Dreams For Sale is my 3rd collaboration with Studio Total. Through performative means, this production continues exploring the philosophical and global topics of ecology, climate change, power, means of culture, art, and human existence. Based on deep ecologist Penti Liinkola's ideas, this solo performance creates a poetic soiree for the audience, where big topics are being pondered by a surreal character Ratman, in his conceptual market of dreams.
My role
Set and costume designer
Credits
Commission: Studio Total
Production: Anna Lipponen, Katariina Uusitupa, Petra Kytölä, Jaakko Lenni-Taattola
Co-production: National Museum - Viktor Sohlström
Director: Anna Lipponnen
Dramaturgy: Laur Kaunissaare
Cinematography: Jekaterina Abramova
Sound design: Antti Puumalainen
Photography: Petri Tuhkanen, Simona Bieksaite
About
The production was created in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic in the underground grotto, 30 meters below the National Finnish Museum in the center of Helsinki. As a part of a small but mighty team, I've created costume design and produced several landscape models for installation which became a part of a complex and extensive set design arrangement.
Dreams
for
sale
Trailer
Part 1
Covid - 19 restrictions significantly reshaped our creative plans and their execution. From my home in Oslo, via Zoom call, I have collaborated with Estonian artist and designer Kärt Hammer to set up the characters' costumes and styling for 5 different video clips that later were projected in the live show. Three white-faced silent characters represented the ''Dreamers", wandering in various (forest, city, football field, children's room etc.) environments, creating the abstract yet tangible visual narratives of interhuman, universal dreams.
Part 2
The live performance was rehearsed and performed in an underground cave, the storage for the artifacts and treasures of the National Museum of Finland. The director asked me to create 7 different miniatures, imitating the environments that the white video characters were wandering about in. Each model represented a specific dream. Taking into consideration the site-specificity, we decided to placed the miniatures on pedestals under the protective transparent plexiglass cubes and position them in the performance space so that the whole installation would resemble a real museum exhibition.
Part 3
Another part of the performance space was dedicated to the ''Dream store'' installation. It functioned as a huge bar, the auction room, and someone's real living space.
The only actor in this industrial performance space embodied the mystical and archetypical Ratman, who ''stole'' the show and audience by combining all elements into one spectacle with his electric presence.
