ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

Poor Devil is a performance about art’s reparative failures, memory, and sentimentality. There is a poem, singing, and special effects. Poor Devil is Atkins’s only performance piece — its title changes with each iteration.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ed Atkins is a British artist living in Copenhagen. He is best known for realistic computer-generated videos that expose and scrutinise otherwise unavailable feelings by the profanity of their artifice.

In recent years, Ed Atkins has presented solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz; the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; K21, Düsseldorf; MoMA PS1, New York; and the Serpentine Gallery, London, among many others.

In 2025 Atkins wrote the libretto for Rebecca Saunders’ opera LASH at Deutsche Oper, and a mid-career retrospective opened at Tate Britain, London. Alongside the poet Steven Zultanski, Atkins wrote and directed the play Sorcerer (2022) and the feature film Nurses Come and Go, but None for Me (2025).

He is the author of the collection, A Primer for Cadavers (2016), the epic anti-poem Old Food (2019), and the confessional nothing Flower (2025), all published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. He is a professor of Freie Kunst at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

TOASTER PERFORMANCE BIENNALE

In April 2026, Toaster presents Denmark’s first international performance biennale, taking place across Den Frie and Husets Teater.

The biennale offers a current portrait of the performance field within both visual art and performing arts – and the many intersections between them – which are rapidly evolving nationally as well as internationally. The focus is state of the art: taking the temperature of the field right now.

Experience more than 20 performances, including 10 entirely new works created specifically for the biennial. The artists range from established performance practitioners to emerging talents – sometimes within the same work.

The programme encompasses works rooted in dance, text, costume, sound, light, music, and space. Performance is here and now – it is the time we live in, and the time we choose to spend together.