April 29. Tiny Festival Producers: The Answering Machine + performance by Denis Romanovski + concert with Insomnia Taxxi
Tiny Festival Producers and Weld invite you to an evening of performance, food and music in the colors of Ukraine. Tiny Festival Producers is a nomadic performing arts collective that since the fall of 2022 has collaborated with Ukrainian artists in exile. In the form of an unofficial study circle, they have worked with The Answering Machine – a text by the Norwegian author and playwright Finn Iunker about traveling, moving, making decisions, escape and predictions.
Working on The Answering Machine has served as an act of resistance. Against alienation, separation and apathy. For cohesion, solidarity and humor.
The evening also includes a performance by Denis Romanovski, food and drink, and a concert by Ukrainian electronic musician Iryna Novikova aka Insomnia Taxxi.
April 29 at 5pm–10pm
Weld
Norrtullsgatan 7
Book: book.weld.se
All revenues from the evening will go to the Izolyatsia Platform for cultural initiatives and their aid work in Ukraine.
Read more about Izolyatsia
The Answering Machine
An electronic study circle concert with Galyna Dutka, Yuliia Rossoshko, Cia Runesson, Andres Skreia, Stella Shokotko, Glib Skvortsov, Annikki Wahlöö and Iryna Novikova.
Text by Finn Iunker
The Answering Machine has no coherent plot. We glimpse a first-person narrator, but there may be more than one.
Written in 1994 the Norwegian author and playwright, The Answering Machine is set against a central European backdrop in the shadow of the Balkan War’s displacement of people, which has made it frighteningly relevant in 2022. The speaker’s text moves continuously through different cities. The text is also a paraphrase of Hamlet Machine by Heiner Muller and is a tribute to the spoken word and the ability of theater to communicate complex narratives with an audience.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to process all the sudden shifts and changes in the text. There is a confusing myriad of fragmentary observations of life lived and memories of brief encounters between people, while the ”I” of the text desperately tries to use logic, science and philosophy to follow the long arcs and structure human existence in the world.
The Answering Machine is not one story, but several stories at once. We can perceive one person from a distance but one can be many. It is a story about experiencing and recalling – and about the impossibility of both, and about the irreversible cruelty of war.
Denis Romanovski
was educated as an artist at the Belarusian State University and State Academy of Arts. And during the period 2001-2006 at the Royal Institute of Art. He works with performance art, experimental forms of digital media and artistic research. His works have been presented at international festivals and exhibitions in Belarus, Finland, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Thailand, UK and USA. He is also an active organizer of performance art, including international performance art festivals such as Navinki 1991-2008 (Belarus), Navinki-Weld 2008 (Sweden), No-budget Performance: a Stockholm Odysssey 2010-2011 (Sweden) and PALS – Performance Art Links 2012 (Sweden).
During 2012-2022, he has participated in some 60 solo and group exhibitions, performances and workshops including: Valetina Dobrova’s life, exhibition at Tegen2 gallery – 2000-2019 film project in collaboration with Nils Claesson. Kara(oke)-body or Body-less Proxy of Gogol’s Nose, performance at FNAF festival in Prague. Memories – Water Thief, window installation at Galleri 54, Gothenburg, Russian Salad aka Democratic Salad performance at Gallery Y, STATUS project workshop, Minsk. Horizons performance at Perfonauci – Galeria Raczej, Poznan and Escape – evacuation sexercise performance at Performance Art Oslo and others.
2017-2022 Denis Romanovski was project manager for The Role of the Artist in the Changing of Society, bilateral exchange project Belarus – Sweden.
Insomnia Taxxi
Ukrainian sound artist Insomnia Taxxi is one of the most innovative music creators from Eastern Europe. When war broke out, she found asylum accommodation in Gothenburg and is now developing new projects from her temporary base in Sweden.
Iryna Novikova is a music producer, sound designer and DJ under the name Insomnia Taxxi. Located at the European forefront of electronic experimental music and originally coming from a dark pop music environment, she is now moving towards immersive multidisciplinary sound art that works in clubs, art spaces, galleries and museums.
In a short time she has performed in a variety of venues in Sweden such as Rikstolvan, Malmö Konsthall and Stora Teatern in Gothenburg, as well as in clubs and arenas in Europe. Insomnia Taxxi explores the relationship between moving image and sound. Most of her performances have spectacular elements of film and projections accompanying her set.
All her works have a deep political and metaphysical subtext.
Tiny Festival Producers
is a nomadic performing arts collective based in Gothenburg run by Benedikte Esperi, Cia Runesson & Annikki Wahlöö. They run The Tiny Festival since 2016 and plan, produce and present performing arts, interdisciplinary projects and artistic research in a variety of contexts both nationally and internationally, including Atalante, Finnekumla Dans & Konstscen Ulricehamn, GIBCA Extended, NSU Wroclaw, NSU Vilnius, Teater Trixter and others.
Supported by: Swedish Arts Council, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, VGR Kultur, SWAN – Swedish Artist Residency Network & Artists at Risk.
Weld is supported by Stockholms stad, the Swedish Arts Council and Region Stockholm