About
TOASTER is a collaboration between Husets Teater and Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. Each year, TOASTER curates a program comprising companies and stage artists from Denmark and abroad that experiment with formats and contribute to the development of the performing arts.
TOASTER is both a home and a driving force for art at the crossroads of theater, performance and the visual arts, where artists have great artistic freedom in the realization of their works.
TOASTER promotes increased internationalization by re-establishing Copenhagen as part of a flow of international guest performances and networking between self-producing groups, collaborative scenes and art institutions abroad.
Contact:
Miriam Frandsen
Curator, dramaturgist & project manager
miriam@toastercph.dk
+45 21865184
My van Dijk
PR & communication
my@husetsteater.dk
+45 31416692
General inquiries:
info@toastercph.dk
TOASTER is supported by the Danish Arts Agency with a four-year grant from 2021 to 2025.
Artistic development collaboration
At TOASTER, we believe that the performing arts are changed and developed by those who work with them, and our ambition is to create a space where performing artists can interact and collaborate as colleagues.
TOASTER will increase the presence and improve the quality of self-producing groups by supporting them in their development and production processes, so that together we can create conditions that are more conducive to the thriving of performing arts companies in Denmark. Through these dedicated efforts, we will contribute to the development of the industry – artistically and production-wise – for the benefit of audiences and other performing arts venues.
As part of a special initiative to support these efforts and aims, TOASTER has invited the following companies to participate in extended partnerships with Husets Teater and Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art:
DANSEatelier
DANSEatelier is a place and a group consisting of 11 dancers, Sandra Liaklev Andersen, Ingvild Bertelsen, Marlene Bonnesen, Isolde Daun, Stine Frandsen, Meleat Fredriksson, Emilia Gasiorek, Snorre Jeppe Hansen, Nanna Stigsdatter Mathiassen, Olivia Riviere and Karis Zidore, and their network from the dance environment in Copenhagen, as well as internationally. The initiative stems from a need for continuity, knowledge sharing and social and artistic support. Community is essential in all aspects of DANSEatelier’s work, both in the creation process, but also in the organizational and creative investigation.
Experience DANSEatelier:
Triptykon III – Splat
Triptykon II – Udflugt
Triptykon I – Vandmærke
Det Algoritmiske Teater
Det Algoritmiske Teater is an interdisciplinary workcommunity and an investigation of what new algorithmic technologies do to our bodies, identities and society. It is an artistic research project in the intersection between performing arts, visual arts and programming, which directs a critical, investigative look at the increasing algorithmization of life. Their interests range from data collection and personal profiling of children in online games (e.g. Fortnite), biometric monitoring of refugees and migrants, to states and companies’ increasing use of algorithmic personal profiling of citizens. Labyss is the first of a planned series of works in which programming, dramatic text and audience interaction are composed in an interactive, algorithmic structure.
The core members of the community are visual artist and writer Kristian Byskov, playwright and stage director Kristian Husted, dramaturge Pernille Kragh and program developer and curator Tina Ryoon Andersen. In addition, changing partners are invited into the community, including scenographers, performers, programmers, visual artists, researchers and theorists.
In 2020, with support from the Statens Kunstfond, they started a collaboration with the Engineers’ Association in Denmark (IDA), which resulted in a seminar and a workshop at IDA. They have since had a residency at Art Hub Copenhagen and are collaborating with researchers and students from the Institute for Game Theory, ITU.
Experience Det Algoritmiske Teater:
Labyss
Hestnes / Popović
Hestnes / Popović consists of the Danish scenographer Freya Sif Hestnes and the Norwegian-Bosnian actress Marina Popović. They both graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Norway in 2016. Hestnes also has a background as a photographic visual artist from Akademin Valand in Gothenburg, while Popović has an MA in European Studies/Cultural Memory Studies from NTNU in Trondheim.
Artistically, Hestnes / Popović are preoccupied with history writing and how it is possible to examine the marginal, the overlooked, the archived and the forgotten. Through documentary material and sensuous composition, they take a closer look at memories – both personal and collective. Memories, oral traditions and the ability of the senses to understand the individual’s place in historical currents are explored through spatial concepts and newly written dramatic text. Hestnes / Popović’s interdisciplinary work is inspired by both theatre, performance art, choreography, visual arts and academia.
Experience Hestnes / Popović:
So far so good
Salon #3
Institute of Interconnected Realities
Institute of Interconnected Realities (I-IR) is an artistic project dealing with the concept of decentralized choreography. The institute was established in 2019 and is under the artistic direction of choreographer Marie-Louise Stentebjerg and dramaturg Ida-Elisabeth Larsen (formerly two-women-machine-show). Since the start, I-IR has been preoccupied with collective work processes and the multi-voiced expression – both at organizational level and artistically. As a result, I-IR’s development has strongly been influenced by a number of associated artists who, in various phases and periods, have inspired to experiment and think differently, of which i.a. Jonathan Bonnici (actor, lyricist and co-founder of I-IR) and Santi Rieser (sound artist and music producer).
Photo: Jeffrey Scott Stratton
Experience Institute of Interconnected Realities:
A Play
Song of 8
MEGA RICH COMPANY
MEGA RICH COMPANY is a performing arts collective disguised as a corporate company, founded in 2021 by Ida Grarup and Sigrid Johannesen.
MEGA RICH COMPANY investigates our relationship with finance in the modern world.
With MEGA RICH COMPANY we aim to break free from economic mediocrity. When we look at the world and the future ahead, we see only one solution: to survive future pandemics, wars, and the climate crisis, one must be rich. Very rich.
Therefore, we have established a company that can make us wealthy and ensure the survival of the capitalistic societies in the upcoming crises through innovative economic strategies.
MEGA RICH COMPANY works artistically and activistic, using theatrical tools to examine the emerging wave of entrepreneurship in our society – and uncover how hidden economic logics affect our society and democracy.
Est. 2022 ® Sigrid Johannesen & Ida Grarup. “WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART
Experience MEGA RICH COMPANY
The big MONEY GIVEAWAY-SHOW
The Other Eye of The Tiger (TOETT)
The Other Eye of The Tiger (TOETT) is an artist collective whose six members collaborate on concept, direction and performance. The collective conceptualizes together, but all come from different branches of the performing arts. TOETT’s work is based on various parameters which they strive to utilize to the maximum in all aspects of the productions. Often other artists, performers and technicians are invited to collaborate. By exploring and bending the boundaries of performing arts, TOETT hopes to be able to create new opportunities and reinvent theater as an art form. The six members of the collective all graduated from Den Danske Scenekunstskole in 2016. They are: Ida Grarup (scenography), Henrik Grimbäck (direction), Morten Hee Andersen (actor), Mia-Luise Heide (performance management & props), Súni Joensen (light design) ) & Asger Kudahl (sound design).
Experience TOETT:
Peer Gynt?
Salon #2
Filip Vest
Foto: Samir Ceric Kovacevic
Filip Vest holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Through performances, installations, films, and texts, they examine queer love, loneliness, and desire in the 21st century. Applying rehearsal methods from theatre, they test the relationship between the script and the body to inve- stigate the different ways we perform our identities and relations. Vest’s universe is inhabited by a vast network of things of different scales, each affecting the other: climate change and crumbling relationships, role play, doomsday karaoke and re-enacted kisses, a bird falling in love with a statue, and a frog having a breakdown in the middle of a striptease. Through mobile phones, walls and windows, the characters communicate and miscommunicate across species and time while attempting to make themselves legible to each other.
Filip Vest has previously shown their work at SMK, Copenhagen Contemporary, Møstings, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Arken, Den Frie, Charlottenborg, Roskilde Festival, Tallinn Kunsthal, and at Manifesta13.
Experience Filip Vest:
Resort
Jules Fischer
Jules Fischer is a visual artist and works with larger performance works. Their practice is driven by the desire to create transformative and potentially healing experiences. Jules’ works have a collage-like character and sample movements, symbols, words and music from recognizable and abstract contexts. Jules is interested in basic emotions such as love, loneliness and sadness, but always from an ambivalent and queer perspective. Jules works cross-aesthetically and in many collaborations as an antidote to capitalist individualism and loneliness.
Jules graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2017 and has also studied Dance and Choreography at the Danish Performing Arts School as well as “Art & Social Practice” at Portland State University. In collaboration with professional dancers and performers, Fischer has shown works in institutions such as the Glyptoteket, Statens Museum for Kunst and Arken. In 2024, they will show their first solo exhibition outside of Denmark at Unge Kunstneres Samfund in Oslo. In 2023, they received a three-year work grant from the Statens Kunstfond.
Experience Jules Fischer:
TOASTER’s spaces
View pdf of the spaces at Den Frie and Husets Teater.
International network
Toaster is member of the Nordic performing arts network Yggdrasil and member of the steering committee.
Yggdrasil was founded during the pandemic to strengthen ties between performing arts institutions and independent groups in the Nordic areas, and to promote innovation within the sector by sharing knowledge and best practices between professionals. By acting as a connecting platform, Yggdrasil also promotes collaboration between members, currently counting some 60 performing arts professionals.
In 2023 Yggdrasil received a 3-year grant from the Nordic Culture Point, which enables the development of the network and helps fund online and onsite workshops and assemblies. During the grant period Yggdrasil is coordinated by Hålogaland Teater (Tromsø, Norway) with an operational coordinator situated in Helsinki, Finland.
Contact:
johanna.welander@ht.tr.no