Kaya Behkalam & Azin Feizabadi: Negotiation, 2010. Video, 36:00 min, image courtesy the artist and OtherIS.

Negotiation examines scenarios of political conflict through a staged negotiation in a UN Security Council-like set. The script presents a group of actors with a three-act drama on an unspecified revolutionary situation. They proceed to rehearse and embody both their real and scripted characters — the boundaries between fictional and factual histories, individual and collective desires, projections and biographical backgrounds become more and more blurred in the process. Prompted by the authority of a narrator, the actors discuss, improvise and negotiate the necessity for action. But to what extent can action be thought and performed beyond the inherited dramaturgical patterns? Produced by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin.