”The Gateway is a most interesting and wonderful strange sci-fi dinner to be a guest in” — Very nice review of YOU ARE INVITED – The Gateway in Kunsten.nu!

” The Gateway is a most interesting and wonderful strange sci-fi dinner to be a guest in, where you switch between feeling strange and welcome.” – – Mette Garfield Kunsten.nu

HAPPY to read about Lilith’s second performance dinner – YOU ARE INVITED – The Gateway by Myriam Laplante Oct 12-14 in Kunsten.nu

https://kunsten.nu/journal/disco-sci-fi-middag/

https://kunsten.nu/journal/disco-sci-fi-middag/

” The Canadian artist Myriam Laplante invited  us to a strange, futuristic performance dinner at Lilith Performance Studio in Malmo on the occasion of Lilith’s 10th anniversary:

Time is another. Or at least difficult to suggest in the Canadian artist Myriam Laplantes performance installation The Gateway at Lilith Performance Studio in Malmo. There is a large digital clock on the wall. It counts up or down after our known seconds, but the numbers do not match our schedule: 27:35:40.

The room is dark, but rather lit by several lamps with multicolored lights in the attic. At one end of the room are a number of strange creatures on a scene; they may not be less like the Norwegian artist Tori Wråné’s troll characters or space workers from the Star Trek series. The beings are completely masked and are in a way recognizable and at the same time not at all. At the other end of the room is another strange creature. Raised as on throne. She welcomes you with phrases that might come from popular sci-fi movies or series? The scene where space workers meet people.

A significant place for performing arts
Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö is a great place that can produce performances under proper terms for the artists. The place is one of the few in the world that has performance art and theater as the only main priority. Here, performance art is treated with care and not just an exciting, bodily live feature for a fernization. National and international performance artists will be able to experiment with Lilith Performance Studio, as well as the artists have longer production runs, reminiscent of the test runs at a theater. In addition, the site has potential for producing large scale performance pieces. The place is therefore very important and distinctive for the performance scene in the Nordic region and the rest of the world.

Ritual snacks
Laplantes’s work therefore also develops into a form of ritual. The masked creatures go slowly in rows around us, the audience. It’s hard to know where to stand and go how to act. They do not really look at us and sneak in between us, from behind or from the side. Suddenly they only stand there.

The lights in the ceiling are lowered, and the creatures carry them serially around the room on pillows, which were the irreplaceable, very valuable items. Later they come in with slices of food that are put on the tables in the room. The food is colored, strange, it is at once different and recognizable. It also turns out to be mozzarella cheese, biscuits, common recipe snacks. Then the creatures come in with flashing glass that would make any discofest honor. Then the disk is up for sci-fi anniversary dinner!

Inner demons or societal references
The Sci-Fi performance dinner of Laplante is image-saturated and tempting just to look beyond being strange to move around. It’s hard to navigate and know how to deal with space creatures. You get alienated, but the work does not get really uncomfortable. We all know the frame as a dinner and we are invited.

The work is melancholy, as the creatures seem so sad, but at the same time The Gateway seems cynical because they are not communicating with. The creatures are cold. Of course, the work, as science fiction often does, refers critically to our society, where one can also feel strangers to each other and unable to act and communicate. Or the creatures may be the expression of our inner, sad demons or suspicions of human sadness. Unfortunately, The Gateway is characterized by a few clichés, and it might have been interesting with more interaction, as it is hard to hear the woman’s important ending replay at all, but in addition, The Gateway is a most interesting and wonderful strange sci-fi dinner to Be a guest, where you switch between feeling strange and welcome.

The performance series You are invited to Lilith Performance Studio on the occasion of Lilith’s  10th anniversary

Written by: Mette Garfield / Kunsten.nu