ABSTRACT
Alexander Schubert’s most recent artistic research involves a renewed consideration of digital and human realities, merging them through interactive media and virtual environments. Genesis (2020) is a participative installation designed as a web-based video game. Home gamers control four avatars impersonated by real-life human performers living in an empty industrial hall in Hamburg over seven days. The chapter investigates its conception and staging, which occurred during the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Being held by online users and involving a restricted number of people within the performance hall, Genesis was one of the few events confirmed for the 2019–2020 Elbphilharmonie season. The field study of the preliminary stages and the author’s testimony outline a working schedule affected by staff restrictions and technical issues. Still, the performance stuck to the original concept, regardless of the emerging constraints: Schubert’s approach encompasses the digital mediation of community instances, fitting perfectly with gamers’ and avatars’ isolation. To this extent, the analysis of internal dynamics related to extraordinary circumstances becomes the litmus test to show already emerging processes. Institutional, social, and aesthetic needs converge in the informatics’ mediation, and the performative virtual space enlightens the intermedia transition as a cultural artefact.
