FuturePerfect Productions 2016: Verdensteatret’s “Bridge Over Mud”

FuturePerfect Productions 2016: Verdensteatret's "Bridge Over Mud" from FuturePerfect on Vimeo.

FuturePerfect is a New York-based interdisciplinary production company focused on the intersection of live performance, media, visual art and technology. Wayne Ashley, the former Director of Arts in Multimedia at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), founded the company in 2008. futureperfectproductions.org

FuturePerfect is developing the 2016 North American tour of the Norwegian performance group Verdensteatret's latest work Bridge Over Mud. Part music concert, part installation and part performance, Bridge Over Mud features a vast delivery system that includes 195 feet of elevated tracks, 11 motorized vehicles, 60 speakers, and 30 micro-controlled motors. Throughout the hour-long work Verdensteatret uses these tracks to literally transport video, sculpture, shadows, screens, and sounds to create a dazzling open-ended story space of immense proportion.
Verdensteatret is recognized as one of the leading Norwegian art collectives, known for surprising uses of new and old technologies in the making of contemporary theater, performance and art. Verdensteatret’s works are presented internationally in a variety of contexts, including galleries, music festivals and theaters. Led by Lisbeth J. Bodd and Asle Nilsen, Verdensteatret has long had strong ties to the European, especially German, theatrical tradition that includes Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Heiner Müller. Following experiments in fields such as visual performance, environmental theater and text-based theater, the group has recently tended toward the ambitiously interdisciplinary. Today, Verdensteatret consists of video artists, computer animators, sound engineers, musicians, artists and a painter, among others.
FuturePerfect develops works through close and often long-term relationships with some of today’s most interesting artists, scientists, researchers and organizations. Through ongoing collaborations FuturePerfect generates and supports new directions in performance and visual culture through commissions, touring, consulting, residencies, presentations, and conferences.