“If you take me to 20,000 I like it, I will do something incredible.”
That is what Performance artist Louise Orwin promises the public in “Famehungry”, an existential crisis of Tiktok Set about being an artist in the digital age. Presented before a live crowd, it is also transmitted live simultaneously in the application.
In Wednesday's show, Orwin did tasks inspired by what he has seen on Tiktok Live: eating in front of the camera, running on a running tape, drinking a Stanley glass and performing Tiktok dances, all while describing his career in Performance art.
The public of Soho Playhouse, where the public will be executed in the clown of Orwin, where “Famehungry” runs until February 8 after the success at the Edimburgh Fringe Festival, was a question open this weekend, since The application was briefly prohibited in the United States.
“The danger in terms of the practical aspects of the program is not great, but also the sense of political danger around the prohibition is really interesting for work too,” said Orwin. “It is a strange situation to be.”
The Congress approved the legislation last year to prohibit Tiktok unless it was sold to a buyer approved by the Government, citing concerns that the Chinese government could obtain access to confidential data from the user and manipulate content in the application, which is Property of the Chinese company Bytedonce.
After the Supreme Court confirmed the law last week, Tiktok darkened briefly before making many users life again when the incoming president, Donald J. Trump, indicated support for the application. (After Trump's inauguration on Monday, he signed an executive order that stopped the ban for 75 days).
For many, which was finally an interruption in the service became a joke. But the legal status of the application is murky, and Orwin is one of the users who still does not have access to Tiktok. Production achieved an alternative solution with a VPN service, but live commentators noticed that the current was sometimes slow.
The “Famehungry” premise, Orwin is advised by a Tiktok user who acts as a guide to the frantic universe of the application, also offers a rapid story of the origins of the program.
In 2020, Orwin was working on a youth therapy project when he met Jax ValentínHe was 15 years old and had about 30,000 Tiktok followers, without celebrity guarantee in an application promoted by trends distributed in many accounts. But for Orwin, an artist who saw the dry opportunities during the Coronavirus pandemic, 30,000 people who watched their work was incredible.
“I had lost all my audiences, ”he said. “I had basically lost all my income. And here there was a 15 -year -old who had access to followers and was earning money outside the application. “
That made Orwin think of developing a show about Tiktok. Valentine, who is now 21 years old with 80,000 Tiktok followers, calls the theater virtually, from her room in Sheffield, England, and Orwin coaches about how to succeed in the application.
A screen projected behind Orwin shows the live transmission of Tiktok, with live online users comments, as well as writing that only the internal audience can see. While Orwin laughs repeatedly in the cell phone camera, the text that wrote flashes on the screen: “This makes me want to tear my eyes.”
An aspect of Orwin's performance is whether Tiktok will turn off its live broadcast for violating community guidelines. In Wednesday's show, two of his accounts were closed by sexual content due to a cucumber on the screen and, later, a vaguely phallic lollipop. Orwin changed to real -time backup accounts.
“It is interesting who is censored and who is not censored,” said Vania Myers, who saw the program on the opening night.
The “Something surprising” that Orwin promised, she follows whether the live transmission reaches or not 20,000 I like, implies a song and an act of final degradation. As the audience responds, often with laughter or applause, the projection of Valentine on the wall looks silently at the crowd.
Although the program points out many of the Tiktok, Orwin and Valentine traps emphasized that there is no easy moral judgment to do on a platform with tangible benefits and real inconveniences. For Valentine, the application has been a tool to build self -esteem, but also a place where they saw that their “thirst traps” worked better when they were not yet adults.
“We do not want anyone to leave the show and go home and say: 'Tiktok is horrible,” Valentine said. “We want people to leave it and say: 'Ok, that's hard. What is the nuance that surrounds it? “
At the time of the end of Wednesday, Orwin's performance had received more than 8,000 likes in Tiktok. But because the program had been expelled from two accounts, its online audience had decreased.
“I hope that the three people who look at Tiktok really like it,” Orwin said in the final moments.
On the screen, User3361307021887 commented: “I loved it.”
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