Uncanny You
June 6th, 2017
Averill Park, NY, United States
“Uncanny You” is audio-visual theatre performance by Ann Mirjam Vaikla and Lærke Grøntved. The project researches and focuses on “uncanny” spaces and situations. It is inspired by examples from the times we are living in and our surrounding political climax: Trump’s rhetorics and post-truth era, right-wing uprising in Europe, refugee crisis and the process of climate change and the denial of it.
The term “uncanny” was first mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his essay “Das Unheimliche” in 1919. The word “uncanny” refers to something that is strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious; arousing superstitious fear or dread; uncomfortably strange”.
“Uncanny you” works around this term in relation to our heated up political climax - it is a cross disciplinary performance using elements of concert, poetry, video, text based theatre, movement and visual theatre. The text in the performance is partly written by the authors and partly from found material from recent articles and newspaper (ex New York Times, The Guardian ect).
Parallel the project focuses on insect’s survival strategies and mimicry to mirror and communicate what it happening in the humans world (inspired by the essay “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia” by Roger Caillois).
“Uncanny You” is an international theatre project. It is co-produced by Kanuti Gildi SAAL in Tallinn, Estonia where it will premiere in the end of September in 2017. Important supporters are residency center Arts Letters and Numbers in New York, USA and Teater Momentum in Odense, Denmark.
Photography by Zelé Angelides