AVA LONDON Festival 2025 – pushing the boundaries of contemporary culture
March 14, 2025
Conor McTernan on why Camden’s Knowledge Quarter is the best place for AVA’s London edition
Please introduce yourselves and the company Requardt & Rosenberg.
Frauke and David: We have been working together for over 10 years making mainly outdoor contemporary dance shows in structures that offer a particular perspective for an audience. Together, we use headphones to create intimate audio worlds that accompany distant images.
Future Cargo is retro-futurist, sci-fi spectacle that plays on our curiosity for contact with other worlds. What inspired this idea?
The first idea was that we wanted to make a show in a truck with a giant running machine that would present the continuous appearance of bodies. Given that humans have yet to develop such a system, it fell upon other-worldly intelligence to experiment and create such a machine.
Also, we became nostalgic for a time when humans were more interested in other worldly sightings, including aliens. Yet with the ubiquity of cameras and photographs, these sightings have diminished, and our imagination has been neutered. We are doing what we can to reignite that desperate desire to not be alone out here.
Check out the official Future Cargo trailer here:
Interview continues below
How has Future Cargo evolved since the version that toured in 2021?
We first made the show during the pandemic and certain choices were made due to certain restrictions that were imposed on us. Interestingly some of those restrictions created useful constraints that contributed to the meaning of the show, but some of them were obstructive.
We make our shows without knowing what the overall impact and meaning will turn out to be. Often this isn’t revealed until an audience comes together, and we can see their reaction to the work. Things that don’t necessarily work can then be shaped. At this point we can draw out the things that are important in the work.
We also realised that in the original production there was an unforgivable absence of dogs – which we have now rectified. You’ll have to watch the show to find out what we mean…
The show arrives in King’s Cross as the centrepiece of an exciting Summer Sounds festival season. What do you hope it will bring to the area?
The wonderful thing about outdoor shows at Kings Cross, Camden is the location offers a unique skyline and backdrop for the performance. This can have a huge impact on the feeling of the show. It is always interesting to see how each city influences the content.
In turn the truck has its own impact on the location and for a brief period it becomes part of the local landscape. It becomes a curious public intrusion that appears and disappears.
What do you hope audiences will experience when coming to see Future Cargo?
Future Cargo is an encounter with a beautiful and unknowable other worldly seduction. The audience are both earthly voyeurs and the helpless objects of interstellar desires.
Future Cargo plays at Lewis Cubitt Square from Wednesday 10th August to Sat 13th, and from Thurs 18th to Sat 20th. Full info and tickets available here.
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