Royal Theater Carré, Amsterdam
Book tickets at carre.nl
Carla Adra
Abel Azcona
Dante Buu
Yingmei Duan
Mauricio Ianês
Miles Greenberg
Maria Herranz
Anthony Huseyin
Yiannis Pappas
Ana Prvaćki
crossfire is a site-specific participatory action conceived by Maurício Ianês. The public, together with the artist, will build an active and lively living space with the material available to become a place for conversation, exchange of ideas, discourse, and other social, political, and aesthetic experiments, in which the artist will not have the control of the artistic results. The collective action dismantles the hierarchies between public, artist, and institution, blurring the lines between public and private, observer, and artist.
The public finds Azcona sitting in a chair and witnesses the artist’s drowsiness through his own psychiatric medication, prescribed for his mental illness and his addiction. As the medication develops its maximum effectiveness, the artist’s body will collapse and he will descend from the chair. Azcona invites visitors to move his body through the theater in a procession. In the end, they will place the artist’s body along a base. Accompanied by the public, the body remains motionless and veiled until the artist regains consciousness.
In Landscape with Figures, the floor of the Carré’s ballroom is covered in sand. At the centre of the ballroom, three performers stand atop mirrored surfaces, cradling stones in their arms. Their bodies are dripping in a viscous liquid, evoking the amniotic fluid of the womb. This is a space to amend the rift between our violent, compulsive nature to expand, and the ontic expanse of nature.
Anthony Hüseyin is a non-binary performance artist and musician of Turkish-Kurdish and Arabic descent who works with voice, text, film, dance and installation. In No Intermission, Hüseyin will present two works:
Everything Sounds Better in the Bathroom, a performance that invites the public to transition their voice using a vocalizer and harmonies exploring the full spectrum of gender through voice.
Portable Disco, a roaming disco across the theatre inviting the public to dance and sing, finding moments of catharsis, metamorphosis, and gentle rehabilitation.
Bee Intense is a theatrical, tragicomic take on science and entomology, climate change, and the prominent presence of bees in history, evolution, mythology and religion. Bee Intense will take the audience through a series of experiences. The intensive will offer scientific facts, calming smoke, pollination sex, and participatory exercises such as honey bath and honey tasting.
Building 2 (2022) is the second in a series of brick performance works by Maria Stamenković Herranz. Building 2 builds through communal effort. Inviting the public to join her, MSH will lay bricks along the carpeted paths of the theater and with one starting and ending path to/from the streets. The action created among the construction, the builders, and the paths will meditate on the importance of the process in how systems of survival are built as a community, while at the same time preserving individual needs.
Since 2005, both interaction and collaboration have been central themes in Yingmei Duan’s performance art. At Carré, Duan will present “Yingmei in Wonderland,” a series of performances, which will change each day or multiple times a day, focused on interaction with audiences, the other artists, and the theater space. Through seemingly simple actions, Duan will embody different characters, exploring forms of encounter and play to evoke a sense of innocence, nostalgia, absurdity, and humor.
In “The Revise”, Yiannis Pappas issues a collective request to question and propose answers for all members of humanity — on issues of freedom, justice, impunity, environmental degradation, the everyday, and peace in the world. This synergetic durational and participatory performance peacefully protests our freedom of expression. If human rights are universal how could we utilize them in practice?
Circulating every corner of the theater, Adra approaches the visitors in order to gather their personal testimonies of injustice and anger to transform them into a performance in which she will channel their stories through her own body. This performance is documented on film and immediately uploaded to TikTok.
@theofficeoftears
Commissioned Artists
Carla Adra, Abel Azcona, Dante Buu, Yingmei Duan,
Mauricio Ianês, Miles Greenberg, Maria Stamenković Herranz,
Anthony Huseyin, Yiannis Pappas, Ana Prvački
Performance Facilitators
Adriane Bastiaens, Agatha Kosobucki, Alessandra Tom,
Alice Fara, Alma Wattimena , Come Ledesert , Elizabeth Boksha,
Famil Zamanli, Fiona van den Bergh, Geraldine Guerrero, Indigo Perry,
Irene Ruigrok van der Werve, Isa Zwart, Larissa Baglieri,
Martin Toloku, Michał Dawid, Michel de Vries, Michelle Louise Samba,
Moe Satt, Pieke Pleijers, Ralph Blom, Stephanie Schuitemaker,
Suhaila Abu Hadba Mounayer, Suzan Daeleman van Dijk, Tobias Mud,
Wannes Aelbrecht, Yitu Wang
Concept development & artistic co-producer: Madeleine van der Zwaan Executive
Technical producer: Marco Hartendorf
With the indispensable cooperation of all employees associated with Carré
Curatorial Team
Paula Garcia (Lead Curator), Marina Abramovic, Thanos Argyropoulos, Serge Le Borgne, Billy Zhao