Waiting Room (2021- 2022) 

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Artistic research

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Waiting Room is an artistic research project that delves into the concept of Otherness through exploring topics such as capitalism, feminism, and ecology. The project aims to create a connection between art and culture, economy, and democracy by producing a performance that empowers individuals and minorities through the use of new technologies.

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A model of encountering

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At its core, Waiting Room is a model that encourages encounters between people and their environment. By examining the environment in relation to shared movement practices, Waiting Room creates a space for equal encounters between sound, image, movements, humans, and sensoria. Through this process, Waiting Room facilitates a performative space for conversations between companions and guests. It is not a definitive statement, but rather a collective manifestation of thoughts that inspires one another to reimagine a different constellation of the current environment.

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Key notions

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Process, Participatory, Locality

The project values the research process as the essence of the project and focuses on participatory activities that engage the public. A series of location-based artistic activities take place in urban spaces, allowing alternative narratives for social, democratic, and environmental renewal. Waiting Room encourages the exchange of knowledge between artists and the public, opening up the possibility of strange encounters that may change the course of the project.

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Waiting Room is also concerned with the democratization of the performance. By sharing the research process with the public in different settings, the final performance no longer belongs to the artists themselves, but rather becomes embodied by the people in a multitude of spaces.

 

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Questions

Waiting Room poses several questions, such as how to open up an artistic process to engage conversations among peers from different disciplines, how to engage local communities to arrive at a performance together, and how to situate artistic practice in an ecological way for a local environment.

 

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Method

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Play --> Documenting --> Performing -->  Designing

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The knowledge exchange happens between the artists and the public. By opening up the research process, Waiting Room allows strange encounters to happen - an idea, a critic, an action, an image, a movement, a suggestion that may change the course of the project.

The project's method includes playing, documenting, performing, and designing to arrive collectively at alternative narratives.

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Outcome

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The outcome of the research includes a written journal documenting methods and outcomes of the research, as well as a sketch of thre mini performances. These performances deal with the theme of Otherness through mixed-media symbolism, exploring somatic movements in relation to technology, situated environment, and human conditions.

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These performances are: 

Mary the Television [Sci-fi fantasy],

Suffocation of Womb [Female hysteria],

and Bodies of Water [Ecological thinking].

 

All together, it is an open play constructed by a community of people.

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Contributors

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Yu Bai, (Researcher, Choreographer, Performer)

Pauline Kess, (Media, Installation)

Miša Skalskis, (Sound Design)

Charles Ménard-Wendling, (Research, Film)

Marja Matussek, (Performer)

Mayila Khodadin, (Performer)

Iris Ekelöf (Performer)

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With the support of

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Finnland Institut in Deutschland, Utrecht University, Heizhaus / PSR - Uferstudios GmbH.