The New Genius Experience of The Great Atomic Bombreflector Workshop
The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale calls for participants who could share the experience with artists from production to the stage of a participatory experimental performance The New Genius Experience of The Great Atomic Bombreflector (2025) by ORTA (Alexandra Morozova and Rustem Begenov)
The goal of this workshops is to share our principles of creating art, including creating a general performance atmosphere, collectively creating live music, working with hand-held light, creating props, and working with texts - real letters from atomic test survivors. During the workshops, we will work on all of these aspects and develop them together to see them work in performance.
Application submission from July 25 to August 8, 2025 18.00 PM
Workshop participants up to 10
Session 1. Introduction to New Genius
In this session, we will explore the musical practice and the concept of the Fragile Orchestra. Participants are encouraged to bring a musical instrument or any item that can be used creatively as a musical instrument (such as a bell or a small-diameter corrugated tube). No prior musical experience is required! It is a story about Atomic Inhumanity.
Session 2. Reading letters from test survivors
During this session, we will distribute texts to performers and work on ways to pronounce the texts without acting. We will connect the readings with actions and begin developing performance actions. Additionally, we will start working on the music for the performance and creating props for both the performers and the overall performance.
Session 3. Working with light
In this session, we will discuss our decision not to use special theatrical or cinematic lighting. Instead, we will focus on creating atmosphere using manual lighting techniques. We will develop existing ideas and generate new concepts for lighting while continuing to work on the music, props, and actions.
Session 4. Relationships between performers and spectators
This session will explore the concept of creating a new sense of time—the performative time of the performance. We will focus on how to control the atmosphere of the performance and rehearse everything we’ve developed so far at SeMA, in preparation for the upcoming rehearsals at SAPY.
