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THE AGENCY: Medusa Bionic Rise. 10.08.2018. Tanz im August, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin.

<character mode> In a totally extreme approach, an only-by-selection door politics which excluded even press, THE AGENCY opened its Medusa Bionic Rise club to its chosen members (thankfully, looking – and being – totally alone and lost at the end of the evening, I was invited in). Thus in the basement of the Haus der Berliner Festspiel I found myself in their MBR headquarters, full of grit and futurism, sweat and post-digitisation. <analysis mode> The most enveloping aspect was perhaps just existing in the formidible space itself, with all of its materiality, possibilities, and social codes, but this was importantly punctuated by more focused interjections: a workout session, a room to watch video reels with MBR propaganda, a chatty personal history lecture from one of its members, bracing one-on-one dialogues, and a concert which began slowly from the workouts and whispers of the team until it took over the space in brutal rock cacophany. The conceptual nexus focused on the relationship between the body, technology, and sociality, how we train and manipulate our bodies, and for what ends, and here THE AGENCY’s slippery juxtaposition of self-improvement, capitalism, resistance, and technology remains confusing and exciting and troubling >> where do you stand?