Gerard Byrne is a visual artist working with photographic, video, and live art. For If I Can't Dance's first edition, Byrne will develop and produces his film project 1984 and Beyond. At Festival a/d Werf in May, Byrne will present Exercise for Two Actors, a piece in which he explores the relation between spoken language and film dialogue. In Theaterfestival Boulevard, he stages a live reading of the script of 1984 and Beyond. At de VeenFabriek in November, Byrne will premiere his film.
The film takes the magazine Playboy as a starting point. If you were a man who lived in America in 1963, you might have read the panel discussion in Playboy called 1984 and Beyond, comprising a group of science fiction writers including the famous Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Rod Sterling (creator of The Twilight Zone). The panelists discuss how we might imagine ourselves years from now, how we would organize society, population control, warfare, genetic modification, the future of religion, and, of course, the possibility of finding alien life.