Soon showing Garden of Ghost Flowers at STRP

From 7th to 10th of April we are showing the first iteration of Garden of Ghost Flowers at STRP festival in Eindhoven. The project is an experiential performance for up to 20 people, that uses virtual reality headsets, not to transport the visitors to artificial distant worlds, but to make visible and enhance what is already present between them.

The artwork is made together with our longtime collaborators Lundahl & Seitl, a Stockholm-based artist duo working with various forms of realities and virtualities through a unique combination of technology, choreography, and narrative. Composer Hara Alonso weaves intricate procedural soundscapes around the experience, and dramaturg Rachel Alexander frames it in a poetic and interactive narrative.

Visitors of the artwork are invited into a room, a biosphere, where they are guided through a collective experience where they use their voice and movement. Their actions and interactions form the nourishment for a virtual lifeform to grow in, a new type of soil for a new type of life that grows of the resonance of the group that experiences it.

The sociologist Hartmut Rosa defines resonance as a mode of interacting with the world that is not based on control, but on mutual giving and taking, as in a conversation or a dance. We explore technology both as a way of extending our human senses, as well as a tool to make visible what our senses in some ways already allow us to sense. We explored the themes of this project in an essay for STRP, which you can find here.

A big thank you to Magasin III and House Blivande, who both generously let us use their places for tests and rehearsals. At Magasin 3 the project was part of their ongoing Work in Progress series, where they showcase the production process behind a series of complex artworks. We highly appreciate their focus on process, as it opens for a more conversational attitude towards the production of art.

See you in Eindhoven,

Untold Garden