Toaster and Live Art Denmark present the performance festival MANAGING DISCOMFORTS, which includes a number of Danish and international artist, whose work have the common denominator that they all deal with discomfort, which they process with care and humor.
British Martin O’Brien thus uses his body’s impairment in the work An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance). Finnish Teo Ala-Ruona interprets his own transition in Lacuna. And Danish-Iraqi Lina Hashim invites the audience into a harem in the work Odalisque To be or not to be? and confronts our Orientalist view of the Middle Eastern woman.
A total of 16 artists present their work at Husets Teater in the spring of 2024. They attempt to push the audience out of their comfort zone and activate a discomfort in the audience seats. But more importantly they explore how we collectively manage this discomfort. In the present moment of the theatre.
“The further we enter into the 21st Century, the more we are forced to relate to a growing discomfort. It’s the discomfort born from the collapses we are facing: From the cohesion of society all the way down to a personal and corporeal level around how we relate to each other as human beings. Performance art meets us in this discomfort, looking it square in the eyes and playing with it, so we all can handle it all a little better. And that’s why we call the festival MANAGING DISCOMFORT, because it’s about how we handle discomfort. There’s an extremely great need for us to be able to do that together.” (Liv Helm, Head of Theater, Husets Teater)
MANAGING DISCOMFORT will be a Mecca for performance art fans and at the same time introduces the field to new audiences. Toaster collaborates with Live Art Denmark, who have worked with curating and creating performances for many years. Together we wish to create more and better opportunities for audiences to meet this art form, which historically have been referred to the periferi of arts institutions.
Today, everyone has a private stage at hand on their phones in their back pockets, where everything is possible and you can swipe away any sense of discomfort with the flick of a finger. Thus, performance art no longer need to offer glamour, dreams or an escape from reality. We believe that the audience still greater extents will seek out the theatre space precisely because of its limitations. It’s the ideal framework for demanding confrontations with other incomplete bodies; in real time and in a real space. Everything that has always been the hallmark of performance art.” (Live Art Denmark)
The audience will experience two performances in one night. A ticket is thus a so-called “double bill” where they on the same night will witness a Danish and an international work. Apart from the theatres black box and the red salon on the first floor, VR works by Danish and international artist will be installed in the theatre foyer. Part of the program also consists of workshops with international performers, so that it will be possible to get closer to their methods and thoughts
“Managing Discomfort” – Performance program 2024 present international and Danish artists working consistently with the transgressive – that which crosses borders.
Read more about the performancefestival here
