Participatory Role-Play of Wind-Power Controversies in Lower Austria

Dramatic Mediation is the participatory and experiential strand of the InSituEx research agenda. Within the framework of Multispective Experience Design (MiXeD), the project focuses on the performative mediation of sociotechnical controversies.

Building on Polyphonic Personas, the Dramatic Mediation project will encourage stakeholders involved in recent wind-power debates in Lower Austria to engage with perspectives other than their own. Through structured role-play and role reversal, its eco- and sociodramatic approaches will enable participants to enact and reflect on different human and nonhuman positions within the controversy.

These ecodrama workshops may be complemented by extended-reality technologies, which selectively augment the embodied inquiry through digital representations. Mixed‑reality mediations can make spatial, sensory, temporal, or infrastructural relations perceptible that cannot readily be encountered through role-play alone.

Dramatic Mediation does not treat consensus, compromise, or conflict resolution as its primary measure of success. Instead, it cultivates mutual understanding, ethical perspective‑taking, and informed collective reflection. The project demonstrates how the MiXeD framework moves from analysis, mapping, and representation to embodied, participatory mediation.