What if we treated nature not as a motherly figure, but rather as our lover? “My throat is burning” explores the deeply problematic relationship humans have with nature from an erotic angle: we long to be closer, yet we continuously cause more harm — the very definition of a toxic connection. The performance devises a procession of future climate migrants that return to the present time. They march under the rhythm of a percussion and carry flags and banners, giving voice to the remnants of something lost or broken; their presence acts as a reminder of our responsibility to heal our relationship with nature before it’s too late.

This performance is an interactive experiment, an experiential experience rooted in the live coming-into-being of human co-existence, and of social groups. Each member of the audience enters the space alone, and each person decides how long to spend with the performance, up to a maximum of three hours. With the group’s unmediated presence as its sole material, the work reveals both the fundamental desire and juvenile need of humankind to gather together, and the perception of self through the other. The performance’s main interest lies in how, when human beings are freed from of denied speech, role, status, and limits, all they are left with is the immediacy of the body in and of itself, spatiality, the gaze, and feeding-back into their most primordial form.

 

(Read Mina Ananiadou’s full review here).

This performance is a personal invitation to dance. The artist and one participant take equal roles in the creation and development of the work. They dance and improvise throughout its duration, as they take cues from the music and the dynamic between them. The set resembles that of a dance club — dark with dim lights; but it’s exclusively for two people, with no other member of the audience viewing or entering before the previous session ends. “Room for Two” creates a safe space, where participants can let go, be present, and tune into the rhythm of their bodies – to explore how it responds to sound, the space, and the connection they build with the performer.

This performance draws inspiration from the iconography of parades. Symbols like the flag, the procession, and the public following the person leading the parade are recontextualised in the setting of an art exhibition. Normally, they act as markers that distill identities (national, social or individual). Here, they also act as highlighters of the inherent desire of belonging — how individuals want to be accepted as part of a group and how they deal with their “separateness” of it. As the human body innately synchronises and acts collectively, especially in such rituals, the procession becomes one large body, forming a choreography of people coming together.