Der öffentliche Raum /DE - Ulrike Syha / 15+

DER ÖFFENTLICHE RAUM / GERMAN PREMIERE
Ulrike Syha

A seemingly trivial police case sends a man spiralling into deep paranoia and mounting fear. His response: filling his apartment with security devices and surveillance cameras. At the same time, his work at a law firm pulls him - against his will and beyond his control - into murky right-wing political circles. His wife fares no better: a sociologist who spends her nights on internet forums, tailing strangers, and losing herself in the conspiracy theories of far-left extremist groups. The private lives of both, along with their secret, barely visible activities, have long since become entangled with a larger, unsettling space - one made up of digital networks, trolls, hackers, and bots - turning them into objects of surveillance. Though they supposedly occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum, their paths converge through the omnipresent logic of control and obsession.

Ulrike Syha's text - which won the Hamburg Literary Prize in the poetry/drama/experimental category in 2019 - takes a wry, darkly comic look at a society that has fractured along deep political lines.

For audiences aged 15 and above who approach questions about the future with a critical and self-reflective eye on the media and tools they use.