SUGARHEX

Conception  - Rudi van der Merwe
Created and performed by Domi Chansorn, Béatrice Graf, Rudi van der Merwe
Outside eye / Costumes  - József Trefeli
Lights - Hugo Cahn
Production - Laure Chapel - Skree Wolf
Support - La République et Canton de Genève

Sugarhex is a concert-performance created on 22 February 2023 as part of festival Antigel in Geneva. Imagined as a prologue to a cyberpunk adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the performance touches on themes such as artificial intelligence, monolithic all-powerful corporations and rule-by-distraction politics. Taking inspiration from 70s and 80s alternative music, the music style can be described as post-darkwave.

The title Sugarhex is inspired by the name of the witch Sycorax, a character in The Tempest who dies before the start of the play. Additionally, in this cyberpunk adaptation ‘sugar’ refers to entertainment, drugs and post-life technology. ‘Sugar’ therefore refers to the remedies through which humanity flees boredom, pain and death.‘Hex’ refers to a bewitchment.

Shakespeare’s The Tempest is set entirely on an island, but some information is given on how the protagonists arrived there. Sugarhex is set in outer space and dramatises these preliminary pre-island events in a set of 10 original compositions that follow a narrative throughline.

The Sugarhex album can be accessed on Spotify and iTunes.

In addition to Sugarhex, Cyberpunk Tempest has two further outcomes:
ARi3L - a digital project created in collaboration with company Gilles Jobin.
Néapolis - an animation short by Thomas Schmidt.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKR4kps9C4