Die Dauercamperin stages the celebration of Lena Bauer and the offline community Dezent by The People Company (ppc) a dominant tech company in the future. The installation combines dramatised audio fragments, stage design and exhibitionary conventions to ask how the agency of the individual and the notion of independence can manifest in a networked world.

In 2024 a growing backlash against the power of Tech and the tyranny of Big Data causes thousands of individuals to move into self-governed and autonomous Intentional Communities. One of these communities is Dezent, co-founded by Lena and her partner Holger in an abandoned patch of land on Rheinische Strasse in Dortmund.

The everyday experience of a small community reveals Lena and Holger to have different understandings of independence. Holger rejects global networks and technology and wants to revert to an (imagined) past in which communities lived self-sufficiently. Lena aspires to use technology to decentralise power away from commercial and state interests. By 2029 Lena has left Holger, moved out of Dezent and started working at The People Company (ppc).

One hundred years later the global technological landscape has radically changed. The People Company (ppc) have adapted the discourse of decentralisation to their top-down commercial agenda. They mark their centenary by 'honouring' everyday heroes, a way of appropriating the positions of former activists such as Lena and Holger.

Thanks to: Carlo Peters (Sound Design) Ewa Rataj & Michael Witte (Actors). Supported By: Urbane Kunst Ruhr, Innogy Stiftungfull project