The Art of Survival
The Art of Survival scrutinizes the story that scrutinized the story - we continue the thousand-year-old human tradition of localizing, recontextualizing, and searching for the new, perhaps even the better, within the already existing.
Physical and Visual Theatre
2024
About the project
The short story "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" was written by influential Afro-futurist author N. K. Jemisin as a response to world-renowned science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin's surprisingly obscure story, ""The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." In both cases, it is a contemplation of the limits of human imagination. The authors explore how much humanity is capable of imagining utopia. While Le Guin suggests that universal beauty and goodness can only be imagined if suffering is present somewhere, and that people prefer to withdraw themselves if we disagree with the system rather than try to change it, Jemisin's story implies, that utopia actually does not exist.
Jemisin's story, which is deeply rooted in the specific context of the systemic racism of the United States of America, nevertheless resonates with us as well. What kind of utopias can we imagine and what is society willing to do for utopia? How do mass media and social networks influence our collective imagination and action? Where is that golden balance between free speech and hate speech? Can we even establish it - and maintain it? Or is thinking about utopias utopian?
