75′ performance
september 2024, Kanuti Gildi SAAL / Kanuti Gild Hall
more information: https://saal.ee/performance/roti-rumba-1924/
directors: Liisbeth Horn, Kärt Koppel, Anumai Raska
producer: Eneli Järs
dramaturge: Liisa Saaremäel
performers: Liisbeth Horn, Kärt Koppel, Anumai Raska
video wizards: Piret Parrest, Kristiina Tinnu Tang
stage and costume design: Linda-Mai Kari, Clara Jantson-Köstner
sound design: Laura Sinimäe
lighting design: Kristiina Tinnu Tang
supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Kanuti Gildi SAAL
With this performance Anumai Raska, Kärt Koppel and me explored the tension between the pleasure of being seen and the desire for privacy.
The three of us somehow got sucked in by the topic of surveillance as a condition of power two years before the premiere of this piece. During our many preparatory steps, we explored how our behavior changes when we know we’re being watched, how presence of power operated inside us. We examined the mechanisms of self-perception, social conformity and the tension between the pleasure of being seen and the desire for privacy.
In the performance, we used six cameras and multiple screens to capture the audience’s reactions, creating a feedback loop where everyone’s behavior was reflected back at them to dissolve the boundary between spectator and performer. Thus, the central protagonist of this piece was the audience themselves, drawn into play through a playful yet toxic atmosphere. The performance was designed to make the audience feel both powerful and vulnerable, questioning how much they’re willing to reveal and how much they want to hide.
For example: we shaped our fingers into a gun and aimed them playfully at the audience. The audience picked up on it and started aiming those fingers at each other, since this was presented as a choreographic game. No one was in real danger, yet the act, even if harmless, filled the space with questions.
This way those playful mechanics operated as a political tool: participants were encouraged to test how much power visibility can offer, while simultaneously confronting the vulnerability that this exposure brings.
Premiere: 19/09/2024 in Kanuti Gildi SAAL
You can try as hard as you want, but eventually every social predator will realise that we need to stick together. Communal living is all warm and fuzzy, but living together makes our actions and feelings visible to others.
The rat secretly observes the other members of the pack. It’s instincts are saying that gaining the approval of others is beneficial for survival. Make yourself seen when you have something to show, hide when the attention is harmful. That is why it tries to appear as sober as possible whilst being drunk and as self-assured as possible whilst feeling insecure. It is wise to please the watching eye and to control what the pack sees. This is no simple task. Energy is constantly running low. Running low on maintaining power over how one ‘fits in’. Each individual member reflects the pack, and the pack, in turn, reflects the relationships between its members. No new information emerges, the already existing is endlessly recycled, simultaneously creating connections and embedded values within an information vacuum. (In music, this is probably called looping).
You can try as hard as you want, but eventually even the ever reflective plastic-bag-self grows a hole and the empty air flows out. The rat is haunted by the thought of whether their tail would even wiggle without a viewer.
The performance is developed from a work-in-progress performative installation Stalker Dance that was part of SAAL Biennaal 2023 fibre program.
