Productions

Maria Metsalu
(Estonia)

Concept Maria Metsalu
Text Jaakko Pallasvuo, Maria Metsalu
Sound Oxhy
Performers Maria Metsalu, Bosa Mina
Stage Tarvo Porroson
Dramaturgical support Manuel David Scheiwiller, Nicolás Facundo Rosés Ponce
Light Priidu Adlas, Henry Kash
Technical support Henry Kasch, Kristiina Tang
Project managers Kaie Küünal, Eneli Järs

Together with collaborators Jaakko Pallasvuo and Oxhy – working with text and sound,
respectively – and fellow performer Bosa Mina, Metsalu presents an unintentional and
accidental but inevitable sequel to her 2017 solo performance "Mademoiselle x". In
"Mademoiselle x" Cotard's syndrome was utilised as a tool to express “zombification”
and individuals' autopilot behaviour in the world while simultaneously and paradoxically it
cried out for basic human connection, touch and compassion. Nevertheless, even as it
demonstrated connection, it emphasized disconnection.

"The Well" takes the concept further by incorporating the audience as agents within the
work and confronting them with both their passivity and complicity as observers and
actors. Rather than being witnesses of a passive declaration of emotional turmoil, the
audience is invited to perceive power, and how it inflicts itself on the disorderly body.
The witnessing gaze of the audience will be reimagined as a gaze which has become
clinical.

In "The Well" the preconceived notions regarding the structure and meaning of
protagonist's reality have disappeared into the abyss and the anxiety in which she has
become aware of her finitude, an ontological insecurity has taken effect. She has no
family, no friends, no connections. The world has become overwhelming in its complexity
so she is being lowered into the well by her four psychoanalysts – AJ, Brian, Kevin and
Nick. Her job while lying on her leather couch in the bottom of the well is to write and give
the world a structure. She is a composer. She is a magician and an alchemist. Through
the narrative story of this tragic protagonist, the non-narrative performance deals with an
individual apocalypse in a liminal space. The performance space becomes an erotic
mindscape, an internal and secret place, confinement secluded from reality for the
misbehaving deviant body, hearing what should not be heard, seeing things that are not
there.

Maria Metsalu is an Estonian choreographer and artist, who graduated from
SNDO (School for New Dance Development) in Amsterdam in 2016. She is creating visual
performative works that regardless of the chosen medium place her own body in the
epicentre. She views performative experiences and performing deviance as possibilities
through which one may reflect upon the state of things and become inspired to act,
formats through which collective memory could be created. She is interested in ways the
position of the spectator can be challenged, destabilised or abolished altogether. Her
work seeks to advance ambiguities, to proliferate meanings rather than systematise them
into a clarity. She views performance as a radical space, capable of creating new
meanings, new ways of looking and seeing.

Besides her solo work she is one of the founding members of international art collective
Young boy dancing group and has collaborated with and performed for Tino Sehgal,
Michele Rizzo, Nils Amadeus Lange and Gelatin among others.

Her solo work has been shown at kim? Riga, gallery Art In General during Performa17 in
New York, Kunstraum in London, Theater Nanterre-Amandiers in Paris, Kiasma Theater in
Helsinki, Alt_Cph18 in Copenhagen, FLAM Festival in Amsterdam, Les Urbaines festival in
Lausanne, Impulstanz Festival in Vienna, Tallinn Art Hall in Tallinn, 3hdFestival by
Creamcake in Berlin and Centre d'art contemporain - la synagogue de Delme to name a
few.

In English
Duration 60 min

Supported by Eesti Kultuur Maailmas, Eesti Kultuurkapital / Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture; residency support FABRIKKEN for Kunst og Design, Esitystaiteen Keskus, HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme, Nordic Culture Point; co-production Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Maria Metsalu; premiere 20.12.2021, Kanuti Gildi SAAL; first showing 23.10.2021, Park Center Treptow.