MASS – bloom explorations

2018

By Recoil Performance Group

MASS – bloom explorations is a durational choreographic installation dealing with the issues of decay, decomposition and death.

In a plastic dome appearing like something in between a mausoleum and a greenhouse you meet the human Hilde I. Sandvold and thousands of mealworms. They live side by side in a microuniverse built exclusively of disposed white foam plastic – a material that also happens to be a nourishment that pleases the ever-hungry mealworms. The mealworms and Hilde co-create a new space. They conduct a durational choreography – an installation in which the space is slowly but visibly being altered though the metabolism of the worms and the human body in motion. The voice of the author Ida Marie Hede, reading from her text on the peculiarities of life in the plastic habitat, accompanies this unlikely symbiotic system between worms, plastic and a human. A surreal staged ecosystem that nourishes speculation on survival strategies. Could an organism capable of living from plastic be the potential beginning of a new blooming of species on earth? During the opening hours the visitors are welcome to explore and interact with the installation, and to come and go as they please. They are also invited into the do me to a close one-on-one encounter with Hilde and the worms where they will experience a woman transforming her body, skin and voice in the attempt to co-evolve with a species that potentially has better prospects than herself. MASS – bloom explorations is the second part of The Membrane Project; as I collapse (2017), Extended falls to humanity (2019) – a series of work seking to challenge our understanding of the human and the humane.

Choreographer: Tina Tarpgaard
Performer: Hilde I. Sandvold
Performer at ODD residency: Ellen Furey
Science-art researcher and installation design: Pei-Ying Lin
Writer: Ida Marie Hede
Technical and engineering design: Minshu Haung
Sound design: Søren Knud
Dramaturge: Inge Agnete Tarpgaard
Production managers: Rasmus Sylvest & Viktor K. Magnusson
Producer: Carlos Calvo
PR: Betina Rex
Supported by: The Danish Arts foundation, Wilhem Hansen Fonden, Augustinus Fonden, Københavns Kommunes Scenekunstudvalg, Louis Hansen Fonden
Collaborators: Ottawa Dance Directive, Windsor university and Westboro Village

Photo credit by Recoil Performance Group / Søren Meisner

Photo credit by Recoil Performance Group / Pei-Ying Lin