Humans are suspended in a universe in which photosynthesis defines life on earth and the sun is the pivot. Maria Metsalu processes the discomfort of being subject to the forces of nature and our conflicting desires to both live a simple life and one of maximum pleasure and consumption.

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

Kultuur contemplates the Sun. Performance not as thesis but as experience – something between a piano concert and a finger-painted surface.

The Sun radiates energy. The Sun might nurture life or burn right through it. Metsalu gathers herself on the orbit of this duality.

Kultuur accommodates chaos and rejects it. Intensities vary between states of pleasure, indifference, suffering and hope for renewal.

Metsalu displays herself as an object of spectacle, then denies the spectacle. We face Kultuur as an audience, a collective body. This body will be fed, entertained and challenged.

The performance is divided into three baroque and splendorous movements – the parade at the hot dog cart, the concert of the Flower and the final consumption of the Sun, table d’hôte.

Kultuur is a celebration of life – of its fleeting, sensual nature. A desire for simplicity exists in tension with the allure of excess.

The pleasures are earthly, even if their energy comes from the body of a star.

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ABOUT MARIA METSALU (EE)

Maria Metsalu (EE) is an artist who uses her own body to explore contemporary issues, often employing sexually loaded means of expression. She views performance as a radical space and performing deviance as a possibility through which new ways of looking and seeing could be created. Her work seeks to proliferate meanings rather than systematize them into a clarity. She is interested in an emancipated audience and in ways the position of the spectator can be  challenged, destabilised or abolished altogether. Besides her solo work she is one of the founding members of Young boy dancing group.

Her solo works have been shown in Art In General gallery (as part of Performa17), deSingel Theater, ICA Theater, Nanterre-Amandier Theater, Les Urbaines festival and Impulstanz festival amongst others.
(At her core, Metsalu is a vagabond artist and rejects the idea of a base. Currently she lives and works mainly in Europe.)

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MANAGING DISCOMFORT PERFORMANCEFESTIVAL

In the spring of 2024, Toaster and Live Art Denmark present the performance festival MANAGING DISCOMFORT, which includes a number of Danish and international artists whose works have the common denominator that they all deal with discomfort, but process it with care and humor.

The festival stretches over seven weeks and each week two new performances are presented, which are staged as a double-bill at Husets Teater. This means that one ticket gives access to both performances, which are separated by a short break.