Public Movement

The Emergency Routine performance activates civil alliances as they occur between bodies in moments of peril. Today, in an era of governments debating the need for civil resilience and the biopolitical relations between state and citizens come have come under scrutiny, Public Movement suggests a collective meeting that springs from the shared practice of the movement of solidarity and governance. The audience, along with five performers, will be invited to experience choreographies of care, imaginary as well as documented hazardous scenarios, and staged evacuation conditions. Following the elusive hand of the state that reaches out to grab its citizens under the guise of protection, touching them, Emergency Routine extends an invitation to be swept away and to allow physical contact and manipulation.

Emergency Routine is based on research on the largest alleged evacuation exercise in the world during peace time: the 1961 Operation Stockholm. During this unprecedented, ambitious event, 225,000 residents were requested to hurriedly leave their city due to a fictitious emergency. Following action in Stockholm, Rome, and Tel Aviv, Public Movement will adapt the performance for a site and context-specific Düsseldorf version.

Public Movement functions as a performative research body that explores and stages political action in public space. Public Movement examines and creates public choreographies, forms of social order and open as well as covert ritual. Since its inception, Public Movement has studied the rules, powers, protagonists, and policies, identity formations and ritual systems that determine the dynamics of public life and public space.