A guided tour of the future of Guimarães

In a couple of weeks ‘Uninvited Guests’ and Duncan Speakman from Circumstance are travelling out to Portugal to run auditions for their mobile performance ‘Give me Back my Broken Night’.

Give me Back my Broken Night is a mobile performance (in Portuguese) using pervasive technology that asks audiences to collaboratively imagine the future of Guimarães. Using a combination of location sensitive mobile devices and portable projectors it creates a magical, relevant and cinematic experience for participants. Give me Back my Broken Night is a guided tour, not of the historic past but of the future of a place.

Audiences are given a mobile devise and a blank folded paper map, a micro projector is hung around their neck. In the streets, a performer guides them to vacant lots and buildings under construction, where they speak about what is actually being planned and about utopian or dystopian possibilities. They also ask about what they’d like to see there. As the audience describe their own visions of the future, these imagined buildings begin to appear on the map in their hand as a series of glowing lines.

They return to the main location to meet other audience members, at which point the individual maps become projected as one on a table and all the participants describe, debate and share their visions for the future.

We ran a casting call and scouted for illustrators and the volume of the responses has been phenomenal. In September the artists will be in The Design Institute to hold auditions, devise and play in the run up to their shows in October.

They will then return in October to perform on two nights from the Pousada de Juventude de Guimarães, which is at the heart of the famous Couros area. The shows will be Friday 26 October (private viewing) and Saturday 27 October. Each night will have two shows, but spaces are very limited so make sure you book your place.

You can book a ticket for Saturday 27 October via this page .

The piece has been made from scratch using Appfurnace technology and has been created in the Portuguese language.

Watch a video of a version of Give me Back my Broken Night in Soho (London).

Give me Back my Broken night VIDEO

Give me Back my Broken night VIDEO

About the artists
Formed in Bristol in 1998, Uninvited Guests make entertaining and provocative performance. Their work represents a contemporary reality, in which memories of movies are as much part of our experience as intimate dialogues with lovers. They work in various contexts and constellations, focusing mainly on performance but also producing installation and digital media. Recent work has blurred the line between theatre and social festivities, with audiences joining them in events that are celebratory and elegiac, nostalgic and critical of these times. Previous projects include Guest House, Film, Offline, Live Chat, Schlock, Aftermath, It Is Like It Ought To Be: A Pastoral, Love Letters Straight From Your Heart and Make Better Please.

Uninvited Guests’ work has toured nationally and internationally, showing in the UK, China, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria and Australia.
Uninvited Guests are produced by Fuel. www.fueltheatre.com

Paul Clarke is one of the artistic directors of Uninvited Guests and a member of the Performance Re-enactment Society. He is also a Lecturer in Performance at University of Bristol.

Duncan Speakman works with circumstance, an international collective of artists, who create cinematic experiences in unexpected locations. These experiences take many forms, from mass participation performances and intimate in-ear stories, to books, installations and workshops. Using both emergent and commonplace technology, they make films without cameras, creating alternate worlds and poetic layers in the everyday.

circumstance draws on its members’ backgrounds in contemporary performance, theatre, interactive design, music composition, wearable electronics, locative and pervasive media. They are known for the creation of the ‘subtlemob’ form of performance and the application of mobile electronics in public space performances. Projects consistently address the social, political and emotional impacts of the technologies used.

From 2008-2010 Duncan was resident at the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol (UK). His work has been exhibited and performed internationally at venues and festivals including RAM (JP), ISEA(JP), MediaCity(KR), M:ST(CA), SemiPermanent(NZ), PerformanceSpace(AUS), SonicActs(NE), AlmostCinema(BE), Mayfest(UK).

This project has been created in partnership with the British Council.