100% City
a statistical chain reaction
Video editing by Marc Jungreithmeier
For statistical purposes, people are converted into pie wedges, bars and curves used in their turn for political arguments and economic cost- benefit strategies. What if these statistics were given faces? What if a city was represented onstage by 100 persons, a number chosen to yield statistically ‘correct’ information? According to statistics (gender, age, neighbourhood, country of origin, living arrangement) 100 citizens are chosen to reflect a certain city on stage. Rimini Protokoll only chose the very first protagonist. The protagonist then has to find the next one, who would then choose the next...
In a world bombarded with ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ this cross-section of the society could tell the truth of modern life in a way graphs or pie-charts never could. Spreading throughout the city 100% city begins the casting in the invited city has to recruit another in 24 hours, who then recruits another and so on – all according to specific criteria of age, gender, household type, geography and ethnicity mirroring the demographic make-up of the city. 100% City - a gathering that is a city, a group just beginning to experience itself, a choir that has never practiced, an impossible entity with many faces – assembled into ever-changing new group pictures: group pictures as replacement for family – as fleeting portraits of belonging. Who is missing? Who thinks they might give answers on stage that are different from the ones they’d give in response to a telephone survey or in the voting booth? And what have the statistics failed to record? Who lives in a completely different city? Who thinks that this city is different because they are a part of it?