Story/Audio
The Dystopian Princess
for Design of the Anonymous by Joanna Zabielska
2024
A Sci Fi Fairytale created for the performance “Design des Anonymen” (DdA)/ “Design of the Anonymous” by Joanna Zabielska, shown at Impulstanz Festival, Vienna, AT (2024) with performers Bita Bell, Verena Herterich & Frederik Marroquín.Joanna Zabielska‘s project “Design of the Anonymous” is a multidisciplinary project that revolves around the red, white and blue checkered plastic bag, found all around the globe. While the origin of its design remains unknown, the bag - called by many different names - has become a symbol of migration, existential stuggle, inventiveness and resilience. Using the bag as a vehicle for interaction, DdA explores urban environments through movement research and collecting stories.
Inspired by the performers‘ co-creation of movements and meanings during rehearsals, previous showings of DdA in public spaces as well as participants’ stories collected by Joanna Zabielska and Daniel Aschwanden (†), I created a science fiction fairytale by combining elements such as time travel and animated objects.
Thank you to Sólveig Guðmundsdóttir and Zosia Hołubowska for feedback.
Further inspiration:
Ursula K. Le Guin — The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Lola Olufemi — Experiments in Imagining Otherwise
Tami T — Princess
First, a crinkling noise. A rustling, a creasing and uncreasing. Sweat. Streams of salty sap running down my face, my arms, my back, my legs. My eyes and thoughts are clogged with dust. I randomly grope for orientation, my fingers feel their way along the rough surface. Finally, they reach into a void. My hands wriggle out of the dark cocoon. I let my head follow, gasping for air. I open my eyelids and am blinded by bright light. I recoil like a snail's eye, suddenly my second skin no longer feels so dark and tight, but safe and warm, like a hiding place.
Now, here the dystopian princess stands, under the awful burning sun. A crown on their head, but not a single sound in their ear. The cheers they still thought they could hear were but a memory. Now, there was no-one left to cheer them on, on their glorious way into the future. No-one was there to witness them making their way to the next realm. Nichts bewegt sich, alles ist stumm in dieser Welt. The princess’s fleeting memories are overlaid by an intrusive crackling sound. They look down, but instead of the smooth white robe they remembered wearing, they are covered in rough checkered plastic. Plastic bags. There is something in the arrangement of the sturdy fabric that forces them to stand up straight and tall. The bags seem lightweight and heavy at the same time.
The dystopian princess looks around. Blocks of concrete, parts of heavy machinery, large wheels, thick black cables, boxes of wooden planks, sacks of sand, metal poles and piles of corrugated cardboard, all randomly scattered on the dusty ground. Sand, pebble and gravel. Behind them, concrete pillars grow in a circular formation to an indeterminate height, but they do not notice, as their attention is captured instead by a massive plywood wall. We are not dreaming of an unmoored fucking utopia is sprayed on it in shrill green colour. Their data bank tells them, this phrase had been originally written by Lola Olufemi during a global pandemic in the 21st century.
What is this place? the princess wonders. It looks like an archeological site, however not like something finished was used and left, but like something was left, unfinished. The construction of the future had seemingly been abandoned, but it must’ve happened already way before they were born. How could that be? They brush against the grey wall and start walking, the sturdy fabric of their dress rustling over the dusty pathway that ran alongside it. The dystopian princess is unfamiliar with the arid ground and straight shapes. Breathing the dry air feels necessary, but difficult. Like their surroundings, their insides feel withered and stiff, like a messy collection of once useful devices, scattered about their body. Maybe they had wrongly been sent to a different location, a different time, a different planet even. This certainly did not look like the future.
[...]