Inspiration
Our piece was inspired by a mix of sci-fi films, apocalypse narratives, and immersive performance structures. As we kept developing the work, I became especially interested in the relationship between time travel, public space, infection, surveillance, and guided audience movement. I wanted our performance to feel like the audience had stepped inside a system that was already in motion, where they were not just watching a story, but being moved through it. Some of the strongest inspirations for this project came from film and performance works that helped shape the visual world, the timeline logic, the infection theme, and the headphone-based structure of the piece.
Men in Black
One of the clearest inspirations for our piece was Men in Black. I was really drawn to the black suits, sunglasses, and the official, controlled feeling of the agents. That visual language felt very close to the time travelling tour structure we created, especially for Vincent as the liaison guiding the audience through a world they do not fully understand. What inspired me was not just the costume, but the idea that there is a hidden system operating alongside ordinary public life. That helped me think about our performers as people managing access, secrecy, and control inside a familiar public space.
Linkļ¼
https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/meninblack?.com
12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys became a major inspiration because it connects time travel directly to a future plague and to the desperate attempt to stop disaster at its source. That relationship between the future and the beginning of infection felt very close to our own timeline structure. It helped me think about time travel not as something clean or heroic, but as something unstable, anxious, and already full of damage. In our performance, that same feeling was important: the audience is moving through the library as if the ending has already happened, and the future has come back too late to fully repair it.
Link: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/12_monkeys?.com
The Last of Us
Out of all the zombie and infection references, The Last of Us felt like the closest fit for our project. What interested me was the way infection changes not just bodies, but also the whole environment around them. The world itself carries the history of collapse, fear, survival, and contamination. That was really useful for our piece because the library was never just a backdrop. It became the place where infection moved through bodies, surfaces, air, and public circulation. I was inspired by the feeling that ordinary space has already changed, even before full horror is visible.
Link:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3581920/?.com
Remote X
Remote X by Rimini Protokoll was a major performance inspiration for this project because it is so close to the structure we were building. In that work, a group moves through the city wearing headphones and following a synthetic guiding voice. That relationship between obedience, collective movement, and private listening felt incredibly relevant to our own performance. It helped me think about how audio can control pace, direct attention, and transform an ordinary public environment into something theatrical, unstable, and uncanny. It was especially useful for understanding how a group can feel both connected and isolated at the same time.
link: https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/project/remote-x?.com
The Truman Show
The Truman Show was another important reference for me because of its relationship to spectatorship and control. What stayed with me was the idea of a person living inside a system of observation without fully understanding the scale of that gaze. That connects strongly to our project, where people from the future are not simply witnessing history, but consuming it as an experience. This helped me think about the audience not as neutral observers, but as people implicated in the act of watching. That darker voyeuristic layer became an important part of how I understood the piece.