UTOPIE/UTOPIA (How We Live Together)2020

The first of four short film collaborations by artist Anne Katrine Senstad and Bill Sage in the How We Live Together series. Utopie/Utopia features Bill Sage, film and TV actor, in a theatrical reading performance set in city and land scapes through their remote collaborative process necessitated by the pandemic. The work is based on the philosophical theories and lectures of Roland Barthes’ 1977 book How To Live Together, and its concepts of tolerance, - a place considered an ethical, moral and distanced civil society, as a place of utopia. Barthes views of tolerance and distance are brought into the foreground in relation to our contemporary times, as a response to the contemporary human crisis, the experiences of isolation, societal and political deconstruction, oppression and marginalization. Bill Sage’s monologue reading has been remixed and enhanced by composer and producer JG Thirlwell for an ultimate listening experience.