The performance good vibes only questions the language and forms of digital getting to know on dating apps. How do dating apps like Tinder, Grindr, Bumble and Co. change our language and thus our behavior when getting to know each other? What algorithms and selection mechanisms are used by the different platforms to connect people while guaranteeing long-term use and commercialization of the app? 

 

For some, dating apps are important spaces of retreat and opportunities for exchange; for others, they are anonymous spaces for sexual harassment and assault. This language also influences behavior and communication in the quasi-analog world. It is a stream of encounters and digital introspection between memory and data loss, where some encounters accumulate as deposits. In good vibes only, an ambivalent artificial world emerges between the physical presence of the performer and the digital representation. While encountering others digital-textually dating apps will be negotiated as spaces in which dystopias and utopias collide.

Through a digital screen mask, movements and the smartphone as interface, the performer meets and gets to know digital doubles and others - expectations, wishes, desires, intimacy and worries are shared and negotiated between identity construction, image editing programs and beautification filters while the physical presence vanishes from sight.

 

Performance: Klemens Hegen

Dramaturgy: Marcin Miętus

Video: Cornelius Schaper

Produktion: Valentin Leuschel

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​GOOD VIBES ONLY is a production by Klemens Hegen in cooperation with RAMPE. Supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart and the Freie Tanz- und Theaterszene Stuttgart.