«An update on the situation for theatre artists in Germany»

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents SEGAL TALKS: Thomas Oberender livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Thursday 21 May 2020

SEGAL TALKS is a daily one-hour LIVE online conversation from Monday to Friday about making art and making sense in the Time of Corona.

SEGAL TALKS was conceived, created and curated by Frank Hentschker in March 2020.

Thomas Oberender: 

Nobody knows how we will be changed by this experience. For me, I can say that it’s not normal anymore to fly to New York to meet in person for three hours. Impossible. I would say I am starting to rethink our system of making exhibitions. All these curators are traveling around the world to go shopping in institutions and bring something home that will be delivered in huge trunks by assistants, just to be presented in the showcase for eight weeks or three months. All this is a luxury behavior. I see it is necessary, of course, in the way institutions are working now—it is necessary for many artists to go on tour and to travel. But I think we now have a second to understand. We remember how bright the sky looks, especially if you remember the photographs of the satellites of Northern Italy—you see the landscape and not the smog. So many things are possible that seemed to be impossible. This gives us some opportunity to think about an economy under the conditions of deceleration. I think there is a generation that will remember this break. The virus pressed the pause button. You see the fragility of civilization.The time of corona makes it clear that there is another world inside the modern Enlightened world. There is a world of different concepts of the world. There is another kind of philosophy of care, of healing, of different medicine—everything, that is not so appreciated by the established system, but is not so toxic as the established ways of our economy and our lifestyle. Resist going back to the things you know too early.(May 21)​