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When lockdown put the usual avenues of the art and entertainment worlds on hold, dozens of storytellers took to the internet to release their pent up creative energy. With audiences stuck at home, artists found ways to connect through web-based theatre, virtual discos, audiovisual performance and interactive documentaries.
To mark this bizarre moment in time, we have ‘Electric Dreams’, a digital fringe festival of storytelling in cyberspace. It’s a mix of online art projects that were formed in the lockdown, and those that preceded it, with a programme that’s as multifaceted as the inside of a microchip. For starters, you can re-imagine 12,000 years of human influence on earth as a 40 minute symphony of sound and image, watch a play that was made specifically for Zoom, and participate in a performance piece that culminates with a group meal in ‘The Stove’. If that sounds a little strange, wait until you hear about the Microbe Disco, a virtual party by the Queer Ecologies collective where you can ‘meet your companion species, move with algae, moss, viruses, grass, skin, bark, poetry and other rhythmic delights under the microscope’. It’s no Fabric, but it’ll have to do.