What is dance when the present is turned permanent and becomes displaced?
Dancer’s Body
On the Screen
Black Box Scene
A Production Machine
As artists born between 1984 and 1996 we belong to the generations that still remember their teenage and early adult years without the omnipresence of smartphones, screens and digital algorithms.
Overtime we have noticed how screen culture has had an impact on labor, practice, attention, organising, and socialising in dance arts. We have also observed the changes taking place in dancers’ presence on platforms which use dance as a means of building emotional and affective responses in the viewer, such as TikTok and instagram.
FRACPTURING experiments with the connection of dance and dancers’ bodies to devices and screen culture. In addition, it explores the black box theater and screen world in relation to each other as places of illusion and world-making, specifically in whiteness and late capitalist landscapes.
Bringing forth the notions ranging from documentation to world-making, from gazing to reproducing and capturing, FRACPTURING asks: what is dance when the present is turned permanent and becomes displaced?*
While making this work Mean Time Between Failures has created layers of multiple references to histories of theater, contemporary dance, conceptual art, surrealism, pop culture, sound art, and outsider art: such as scratch video movement, VJ-culture, YouTubers, TikTokers, tiktok-popularised-phonk and instagrammers.
*this question emerged from the conversation of the working group and their mentor Patricia Scalco.
Content notes!
Filming and photographing of the audience and the performers with flash (the material is not shared publicly and will be shown to the audience members upon request), occasional bright light, darkness, amplified breathing sound and loud sounds.
Credits
Choreography, dramaturgy and performance: Dash Che & Suvi Tuominen @meantimebetweenfailures
Media art and performance: Sini Henttu (www.sinihenttu.com)
Sound art and performance: Oula Rytkönen
Mentor: Patricia Scalco
Technical support: Johannes Vartola & Eero Alava
Production: Zodiak - Center for New Dance, Suvi Tuominen
Residencies: Zodiak Laboratory, Esitystaiteen seura (Live art society), Ehkä-production & Contemporary Art Space Kutomo
Supporters: Vivicas Vänner theatre foundation, Arts Promotion Center Finland, Kone Foundation
Special thanks for assisting with the making of the work: Pääsky Piikkilä, Hrafnkell Birgisson, Miio Holopainen, Laura Dahlberg
Performance times
Premiere:
Fri 29.9.2023 klo 19.00
Zodiak Stage, Cable Factory, Helsinki
Other performances:
Tue 3.10. klo 19.00
Thu 5.10. klo 19.00*
Fri 6.10. klo 19.00
Sat 7.10. klo 15.00
Tue 10.10. klo 19.00
Thu 12.10. klo 19.00
Fri 13.10. klo 19.00
Sat 14.10. klo 15.00**
*Post-performance discussion
**Facilitated audience engagement session after the performance
Duration: 50 min
