Hot or Rot: What Kind of Society Are We Going to Be?
Submission Type
Performance
Start Date/Time (EDT)
19-7-2024 7:45 PM
End Date/Time (EDT)
19-7-2024 8:00 PM
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Abstract
Hot or Rot - What Kind of Society Are We Going to Be? is an interactive performance piece that contemplates the future trajectory of our society. The audience can vote for what they think will happen in a dystopian madcap quiz. The piece's duration is of approximately 15 minutes. It is run on Zoom and voting is carried out via the platform’s polling system. I engage participants with some banter during the brief and intermittent moments of voting.
The quiz presents three distinct pathways: a technocrat-libertarian society, a commons-based society, and a society under the influence of a figure resembling a cult leader. As the performance unfolds, it transitions into a short story that serves as a meditation on tragedy, connectedness, resilience, and hope.
My artistic intention with Hot or Rot is to create a work that is as much about the experience of participation as it is about the content itself. By involving the audience in the formulation of the narrative, the piece becomes in a way a co-created reflection on our individual experience within the contemplation of a societal trajectory. It challenges participants to consider the future not just as a set of ideal outcomes and a path ideally established by moral guidelines, but as a destination that is ultimately unknown. We cannot know where we will end up, and so our main struggle, at a personal level, is to preserve our humanity. The humor that is very present in the first two thirds of the piece fades away at the end. I find that that initial humor and amusement is very engaging and opens the audience up, so that the pathos and meditation at the end can be digested in a more natural and intuitive way.
The draft text of the piece can be found here.
Recommended Citation
Machado Knuth, Margot, "Hot or Rot: What Kind of Society Are We Going to Be?" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 51.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/51
Hot or Rot: What Kind of Society Are We Going to Be?
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Hot or Rot - What Kind of Society Are We Going to Be? is an interactive performance piece that contemplates the future trajectory of our society. The audience can vote for what they think will happen in a dystopian madcap quiz. The piece's duration is of approximately 15 minutes. It is run on Zoom and voting is carried out via the platform’s polling system. I engage participants with some banter during the brief and intermittent moments of voting.
The quiz presents three distinct pathways: a technocrat-libertarian society, a commons-based society, and a society under the influence of a figure resembling a cult leader. As the performance unfolds, it transitions into a short story that serves as a meditation on tragedy, connectedness, resilience, and hope.
My artistic intention with Hot or Rot is to create a work that is as much about the experience of participation as it is about the content itself. By involving the audience in the formulation of the narrative, the piece becomes in a way a co-created reflection on our individual experience within the contemplation of a societal trajectory. It challenges participants to consider the future not just as a set of ideal outcomes and a path ideally established by moral guidelines, but as a destination that is ultimately unknown. We cannot know where we will end up, and so our main struggle, at a personal level, is to preserve our humanity. The humor that is very present in the first two thirds of the piece fades away at the end. I find that that initial humor and amusement is very engaging and opens the audience up, so that the pathos and meditation at the end can be digested in a more natural and intuitive way.
The draft text of the piece can be found here.
Bio
Margot Machado is a writer, researcher, and multidisciplinary artist from the Canary Islands (Spain) and the United States. Her digital and material pieces and performances tend to be interactive and make use of humor, unease, and soundscapes.
Margot's practice-based research explores archive construction, the use of language and sound in generating liminality within narrative digital art experiences, and interactive narratives. Her pieces and performances have been showcased online and in La Noche de los Libros and La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Flipa Gallery in Barcelona, and Phe Festival, Equipo PARA, and Teatro La Granja in Tenerife. Her collaborative piece "Spinning Walks" was published by Quarterly West last year. During her time in New York City, she co-founded and ran Las Marías (2016-2020) a gender justice education project based on critical pedagogies.
She now lives in the island of Tenerife and is pursuing an MA in Contemporary Art, Literature and Culture with a research track at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Margot’s thesis investigates the generational differences in emotional and aesthetic responses to liminal experiences within new media art and digital environments.
Some of her work can be seen on her website.