Berlin-based trio Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug, Stephan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel) team up with Zurich-based scenographer Dominic Huber to invite us into a model city that blends recorded real-life experiences with immersive theatre adapted to the Covid-era. 

The installation Urban Nature folds around itself, occupying just one half of the top exhibition floor of the CCCB. It offers a conveyor belt of narratives, each strictly eight-minutes long, that offer perspectives on the present and future of the post-Covid city. But while the stories are local, the landscape feels remote from Barcelona. It seems like a generic place in transition; a waiting room, or a series of waiting rooms. 

The intention, in line with the troupe’s previous projects, is that the public help bring the piece together – a challenge, still, because of the necessity of social distancing, masks and the limited number of members of each group of visitors. 

As such, the frustrations remain: the interconnected space encourages stories to intertwine, though never quite relate. The shifting perspectives (huge fountain, small buildings, high and low seating) evoke displacement, as do the strange silent avatars (members of another group of exhibition visitors), who must dutifully follow instructions given over sanitised headphones. 

Last seen in Barcelona in 2017 in the group exhibition After the End of the World, since 2000 Rimini Protokoll have worked with interactive theatre events that seek to represent the entire ecosystem of urban life. Among similar projects, 100% City or a variety of audio walks in cities, from Berlin to Santiago de Chile (but not between!), provide group or individualised experiences that reconnect city dwellers with each other and their histories. Urban Nature combines elements of the two, yet is missing the intimacy of the latter and the group dynamic of the former. As restrictions ease, however, the experience will evolve…