Gin Müller, Laura Andreß & team
JUSTITIA! Data Ghosts
Welcome to the black box of artificially intelligent jurisdiction! ‘Justitia’, the technological future of justice, guides its test audience through a futuristic (mind)game. In the interactive, performative installation JUSTITIA! Data Ghosts, the aim is for humans and machines to jointly test a possible utopia that combines machine precision and foresight with human intuition and judgement. With the third part of their JUSTITIA series, Gin Müller and his team tackle questions of technological progress and moral responsibility, allowing audiences to be part of how justice goes digital.
‘Justitia’, the technological future of justice, promises to be completely fair and objective. Supported by its court avatars, she guides the test audience through a futuristic mind(game) in which interactive game islands and voting mechanisms provided by the ‘Justitia’ programme put the participants’ moral sentiment and decision-making skills to the test. The aim is for humans and machines to to try out a potential utopia of commons that combines machine precision and foresight with human intuition and judgment.
In continuation of Gin Müller’s JUSTITIA performance series on justice and the law, the themes are expanded into the digital space. New technological possibilities such as artificial intelligence constitute a profound paradigm shift for our legal system, challenging our understanding of authenticity, objectivity, intellectual property and legal responsibility. Sooner or later, algorithms will change the justice system. So, what do we believe to be a good and fair decision?
Following JUSTITIA! Identity Cases (nominated for a 2023 NESTROY award and invited to the 2023 Impulse Festival) and JUSTITIA! Il*legal Monsters, JUSTITIA! Data Ghosts tackles questions of the relationship between technological progress and moral responsibility, allowing audiences to be part of how justice goes digital.
Gin Müller is a dramaturge and ar/ctivist who works in the fields of theatre, performance and queer studies. He was a guest professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2018/19) and is now a lecturer for theatre, film and media studies at Vienna University. In addition, he has realised his own theatre and performance pieces in Vienna (brut Wien) and Mexico City, some of which include: Sodom Vienna (2020/21), the que_ring drama project (2018/19), Fantomas Monster (2016/17), TransGenderMoves (2014/15) and Melodrom/Rebelodrom – NoborderZone (2012/13). Gin Müller was also a co-founder of noborder VolxTheaterKarawane (2001–2004) and the band SV Damenkraft (2003–2008). He was active at the Schandwache from 2020 to 2023, in the Refugee Protest Vienna of 2012/13 and at Rosa Lila Villa Tipp from 2011 to 2019 as well as at the LGBTIQ welcome and support project Queer Base. ginmueller.klingt.org
Laura Andreß studied theatre, film and media studies in Vienna and, following assistant jobs at various theatres and festivals (including the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Schauspielhaus Wien and PACT Zollverein Essen) finished a master’s course in dramaturgy at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. She has since been active as a free dramaturge and director. Her work has been presented at venues such as the Volksbühne Berlin, Schauspiel Leipzig, the Wiener Festwochen, Festspielhaus Hellerau and the Münchner Kammerspiele. In 2021, the piece NAME HER. Eine Suche nach den Frauen+, to which she had contributed her skills as a dramaturge and writer, got invited to the Theatertreffen in Berlin. Playing Earl Turner was invited to the Staatsschauspiel Dresden’s Fast Forward Festival in 2022 and to the Rehearsal for Truth Festival in New York in 2024. Andreß is a founding member of the Vienna performance collective DARUM.
Others involved
Jan Machacek is a media artist and performer. His performances are intersections of space, body, video projection, sound and spoken word, focusing on matters of individual agency in a reality informed by audiovisual media and information. Machacek likes to realise his projects in collaboration with artists from various genres. Specifically, he has cooperated with Gin Müller on multiple projects. Machacek's performances have been presented, among others, at the Wiener Festwochen, the Residenztheater, Munich and Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City. His work has won multiple accolades, such as at the Graz Diagonale and the International Prize for Performance in Trento. Most recently, he presented his solo performance blind spot light at WUK and the group piece EX-HELENA at brut Wien. janmachacek.at
Anna Mendelssohn studied acting in the UK and has been a cast member of toxic dreams since 2004. She also worked with numerous other choreographers and theatre directors (including Mara Mattuschka, Superamas, David Mayaan) and film directors (Michaela Schwentner, Thomas Marschall). Since 2010, she has been creating her own stage performances (including Cry Me A River, What?, Feminism and the Bauchgefühl, Amazon – River Deep, Free Speech?!), which have been shown at festivals throughout Europe and won her awards. Her main interest is in tackling language and rhetoric in private and political affairs in an informed manner. Anna Mendelssohn has been working as an actor, dramaturge and screenwriter in film since 2007. Also, she is a voice artist and freelance psychotherapist.
Nora Jacobs works with performance and video and implements large-scale installation pieces. In 2018, she acquired her diploma with accolades at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna after finishing a bachelor's course in acting at the Norwegian Theatre Academy and attending the Zurich Hochschule der Künste and the Academy of Circus Arts as part of the Erasmus programme. Residencies took her to places such as the Rote Fabrik in Zurich, the ImPulsTanz festival in Vienna, a cargo ship crossing the Baltic Sea and the Sahara Desert. She is a co-founder of the queer-feminist group HEATHERS. www.norajacobs.info
Nicholas Hoffman works in the fields of visual art, music and performance. His practices enable and inform one another, and the artefacts of his creation are interrelated on material, musical and textual levels. In his work, Hoffmann analyses the banality, violence and humour of every-day life by creating performances, drawings, sculptures and songs that address the relationship between time, composition and rhythm as well as between space and narration. Hoffman is also one third of Vienna's 'trio-core' band Kinky Muppet. He lives and works in Vienna. nicholashoffman.at
Johnny Mhanna was born in Damascus, Syria, where he studied acting at the university theatre. From 2013 to 2015, he lived in Lebanon, where he appeared in various theatre and feature film productions. In 2015, Mhanna arrived in Austria, where he has since acted in numerous German-language productions, such as in Homohalal and Die Arbeitersaga – Teil I at the Werk X, in the production Traiskirchen – Das Musical at the Wiener Festwochen and in Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern at the Klagenfurt City Theatre. Most recently, he was cast for several productions by Theater im Bahnhof in Graz and the Wiener Klassenzimmertheater. In addition to his occupation as an actor, he has also worked as a theatre educator and co-curator for the City of Vienna's Kultursommer Wien festival in 2021, selecting theatre productions and staged readings.
Alexandru Cosarca lives in Vienna and works at the intersection between visual art, performance, theatre production and spoken word. In his performance pieces, he tackles the function of gender roles, transformation and the art of hosting. He appeared in numerous productions by international theatre and performance collectives and staged solo art shows and performances, for example at Tanzquartier Wien (2024), WUK performing arts (2024), Index Art Book Fair, Venice (2024), Kunsthalle Wien (2023), the Vienna Art History Museum (2022), the mumok Vienna (2021), the Wiener Festwochen (2016–2022), steirischer herbst (2019), Galerie 5020, Salzburg (2023), Drugo More, Rijeka (2021), Künstlerhaus Vienna (2020), Wienwoche (2020) and brut Wien (2019). He is the founder of WERISTdICHTER? and ContextCocktail.
Lisa Furtner has been active as an actor and puppeteer, mainly in Austria, since 2015. She has appeared at, among other places, the Volksoper Wien, the Konzerthaus Wien, the Philharmonie de Luxembourg, the Theater Drachengasse, the Kabarett Niedermair, the Schloss Tillysburg Festival, the Theater Spielraum and ARGEkultur Salzburg. She has worked as an assistant in production, set and costume design at, among other places, Theater Akzent, Dschungel Wien and Kosmos Theater. Since 2017, she has been part of the leading team of the Schloss Tillysburg Festival in Upper Austria, where she is responsible for all graphic design and contributes considerably to the realisation of sets. Since 2019, she has been engaged in painting in puppet making for various productions.
Sophie Baumgartner is a freelancer active in the field of set and costume design for theatre, music, performance and fashion labels. She has realised stage costumes for the performance Francis Bacon (Reenactment) (2012) by Ismael Ivo and Johann Kresnik at the ImPulsTanz festival as well as for the Chamäleon Theater in Berlin. Moreover, she worked for Universal Music Austria. Since 2017, Sophie Baumgartner has been living in Vienna and working regularly with Kollektiv Kunststoff, designing sets and costumes. In September 2022, she created the set and costumes for the play Fallen by Anna Gschnitzer at Theater Drachengasse, Vienna, in collaboration with Isabella Sedlak. The two of them also conceived of and realised the play Hideaway. Liebe und andere Radikalitäten at Werk X-Petersplatz in 2023. In May 2024, Baumgartner's costume design featured in the production Nachsagungen. at Kosmos Theater, Vienna.
Wolfie Christl is a programmer, researcher, publicist, adult educator, web activist and leader of Cracked Labs, who lives in Vienna. He is a trained telecommunications engineer and finished neither of his studies at the Linz Art University and in computer science, social sciences and theatre, film and media studies at the University of Vienna. For many years, Wolfie Christl has tackled the societal effects of new information and communication technologies, until 2006 as an employee of renowned Vienna web culture organisation Public Netbase. He thinks, writes and speaks about free media, critical web culture, big data, privacy, surveillance, copyright and open source and explores the power of online platforms, algorithmic decision systems and the economy of personal information in this digital age.
Matthias Leichtfried has been a (post-doc) university assistant at the Department of German Studies in Vienna since February 2022, teaching and researching in the field of German-language teaching methodology. His research interests include literature and media education, with research foci on teaching German in a digital culture, aesthetic education and artificial intelligence. As a member of the University of Vienna's task force devising guidelines in handling AI and as a teaching methodologist for German, he is mainly concerned with fostering AI literacy. This includes the aspect of 'knowledge' as well as practical approaches and mainly critical perspectives on the subject of artificial intelligence.
Moritz Riesewieck is a film and theatre director as well as a writer. His cinematic documentaries The Cleaners (2018) and Eternal You (2024), which he co-created with Hans Block, had their world premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States and were screened worldwide at festivals, in cinemas and on television. His essay Vom Ende der Endlichkeit (2022) has been translated into multiple languages. Under the label name Laokoon he shares with Hans Block and Cosima Terrasse, Riesewieck creates innovative theatre pieces, most recently for the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Burgtheater, Vienna (2022) and cross-media works such as the artistic data experiment Made to Measure (2021).
Cosima Terrasse is an artist and director who develops participatory art projects for the public sphere as well as theatre and community spaces. She creates money-free casinos, designs feminist motorbike jackets in Ho Chi Minh City, choreographs performances for dogs and performs the last rites for cars. Under the label name Laokoon she shares with Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, Terrasse conducts artistic research and devises data experiments, theatre productions, performances, audio dramas and film documentaries on highly controversial topics, always circling around the question of how our idea of humans and society evolves in the digital age. Their project madetomeasure.online was nominated for the Prix Europa in 2020, awarded the Information Is Beautiful Award and recognised by more than a million viewers.
Jürgen Schmidt is a computer scientist who has tackled the intersections between humans and machines since he started to work in the 1990s. His first works on artificial intelligence were created in 1999. For 15 years, he and his company have been conducting research on the real-life deployment of AI. Schmidt is a known keynote speaker who gives guest lectures on the subject at universities. Activism and art have long been of key importance to his career.
Accompanying programme
Accompanying the interactive performance JUSTITIA! Data Ghosts, workshops, a roundtable and a lecture followed by discussions on topics such as the digital rights and artificial intelligence will take place on January 17th and 18th. The programme has been curated and organised by students of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as part of the university course Case Studies (Critical Studies).
Fri. 17.01.2025
14:00–16:30 workshop
Pay as you can on site
Register here
17:00–18:30 lecture/input and discussion
Pay as you can on site
Register here
Sat. 18.01.2025
14:00–16:30 workshop
Pay as you can on site
Register here
17:00–18:30 roundtable and discussion
Pay as you can on site
Register here
Credits
Concept, artistic direction & text Gin Müller, Laura Andreß Performance Anna Mendelssohn, Alexandru Cosarca, Lisa Furtner, Nicholas Hoffman, Nora Jacobs, Johnny Mhanna Set & video design Jan Machacek Costume & set design Sophie Baumgartner Sound design Nicholas Hoffman Programming & technical consultation Jürgen Schmidt, Chris Janka, Dario Stefanek, Oliver Stotz, Lilli Joppien, Alessio Molinari, Ralf Tronstoner Content consultation/outside eyes Wolfie Christl, Matthias Leichtfried, Cosima Terrasse and Moritz Riesewieck (Laokoon) Production management Ines Kaiser Assistance Rebekka Utesch Social media management Hicran Ergen Graphic design Georg Starzner Conceptualisation of accompanying programme in collaboration with students of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
A co-production by Verein zur Förderung der Bewegungsfreiheit and brut Wien
Funded by the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs (MA 7)
Dates & Tickets
January 2025
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
Choose your price category: € 22/€ 18/€ 14
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Info
Content notes
Parts of the performance address forms of violence, mental health and death.
Recommended for audiences above 16 years of age.
The performance uses theatre fog and stroboscopic light.
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AFTERLIVES
brut all over Vienna
brut nordwest
accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern), U4 (Friedensbrücke), U6 (Dresdnerstraße) Tram: 5 (Nordwestbahnstraße) Bus: 5A (Wasnergasse)
studio brut
not accessible
Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
Subway: U3 (Zieglergasse), Tram: 49 (Westbahnstraße / Zieglergasse)
brut at Exhibit Eschenbachgasse
Eschenbachgasse 11 / Ecke Getreidemarkt, 1010 Vienna
U-Bahn: U4, U1 (Karlsplatz), Tram: 1, 2, D, 71 (Burgring), Bus: 57A (Getreidemarkt)