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RELIEF / 2008

RELIEF

A Motion-Picture Performance

2008



View All Performances

Credits
PARTICIPANTS

Performer Johannes Lilleøre
Voices Jens Albinus, Sarah Boberg, Viktor Melnikov, Julia Novitskaya, Scott Martingell

Concept Kirsten Dehlholm, Ralf Richardt Strøbech,
Direction, set design Ralf Richardt Strøbech
Music UKR.tele.kom
Manuscript Kirsten Dehlholm
Interviews Marie Tetzlaff / Olga Korobtseva,
Text Vladimir Nabokov and other texts
Animation, video montage Ralf Richardt Strøbech, Louise Springborg
Camera, photo Kirsten Dehlholm, Maria Kuznetsova
Light design Jesper Kongshaug
Sound design Anders Jørgensen

Production Hotel Pro Forma
Associate producer Sarah Ford / Quaternaire
Tour manager Quaternaire
Manager Bradley Allen

3D / binaural sound Produced in collaboration with AM3D

Relief is comissioned by Black/North SEAS, an initiative of Intercult, Sweden, funded by EU Culture 2007-2011.

Relief is supported by Wilhelm Hansen Fonden, Konsul Georg Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorck’s Fond, Toyota-Foundation, Danish Center for Culture and Development, Autorkontoen, The Danish Arts Agency

Reviews
Jyllandsposten
Never has theater sound been so intense… Fascinating story, fascinating visual theater.

Politiken
Something happened to me. Suddenly the National Danish Bank was placed in Odessa, while Odessa sounded as if it was transported to the Danish street Norrebrogade. A true battle for the senses…So let’s go to Odessa!

Børsen
Devilishly well done! It’s beautiful, intellectual, sleepy, but it is also incredibly interesting and damned worth seeing!

Information
“Thank you.” In the new sense-stimulating performance by Hotel Pro Forma, images from Odessa fade into images of the streets of Copenhagen and on to a large screen, while the audience slides into an isolated world of sound between sets of headphones. The aesthetics of Kirsten Dehlholm and Ralf Richardt Strøbech are up in the ethereal regions where it doesn’t matter if the cloud is Danish or if the air is European. Hotel Pro Forma creates international art and universal thoughts in a global world. Spasiba.

Berlingske Tidende
Both in the street and in the studio Johannes Lilleøre is magnificent as the central performer, that steps out of the screen and goes live on stage to recite texts by Nabokov. Most interesting and touching in ‘relief’ are certainly Nabokov’s texts and the new interviews with citizens from the melting pot Odessa by the fascinating sea.

Byen kalder
“Space odessy 2008
The new performance ‘relief’ from Hotel Pro Forma is in the most literal sense a ‘space odessy’, a travel in space, with the 3-dimensional sound as a teasing and poetic compass. Truly a motion-picture performance worth seeing, but it could as well be named a sound-performance. Innovative and sensuous theatre.

Svenska Dagbladet
Magnificent play that examines reality.

Program text
The performance uses the relief as a way of perceiving the world. The relief as a stage between image and space. The moment when the figure breaks free of the flat surface and gains its own independent life. When we decide who we want to be. When geological contours are divided and becomes countries. The performance examines the Ukraine seen in geopolitical relief.

The Ukraine, a country with both a distinctive Russian and European influence, gained its independence in 1991. Via interviews with inhabitants of the multicultural seaport of Odessa, the contours of a Ukraine emerge that has a new cultural self-understanding. A history is being created.

The performance is enacted between the surface of the image and the spatiality of the sound. An investigation of the conditions of sensory perception takes place, captured in a filmic relief. Images in real time blend with recordings made in the Ukraine and are placed in a three-dimensional sound-space. As intense echoes from concrete locations, the sounds anchor the images of the performance in space and geography.

A person finds himself between the surface and the space. He is a link, an example of a man about to start his life. As the Russian author Vladimir Nabokov, when as a young man in 1917 he found himself on the Crimean peninsula (now the Ukraine). From here he travelled to Europe, USA and finally to Switzerland, where he died in 1977. Nabokov never returned to Russia. He was the immigrant with a dual gaze, directed at Europe but belonging to Russia.

In the same way as Nabokov’s life became a journey between countries, it also became one between disciplines. He was an author, a scientist and a university teacher. He expressed it this way: “In a work of art there is a kind of merging between the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science. I believe that.” Nabokov devoted much work to the study and classification of butterflies. Today, there are a number of species of butterflies that bear the name Nabokov.

We are in constant motion as individuals and societies, between fiction and reality, between all the existing strata of reality. We detect, experience without sorting. We reflect, sort, organise. We express ourselves. The performance´s tripartition, the street, the studio and the stage, are used as an organizing structure, while the relief is used as a narrative mode. Reality is composed and shifts, breaks free and is constantly turning into new formations.

First performances
Premiere on 5 May 2008 at Kaleidoskop/K1, Copenhagen, Denmark

In this motion-picture performance that takes place on a two-dimensional screen, the audience is given headphones and taken on a journey to the Ukrainian harbour city of Odessa.

Odessa, a city much like any other, where atom bombs are traded at the local bazaar and where lovers meet at the police station. Is it in the EU or in China?

A young man, perhaps Vladimir Nabokov, perhaps our guide, is passing through. He is seen in real-time on the street outside the venue, on screen and, very briefly, on stage. He observes, laughs and longs for his muse Tamara.

Real-life stories based on interviews with the people of Odessa are intertwined with the writings of Nabokov to create a new self-understanding.

Through the 3D sound-scape heard only through the headphones, the audience’s perception of 2 and 3D are challenged. Perception and reality are set in relief.

What is reality? Reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unattainable.
– Vladimir Nabokov

Duration 72 min. no intermission


Danish
RELIEF
En biograf forestilling
2008

Relief er en forestilling om sansningens vilkår – og om Ukraine i et geopolitisk relief. En forestilling, der udspiller sig i et 2-dimensionalt landskab på et biograflærred. En performer, to menneskelignende figurer og 220 høretelefoner medvirker. I forestillingen bliver relieffet et billede på verden i sin tilblivelse. Relieffet som stadiet mellem billede og rum. Som det øjeblik, hvor figuren løsriver sig fra fladen og får selvstændigt liv. Hvor geologiske konturer deles op og bliver til lande, for igen at ændre sig. Eller, hvor vi tager en beslutning om, hvem vi vil være som mennesker.

Forestillingen udforsker stadiet mellem billede og rum: relieffet.
Publikum udstyres med høretelefoner og tages med på en rejse gennem et flerdimensionalt lyd og billedlandskab i Ukraine. En performer, måske forfatteren Vladimir Nabokov som ung, er på lærredet, i salen og på gaden. Han har endnu ikke besluttet sig for sin livsvej – skal han blive politiker, videnskabsmand eller forfatter. Lige nu undersøger han latterens betydning.

Hotel Pro Forma Tomsgårdsvej 19 2400 København NV Denmark Tel. + 45 51 27 87 47 mail@hotelproforma.dk

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