The impossible conversation

”The impossible conversation”
The UN Climate Panel has given our planet a fatal diagnosis.
An accelarating crisis is turning our way of understanding the world upside down. A threat against the planet has appeared, a threat so great the it poses new demands on us. The different scenaria and prognoses are uncertain, but have in common that the world as we know it will be gone in few years.
When did we – with our good intentions and the ”successful democratic Scandinavian modell” – become the worst offenders? And how can we have a conversation, and reflect on the subject without sliding into a fog of accusations, hiding, shame and dishonesty?
And without stagnating in depression and disempowerment?
In ”The impossible conversation” Teater NOR attempts to show our version to discuss these questions, so that the reality we try to avoid appears.

The water room
Teater NOR has made its own ecosystem, where we can follow the cycle of the water from liquid form, via gass to ice. In a big room we invite the audience to visit the Arctic, to explore life in the lake, dance in torrential rain, and examine the movement of our home made clouds in the sky.
The stage is a big pool. In the water are large iron plates that make the water boil and steam when heated. Powerful pumps create rain and waterwalls. Using live cameras, projectors and watermicrophones we let the water tell its own story, while we tell our story, and project it on the different screens of water.

Participants
Producer: Oddny Wiggen
Director: Thorbjørn Gabrielsen
Text: Thorbjørn Gabrielsen/Anniken Greve
Actors: Sissel Helgesen, Øystein Sanne, Mine Nilay Yalcin, Taro Cooper
Sceneography: Teater NOR
Video: Henrik Kolind
Lights: Anita Bjørklid
Sound: Runar Olsen
Engineer: Bjørge Sæther


H2O
For the eldest philosophers, water spoke about time: about movement and about the inherent and incessant development of every object. Heraklit says: No one can enter the same river twice. In this way the problem of knowledge arises from the river: How can we have real knowledge about something that never stays the same, that is always changing?
In the language of chemistry water is H2O, has maximum density at 4 degrees celcius, freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees. For humans-in-the-world water possesses qualities that cannot be examined in a laboratory. It is the ocean as a wide horisontal plane and reflects the sky. It is the frosting on mountain tops in fall, the glacier that reaches towards the valley, the ice cubes in the ridge as well as the clouds.
Water is one of the four elements and is necessary for life. Whoever goes without will die. It is the most important element in the story of the origin of our world. It is also central to the stories of the end of the world. In this way water shows the line between the early cosmo-logic and modern eco-logic.
The discovery of waterchannels in our brain has led to a paradigm-shift in cellular biology according to researcher and doctor Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam at CMBN. After the discovery of the first water channel, now called aquaporin1 or AQP1, researchers have identified 11 different water channels in mamels. Water channels also exists in plants, microbes and invertebraes.