Do you have a life or are you just living?
UNDERTONE – Traces of Imminence focuses on the phenomenon of surveillance culture and totalitarianism sustained by man-made infrastructure. It reflects on how we manage our fellow species using technology. Combining experimental theatre, dance and installation, the performance takes the audience on an exploration into an imaginary reality that layers the temporalities of the past, present and future.
In the mystical reality of the performance, bodily spaces open up from personal views towards global dimensions. The performance opens up societal power structures and issues of oppression, making visible the structures that offer space and care for others, but at the same time put entire groups of people in a vulnerable position.
The convenor of the working group is Geoffrey Erista, an actor, dancer and performance artist living in Helsinki, who works versatile in theatre, dance and moving pictures.
UNDERTONE – Traces of Imminence is the second performance created as part of the Baltic Circle festival’s four-year project Coming Stage, which is financed by Kone Foundation. The first piece was UNDERTONE – A Proposal For Legal Loitering, experienced on the last night of the 2021 festival.
UNDERTONE Creative Associates
Eric Barco
Geoffrey Erista
Aju Jurvanen
Selma Kauppinen
Amita Kilumanga
Iris Laakso
Mikki Noroila
Eric Barco (he/they) is a lover, an adventurer, a beam of energy and he really likes festivals. Growing as a person, learning about everything, being curious and enjoying life are important values for Eric. Eric cherishes the feelings of celebration, travel and liberation in his life. They graduated with a master’s degree in theater arts in 2020 and has since acted in e.g. Jesus in an Easter play, a death scene in a soap opera series, directed a contemporary theater piece in an amateur theater with a colleague and played in an artist residency with the same colleague. In their art, Eric is interested in research of safety, sexuality and letting go. In the future, they aim to move to the sun every winter.
Geoffrey Erista (he/him) is an actor, dancer and live art maker, who in the spring of 2020 received an MA in Acting from University of Arts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy. After graduating he has purposefully pursued to practice policies that combine theory and physical expression. He has performed in theatre, dance, film and installation art productions. His artistic passions are in site-specific art, documentary and politics of art. Erista is interested in exploring socially relevant topics and finding ways to bring up more diverse art. In 2019 his artistic thesis N.E.G.R.O. – Nhaga & Erista Growing ‘n Reaching Out was part of Tampere Theater Festival.
Aju Jurvanen (they/them) is a Helsinki-based lighting designer. They are interested in a more queer stage in the performance arts field. Nowadays they like to play with different sides of gender. They are also interested in temporality, femininity, contrasts, daydreams, emotional skills, and having fun while making art. At the moment Aju is finishing their Bachelor’s Degree in Lighting Design at Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy.
Selma Kauppinen (she/her) is a contemplative and playful dancer who has trust in body wisdom. She graduated as a dance artist from Tampere Conservatory in 2017, and has since worked diversely as a performing artist. In her free time, she studies Social Psychology at the Open University, dances with her friends, and skateboards. Selma gets her kicks from spaces and events that succeed in bringing people together from different backgrounds. Exploring communities and connections between people are her favourite themes in both science and art. Selma tries to live a slow life with plenty of room for encounters, listening, and being present. These sustainable and soft values are important to her in the artistic process, as well.
Amita Kilumanga (she/her) is a costume, set and spatial designer who is particularly interested in exploring how the costume and the body create meaning in relation to the surrounding environment.
In 2000, Kilumanga moved to England to study. After graduating, she worked for almost 10 years as a costume designer and an artist in the field of performing arts before she decided to return to school. In 2016, Amita graduated as a master of arts majoring in costume design.
After graduating, she has worked extensively in the field of performing arts as a costume and spatial designer as well as a set designer. Currently, the artistic works that are closest to her heart are “Crowning Glory” which was performed at Theater Royal Stratford East, in London in 2013 and “Tunaweza” which premiered in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2014.
Iiris Laakso (they/them) loves and desires dance. As a dance artist, they are currently charmed by corporealities of emotions and pleasure, and the feels, constructions and deconstructions of gender and sexuality. They are also a teacher, Master of Arts (Dance) (2021), student in gender studies and Capricorn/Cancer/Gemini. In their work, they have enjoyed, for example, responsible sentimentalizing, respectful and soft conflicts, dancing alone and together and the uniquenesses of performance situations.
Mikki Noroila (they/them) is a Helsinki-based multi-disciplinary artist working between installation, moving image, and sound. In their current visual artistic process Noroila examines the historical, and contemporary impact of the Finnish colonial discourse of Karelianist-Orientalism on the village of Rimpi – one of the three Viena Karelian villages on the side of the Finnish state’s border – from the point of view of body, and family histories. Noroila has many years of experience working as a self-taught sound designer, and performance maker in the Finnish National Theater, and in the performing arts’ freelance field. The dearest past works for them are Blaue Frau’s Rädslomässa (2018), TRACK collective’s Human Resource (2018), and Anja-eno (2016) realized with artist-actors Fanni Noroila, and Sonja Kuittinen. Noroila is finalising their Bachelor’s degree in the Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts, Time and Space Study Program.