CURSED a preinvented world

CURSED – a preinvented world is bent on trying our imagination. It starts as an open experimental setup, with people moving through a space that lacks the clear boundaries between stage and auditorium. Groups may form and disband. A live commentator keeps us updated about what’s happening, like a sports broadcast. Chatting turns into hearsay; hearsay into a collective state; collective states into new versions of reality. 

The world of CURSED resembles a city where everyone is desperately trying to be someone else. Tourists strive to act like locals. A waste management unit keeps things running, as if the next shift could halt social decay. Amid the crowd are the so-called Oblivion-Infected – people who buck social rules but are under observation regardless. Groups of people start imitating each other. Behaviour patterns are spreading through the room, like trends, rumours, memes. No one can say for sure whether this is still real life or a next-level version of reality being produced.

The Berlin-based international artists collective OMSK Social Club develop performative role-playing formats known as “Real Game Play (RGP).” There is no fixed script or linear plot like in traditional drama. Instead, a social arrangement, a system of rules, situations and changing constellations are created in a live setting – and recreated differently with the next performance. The participants are not fully fictional characters, because their own individual traits, social dynamics in the room and the choices people make, all add up to slowly impact on the game until they take the lead.

CURSED unfolds over the course of ten performances as an ongoing narrative. The work – which also marks the collective’s first production for the theatre stage – centres around a public trial, a public process. CURSED – a preinvented world explores what it means for societies to rate, comment, and dissect ideas straight away, before they can even take shape. What happens when you’re no longer able to tell whether you’re just watching – or whether you're already playing the game?