There Will Be Light

A project about the precarious economy of hope.

Not here, not now. Hope is all about then and there. Today, the people deciding which futures are possible are the CEOs and technocrats running the governments – the experts of the neoliberal status quo. “It has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Today, we are experiencing a crisis of imagination. So what if hopelessness is not the lack of hope, but a lack of space to imagine alternatives?

There Will Be Light proposes possible futures that turn our expectations upside down. For this project, Studio Julian Hetzel takes the equivalent of a basic income of their own cultural funding and gives it to one person. In other words: someone will receive €15.000. Something for nothing.

What would you do with €15.000? This money is an invitation to escape the world of needs and to enter the world of desires. Everybody has a chance, everybody can apply.*

There Will Be Light promotes a radical gesture to question the way we live and how we relate to labor. Today’s societies are defined by work: work to produce value, to have a sense of purpose, to provide status. What would we be if we were not workers? During one week, every day for 6 hours the audience is invited to explore an artificial beach, to follow the interview process to find the chosen one and to apply. Alternative expert committees select the chosen one. We cast for life.

There Will Be Light is a project about life as art and art as work. The real performance begins after the applause, at the very moment when the show is over and the audience returns home. For one year, seven days per week, 24h per day, the “chosen one” starts performing an improvisation called life.

So stop working and become an artist!

www.therewillbelight.com