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Alladeen draws on the lives of people living in the global
cities of New York, London, and Bangalore—each a city where
many cultures collide, both in virtual and material reality. Aladdin's
story is a perfect vehicle for this "collision" since
it is one that has been revised and re-told many times. This archetypal
rags-to-riches story has travelled from Asia, to India, to England,
to America, and each culture has borrowed, stolen, and reinterpreted
it from the last. Similarly, the interaction of ethnicity and cultures
within these sprawling metropolises blurs the line between identities,
and reflects how cultures reinterpret each other's signs and stories.
Alladeen traces a technological Silk Route, dissonantly mixing
the global
and the local in a shifting map of cultural identity.
Finally, the collaboration between motiroti
and The Builders Association on this project represents our own
modest experiment in cultural
collision.
Aladdin's fantasy of personal transformation is played out in the
surreal world of Bangalore's "call centres," telemarketing
centres where Indian operators learn how to "pass" as
Americans. Exploring the paradoxes of identity in an age of multiple
realities—the story of Aladdin is also particularly resonant
for our consumerist
culture in that the tale focuses on class, wealth, social status,
and the fantasy of transformation: transformation of the self through
acquisition and consumerism, and transformation of ordinary objects
(a lamp and a ring, for instance) into manifestations of the sublime.
The story can equally function as a fable about a young person's
ability to land on his feet throughout a process of continual social
and personal displacement.
The Alladeen project has three forms, all sourcing from
the same material: the website, a music video, and a cross media
stage performance.
Website: You're looking at it.
Music Video (premiere, April
2003) directed by Ali Zaidi, presents Alladeen as
a short musical film, scored by Shrikanth Sriram (Shri), a multi-instrumentalist
and composer
whose recordings are
distributed internationally as 'Badmarsh and Shri', with video
by Peter Norrman. Like the website, the video is designed to reach
young audiences 'where
they live'—in clubs, public
spaces, online, on television. (Click
here to see a clip from the
video)
Performance (premiere, April
2003 - see tour dates)
directed by Marianne Weems, uses advanced technologies, and performers
to explore the Bangalore call centres, the voices of American customers,
and the fantasies of the "exotic East" inspired by a
century of Aladdin films. Since so much of Alladeen's
source material raises questions about identity, impersonation,
and transformation,
theatre is the ideal medium to play out these issues. (Click
here for a short excerpt from the performance)
Audience
One of this project's key artistic aims is to create work
that looks beyond traditional arts audiences, targeting people
who are disinterested in or excluded from the theatre. Our aim
is to extend the avenues for art in our society across international,
social and cultural boundaries; to enable the products of our work
to function as effectively on MTV-Asia as they might do in a museum
of contemporary art or a digital arts festival; and to translate
as well in Bangalore as they do in New York or London.
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