Seth Honnor - Kaleider (UK)

In conversation with Martin Zierold

For an overview of all episodes which have been produced in English – among them conversations with the poet Wendy Cope, Tim Etchells from Forced Entertainment and the researcher Orian Brook, please head to our English website www.covid-culture.com

Our guest today might not be very well known in Germany, but he ought to be. He is one of the most versatile, sharp, inspiring, entertaining and challenging artists – Seth Honnor, director and joint lead of the production studio Kaleider.

His work very often is collaborative and ranges from installation, live performance to digital and has toured to festivals, venues and public spaces internationally. His production „The Money“ was among the first West End productions in London to open after the long lockdown for theatres in the UK. The Money is a ‘showgame’ in which audience members have to reach a unanimous decision about how to spend a pot of real money. It has played on 5 continents and in venues as prestigious and charged as the UK Houses of Parliament, Sydney Opera House, Lagos City Hall, Yale Members Club and Tianjin’s Grand Theatre.

We will be talking about his experience to bring this production back to London under covid conditions, but also about other projects from the digital sphere and public spaces and what connects the seemingly diverse works he has produced.

Kaleider Kaleider is a production studio led by artist Seth Honnor and producer Katie Keeler. We combine installation, live performance and digital to design artworks for audiences, which we tour to cities, festivals, venues and public spaces all over the world. Kaleider Studios is in Exeter, UK and is where we make our work and run projects. We share our space with other creative organisations and individuals, many of whom we collaborate with and who collaborate with each other. In the last 5 years, Kaleider has performed 144 international gigs in 14 countries on 5 continents to more than 65,000 people.

Seth Honnor’s practice has spanned both Cultural and Artistic Leadership, playing with digital innovation in both areas and always in relation to the live experience. Until 2006 Seth was an Actor, Director and Producer for Imitating The Dog, a company he co-founded in 1998. In 2004, before the advent of social media, he founded the critically acclaimed development organisation Theatre Bristol, where he leveraged the democracy of the internet for sectoral development across the SW, and later in Serbia and Bulgaria. In 2012 Seth set up the production studio Kaleider, combining both his artistic practice and his developmental spirit. Seth collaborates with artists, producers, and technologists, playing with live performance, installation, and digital to create experiences for audiences around the world. His showgame The Money has received critical acclaim on 5 continents, touring for 7 years. It has received major-channel investment in two non-tx pilots (C4 and ITV). Pig, which also challenges our collective understanding of ownership and money, community and democracy, has played to thousands in public spaces around Europe. Dancing Shadows leverages VR to create a collective dance by the participating public. Robot Selfie premiering May 2021, invites the audience to be drawn by robots to create a massive mural of strangers next to each other in public space. Previous roles: Development Director Interplay Theatre, Curator LIFT, Chair MAYK, Steering Board Chair SWCTN and REACT,Honorary Fellow at Exeter University

Link: https://kaleider.com