Echogedicht

We rush through the web with a constant “yes/no button”.  We search for information that we assume to be relevant. In this way, we assemble a personalized collection of information and rarely give contrary content a chance. Algorithms are often blamed for this. Yet “echo chambers” have existed as long as people and social groups have existed. In our daily lives, we are primarily interested in living up to our own identity.  Having one’s own opinions confirmed over and over again is good for the ego and has a similar effect to a drug.

We create a poem for ourselves with all its metaphors and formal structures, with its codes and repetitions. We enjoy the melody and harmonies of our narrative and look for resonances of it in our interpersonal interactions.

How can we get out of our “echo chambers” and be open to the arguments of the other side? How can we reconcile our own “echo poems” with other narratives and thus create a common reality? Don’t we then create a new, only bigger “echo chamber” again? Or is it in the diversity of narratives and poetry where we can find our common ground?

In this new dance piece, choreographer Tiago Manquinho and the act:on team search to place own worlds, narratives, and their echoes in social spaces.  Contrasting realities attracting and repelling each other, parallel universes in a limited space-time. Like the mountain nymph Echo, who could not declare her love for Narcissus, four “poems” will echo on ” cliffs” and try to find a common melody.