Body Space(d)

Between 27 and 30 November Tallinn Art Hall and Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava will present joint project “Body Space(d)”, which brings together three pairs of artists from the Estonian visual art and performance scenes. Each pair will collaborate on a unique, one-night-only performance.

Curator Evelyn Raudsepp has invited three artist duos to create performative works: Edith Karlson and Sigrid Savi, Rene Köster and Mark Raidpere, and Flo Kasearu and Renate Keerd. On three consecutive nights the results of these collaborations will be presented and then concluded on the fourth night with a diverse programme, featuring discussion, music, and the creation of shared space.

Evelyn Raudsepp is a curator working at the intersection of performing and visual arts. She artfully named the area of convergence between the two fields “kunstihall” (in Estonian, a homonym meaning both “art hall” and “art grey”). Raudsepp first spoke about “kunstihall” as a combination of the black box and the white cube in 2016 at the Artishok Biennale that she curated at Theatre NO99 in Tallinn. Raudsepp’s curatorial position centres around her invitation to artists to step beyond their conventional practices and working methods and into the playground of another field. With her performative curation she creates unique formats in which the audience is also welcomed to activate their perceptional horizon in order to meet unexpected artistic situations.

At Tallinn Art Hall the research into the symbolic spaces – the white cube and the black box – from the two fields of art continues, this time placing the body into the mix. The combination of the invited artists’ practices and the thematic framing allows experimentation to take place within the clinical white cube with theatrical means. It also enables the artists to look into connections between embodied performance and the richness of artistic expression in visual art. Sculptor Edith Karlson and performing artist Sigrid Savi have found common ground in the galloping of the Wild West and the glide of pole dancing. Choreographer and drag queen Rene Köster and photo and video artist Mark Raidpere use the camera to bring forth the expressiveness of identities. Artist Flo Kasearu and theatre director Renate Keerd both refreshingly use the absurd in their work, as well as relying on a symbiosis of media and puckish playfulness.