The residency Room, stage, salon, balcony / Nyxxx takes place at Laholms teater, during September & December, 2019. Open rehearsals:
Free entrance.
Check out the site – turning into a fanzine with text by Sarah Melin, Linus Lundberg, et c.
Photo: Ekaterina Lukoshkova
11-12 of May the two act performance Someone You Trust plays at Skogen in Gothenburg, in connection to the literature festival Intimate Acts. The performance consists in one participatory act, where you get instructions for doing rope bondage together, and one watching act where Tova Gerge and Britta Kiessling follow other but similar instructions for a rope suspension that takes them on a trip in time and space. Follow the first link for more info and sign up.
We did the performance with audiences five times now, and every time it turns out so differently. Sometimes giggly and light, other times darker. But so far always with a touch of stoic humour and care. And also very diverse audience reactions, interpretations, conversations. We’re looking so much forward to see where it goes next!
Someone You Trust will also play at Gylleboverket in July and Inkonst in November.
You take care of the dolls. The dolls will take care of you.
Meet the twelve talking dolls. They scream, cry and comfort, threaten and pray, seduce and order, invoke and plead, explain, hypnotize, confess and terrorize. As an audience member you can pick the dolls up and hold them, take care of them and manipulate them. Or just listen. Together with the other participants in the piece, you create the condition that enables the dolls to appear as a part of your human kinship.
The doll is a thing, but also a body. It has arms and legs, eyes and mouth. When you look at the doll, it returns the gaze. It is speaking and singing. It becomes one of all these objects that ting and pling around you, demanding different types of response. We can have feelings for the doll, tenderness and care, but also nervosity or unease. It is in a borderland creature between life and death. The doll is undead. And it wants something from you.
The piece presents unique handmade stoneware dolls equipped with responsive but pre-recorded voices belonging to twelve different actors. The voices create a polyphonic soundscape that the participants enter, shape and are shaped by. They can also choose to just listen and watch.
Here, a door opens to a playful and eerie world where the dolls are in power precisely through being dolls.
Idea, text, composition, dolls: Nyxxx Voices: Nyxxx, Adriana Aburto Essén, John Alexander Eriksson, André Nilsson, Ellen Norlund, Benjamin Quigley, Francisco Sobrado, Ylva Törnlund and Malou Zilliacus. Costume design: Sofia Luna Carpentry: Johan Andrén
In November, Nyxxx project Someone You Trust premieres in a first version at Skogen in Gothenburg.
Someone You Trust uses the practice of rope bondage to explore trust.
For us who made Someone You Trust, trust is based on listening, consent and clear frames for participating or opting out. Someone You Trust is an attempt to establish conditions for that, both in the encounter between two people, and in the encounter between audience and artists.
The performance is divided into two acts. You can choose to come to both of the acts or just one of them (whichever you prefer). In connections to the rehearsals, there will also be a theoretical outlook on Japanese rope bondage.
SOMEONE YOU TRUST – THE PARTICIPATORY ACT
You and someone you trust book a common ticket, and you come to the performance together. Together, you will follow instructions for how to use a number of ropes. The instructions are calm and invite you to listen to each other and yourselves in a meditative way.
Though in different places, you share room with the others who participate in the first act. Just like you, they follow instructions for tying and being tied.
The instructions are in English.
You need no previous experience of bondage to participate.
Don’t decide on forehand who will tie and who will be tied.
The participatory act will play
– 23–24 of November 18.00–19.00
– 25 of November 16.00–17.00.
SOMEONE YOU TRUST – THE WATCHING ACT
You book a ticket and come to the performance alone or in company, whatever you prefer.
You and the rest of the audience sit down and watch what happens on stage.
On stage, Tova Gerge and Britta Kiessling follow instructions that are both similar to and very different from the instructions in the first act. It becomes a dance with ropes, trust, risk and listening.
The performance is in English.
The watching act will play
– 23–24th of November 19.30–20.30
– 25th of November 17.30–18.30.
SOMEONE YOU TRUST – THEORETICAL OUTLOOK
18th of November. More information soon.
WITH AND BY
TEXT: Tova Gerge and Britta Kiessling
PERFORMERS: Tova Gerge and Britta Kiessling
TEXT EYE AND ROPE RESEARCH: Christian Nilsson
SOUND: Elize Arvefjord
LIGHT: Josefina Björk
ROOM: Josefina Björk, Tova Gerge and Britta Kiessling
ARTISTIC SUPPORT: Gabriel Widing och Ebba Petrén
Foto: Ekaterina Lukoshkova
Thanks to
Everyone in the performing arts collective Nyxxx.
Everyone who helped us to develop the participatory act.
With the support of: Japanstiftelsen, Längmanska kulturfonden, The Swedish Art’s Grant Committee, Cirkör LAB, c.off, The Swedish Author’s fund and Stockholm County Council
Tova Gerge, Pojken (”The Boy”), publishing house Albert Bonniers
Nyxxx: We had a conversation with you on how to write this book years before it was actually published. What do you want to tell our readers about it?
Tova: It’s a novel about the fragility of power, and in a way it is influenced by role play. On the level of the story, the characters in the novel are absorbed by a role play of dominance and submission. But there is also an aspect of role play in how I wrote it. The novel plays with the glitch between myself and the narrator. He is a man trying to break with his working class background through a relationship, and he has no ambition whatsoever to be a good feminist. At the same time, just as in role play, he is also busy with questions that are mine, just from another perspective.
Nyxxx: Do you want to tell something about the reception in the media?
Tova: The reviews I liked the most focused on the riddle in the text. The fact that the reader is forced to answer for themselves who has the power, when, and in what way. It’s also been quite interesting to see how gender is read and remediated in the media. There is an ambivalence in how one of the characters ”should” be read, and some handled this through making a firm decision, while others embraced that ambivalence. The most fun about interacting with the media has been longer interviews, because they allow a dialogue, a difference, a discovery.
Here, you can read more about Pojken in Swedish.
Albin Werle, ‘Ten Spells for Humanity or A Poison Dart for the Ruling Class’, 2018. Installation view, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2018. Photo by David Stjernholm.
Nyxxx: Rumour says you are done with your MFA at Kunstakademiet. Tell us about your what you are showing at the degree show!
Albin: I’m showing a piece called “Ten Spells for Humanity, or A Poison Dart for the Ruling Class”. It consists of a series of games in different materials, such as stoneware, porcelain, iron, textile and stainless steel. Each game is centered around an existential risk facing humanity, and all games are collaborative rather than conflict oriented.
Nyxxx: Is it possible to try the games at the exhibition?
Albin: Every Wednesday between 17-19 I’m in the Kunsthal meeting with the visitors to the exhibition. If they like, we play the games, or we talk about them or do something completely different. During that time, it is free admission.
You turn your back to the world and step into a sounding space. You look around. Someone comes up to you with a proposal. You accept. The withdrawal accelerates. You connect to different games, systems and bodies. You explore and produce new tactics. You are droning. You join the swarm. You disconnect. You rest your way into an action. You install a political paradigm. There is a shift of paradigm. You identify, reinforce and modify your strategies for survival. They are now no longer about survival, but about surpassing what you are trying to cope with. You look back at the world from the other side of the black mirror. You touch the screen.
Nyxxx is invited by the street festival Calle Libre to do Tactical meditations in Vienna. The Swedish performing arts collective Nyxxx makes works that the audience experience by participating. In Vienna we host Tactical Meditations in partnership with the artist Vitória Monteiro. The work has previously been shown in Stockholm, Malmö and Copenhagen.
The performance is free and no pre-booking is neccesary. It opens at 4 pm, but you come and go when you want to.
The performance is supported by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
We spent a week in an empty shop premise in Malmö developing new material. In this episode we talk about games as critique of late capitalism, games played by the police, the games of gentrification and how roleplaying games creates community. We are a bigger group than usual, including parts of the artistic team behind Join and game designer/artist Harry Josephine Giles.
In the end you’ll hear an excerpt of us playing a beta version of the X-dimensional Card Game, developed in semi-public spaces (Malmö Live, Studio and Caroli) this spring. If you are into this stuff, join us during Transistor (se post below) or download the game yourself (soon available)!
Voices: Harry Josephine Giles, Moa Hjärtström, Thom Kiraly, Ebba Petrén, Liv Kaastrup Vesterskov, Gabriel Widing.
Music: Elize Arvefjord.
In order of appearance:
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Ebba, Gabriel & Moa has just returned from a trip to Performing Arts Forum where Lendl and Amy (standing above) organized a philosophy seminar on the occult.
Rebekah Sheldon gave a talk on queer hermeticism, Crowley’s sex magic and showed us some of Kenneth Angers late 60:s ritual films.
Her talk proposed a lot of nice questions. Like what are we doing, when we do science, philosophy or art? How does it do what it says it wants? How does things change? How are artistic and scientific practices related to magic? What is the benefits of an altered consciousness or opening your body to some kind of force?
There is way to much to say about it to fit on a postcard…
We also had the possibility to try out our new X-dimensional card game. Expect it online any time.
The event is part of Laivdagene / Week-in Norway organized by Knutepunkt and produced by Alibier. The event is supported by the Norwegian Arts Council.
Albin Werle is a visual artist and a member of the Nyxxx collective. He is currently doing his masters degree at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. His work consists of formulating real and imaginary games in a variety of materials, ranging from ceramics and 3D-printing to choreography and conversations.
Exploring the esthetics of interaction and asking how artists, activists and philosophers can turn into game designers, he seeks to merge the “art world” with the “game world”.
Nattens Gudinna (Goddess of the Night) is written to be performed in a traditional theatre institution. In their work, the art collective Nyxxx focus on utilizing non-hierarchical collaborations internally, and strive to invite the workers of the institution and the participants in the performance to take part in formulating its content.
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