The Hospitality will be played at Stockholm Scenario Festival 7th to 9th of November 2014 at Långholmens folkhögskola in central Stockholm Sweden.
Thank you for the experience – intelligent play for grown-ups.
– Suzanne Osten
Category: English Page 4 of 5
Here are some photos from our recent participatory avatar piece Human Agency. The three shows at Inkonst in Malmö were sold-out and we look forward to play it again in Stockholm. There is a lot to be said about what we did and we will post more stuff later, at least in swedish. In the end we chose to present the work as a kind of ritual or meditation, a contemplation on bodies, objects, spaces and technology.
The photos from the ground were taken by Gabriel Widing and the ones from above by Kerstin Weimers.
Thanks to Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet) for financial support.
We have made a game about living conditions for artists.
Play the Artist Survival Simulator
Play Konstnärsspelet in swedish
The game takes a few minutes to play.
Please leave a comment here when you have played it!
A participatory avatar piece about different bodies and possibilities to act in a world where new technologies enables and disables human fellowships.
Welcome to Human Agency, an organization with twelve voices but no bodies. When you join us you will be able to listen to one of these voices and become the body which enables the organization to operate in the world. Human Agency emerges between the organic, technical and the virtual elements. You become an avatar, confronting life in a new way through your own senses. Becoming a ”member body” in Human Agency you will get access to a new techno-social approach to life.
We live in an era where the approach to life changes and shifts in relation to different machines and medias. Technologies and human beings melt together and forms new symbiotic bodies. Human Agency examines these new bodies through a meeting between free human beings and voice-navigated avatars.
Human Agency invites you to be navigated. Different voices will lead you through the piece. Through head phones you will get instructions on how to move, talk and act and you can also influence how.
Nyxxx is a performing arts collective with members from Copenhagen, Malmö and Stockholm. Their aim is to create performances with the audience in the centre. The form for the audience participation differs in their work but often they use head phones with instructions that stimulate action.
Text and direction: Ebba Petrén and Gabriel Widing | Sound design: Elize Arvefjord | Objects: Albin Werle | Light design: Kerstin Weimers | Production: NYXXX | Co-production: the Theater Academy in Malmö | With the support of: the Swedish Arts Council and the City of Stockholm.
Premiere at Inkonst, Malmö, April 23!
Date and time: April 23–25 , 7 pm | Space: Inkonst | Length: 60 min | Language: Swedish | Entrance: 150:- U26/stud 90:- | Tickets: Kulturcentralen
The performance will also be played at Turteatern, Stockholm, 11-13 of September.
A game in the space around gifts, loss and collective action.
These days, we are preparing for The Hospitality, a game for Gothenburg Dance and Theatre Festival. We’ll be performing 15-17th of May. The festival just released their whole program, so lots of interesting things to check out.
So far we have done two game tests, at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm. This is what it looked like the 30th of January:
Ok, the floor was not like that for real. But as you can see, we are laborating with different notions of space.
This is what it looked like the 20th of February:
This was Gabriel photographing me and Ebba through the door while we were busy preparing a spaceship made of cloth – our first test with scenography, that turned out very well. Then the game testers came, and off we went on a two hour trip in – yeah, you guessed it, space!
We will also game test evenings here in Stockholm the following dates:
- April 17th
- April 23rd
- May 7th
- May 8th
Keep your eyes open for that! But also, don’t miss the full scale game if you’re in Gothenburg mid-May! Here is some more info about the scenario in it’s present state:
In order for another world to be possible, we have to be prepared to lose the world we are already familiar with.
Welcome on board The Hospitality – a space scenario where you together with a maximum of thirty other players will enter in a sort of role-play, a game or a participatory performance where we try out different conditions or situations that are completely different than those of everyday life.
Three game masters will guide you through a number of scenes where you will make decisions, move and imagine that you are traveling off in space in the company of the other players.
This is not a role-play where you are expected to improvise, perform, play theatre or immerse in a character. The role you will receive is just some simple approaches, tasks and thoughts that you can use in the game – it is made in order for the players themselves to choose how much they wish to pretend to be someone else.
The hosts and game designers are Tova Gerge, Ebba Petrén and Gabriel Widing from NYXXX, a performing arts collective with a strong connection to both the role-playing game culture and the dance world. Among their earlier cooperations are Avatarvaro (Turteatern/Inkonst) and Drömdykarna (Unga Dramaten). NYXXX are looking for new game formats where participants do not have to struggle to find their place, but can lean back and follow a plan, while still sharing a mental and physical experience together with other participants.
The Hospitality is a philosophically stimulating scenario with a nerve of sci-fi. Softness and reflection in an uncomplicated, physical and playful community are some key-words. The scenario happens in a choreocracy – a society where decisions are made through collective movement in space. The choreocratic society decides to initiate a cosmic movement, a travel in space that might never end. During the course of the travel, a lot will get lost – but maybe the loss is important for the community in space?
Welcome!
If you want to check out The Hospitality at the festival, we are here:
We are in Malmö, working with Human Agency. Headphones on.
We are happy to share this short scenario with you. It was written by Ebba Petrén and Gabriel Widing at PAF last summer. You can play it with two people or in front of a smaller audience. The participants should not listen to the track on beforehand.
You need
• 2 voluntary participants.
• A pair of headphones with the Mp3-file.
• A table
• 2 chairs
• 2 windows that can be opened, it’s nice but not necessary if there is a view.
Take it off
To begin, one of the two players starts the mp3-track and put the headphones on. The other player start by observing the avatar. Both players starts standing up. When you put on the headphones you are the avatar, follow the instructions and take no other initiatives. When you don’t wear headphones you try to communicate with the avatar by responding to it as if you are having a chat with that person for the first time.
Description
The avatar asks something demanding, something the human finds hard and personal to answer. The avatar says “You will have the opporutnity to be an avatar. And I will become human. When I raise my hand you can take my headphones and become the avatar”. It raises the hand. The new avatar comes out, “the avatar of a human spirit”, and opens a window saluting the fresh air. Next avatar is “the avatar of the real” trying to jump out of the window. Human has to stop it. More avatars follow, with other agendas.
Some feedback
“It’s like having a child or a pet in your room when you’re trying to work. You have to take notice and care for it. And it will for sure use its voice to communicate!”
Background
We’ve presented this scenario at PAF Performing arts forum in St Erme, 2012, at the 14th Symposium of the International Brecht Society in Porto Alegre, 2013 and at Scenkonstbiennalen in Jönköping, 2013. We are looking forward to hear where it will be played next and how you experience it!
Documentation
Video from a session at a room in Master Express Grande Hotel, Porto Alegre, May 2013. On screen: Ester Claesson and John Hanse. Spoiler warning!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This morning we visited the workshops in Gäddviken where the rooms to Drömdykarna are built and painted. Is was super exiting to see the 3,5 meter high wooden walls in the making! When ready there will be five differently shaped rooms for the participants to explore.
We’ve just started to work with our new project for kids 10-12 and beyond. It will be staged at Elverket / Unga Dramaten. Most of what we are doing is completely new.
What we bring from the last big piece Avatarvaro is basically that the audience will get instructions and sensory stimulation from headphones. This time we are using radio transmissions that is targeted to each audience member individually.
Below is the antenna that separates and transmits the signals.
Starting the process involves plenty of practicalities, here bringing pedestals to the studio from the dark and hidden storage rooms of the royal theatre.
Here is where we’ll run the show, premiere March 15:
This site will host the performance art crew NYXXX. We produce art where the audience goes centre-stage and experience the work from within. We formed as a group in the backwash of Avatarvaro, which was played at Turteatern (Stockholm) and Inkonst (Malmö). Right now we are working on a new piece for Elverket / Unga Dramaten, which goes under the title Drömdykarna (Oneironauts).
We are also thinking about some kind of visual profile, but that will probably come later…
