WILD TANKS: HALOGEN DAYLIGHT SPRINGTIME
August 10, 2024
Mind Eater Festival, UKS, Oslo

Text, performance, music: Ivan Cheng
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Nikhil Vettukattil

In this filmed situation, with new monologues and music by Ivan Cheng, the audience is asked to understand UKS as a casual burger restaurant for off-duty actors. A proposal for a theatre of 'absences', the audience is invited occasionally to step in front of the camera, but also can sit comfortably and watch, passive and unobserved. The often baroque language rewrites and appends texts drawn from computer translations of Ibsen’s ‘Vildanden’ and ‘Naar vi døde vaagner’; texts that deal with mechanisms of perception, representation, and subjugation. Language is presented as the motor, but it's also something that can be turned off.

Emerging out of a continued interest in repertory and reproduction, ‘Wild Tanks: Halogen Daylight Springtime’ attempts to deal with viewership as a technology, perhaps breaking that by the spell of performing romance throughout the work. This is the first performance Cheng has produced in 2024, and tries to push forward a proposition in his work around the contemporary production of image and acting. While presented in English, language should be no obstacle.

Photos Julie Hrncirova