02.10.2024
Turning to others
From the topical political affects in Wuppertal to the lost dodo outlining the dramaturgy of the Anthropocene Epoch in Munich. Maria Säkö travelled with performance group Oblivia and recorded her thoughts on the group’s first work in a series that explores the traces of a human-centric era. Observations emerge on what art would be like if other species and nature itself were given human warmth, and on how Germany can be considered Oblivia’s spiritual homeland.
Performance group Oblivia’s new topic of exploration is the Anthropocene, and the start of the performance series is, as the theme suggests, massive. Turn Turtle Turn premiered on 5 June 2024 at an experimental music theatre festival in Munich, and spans 4.6 billion years. The performance features Oblivia’s members Annika Tudeer, Timo Fredriksson and Anna-Maija Terävä along with regular guest Juha Valkeapää, and they are joined on stage by 12 musicians: the Swiss Ensemble ö! and singers.
Oblivia’s two-year process has guaranteed enough time, and despite the magnitude of the theme, I think the performers have managed to direct their energy in a completely new direction, from the cellular levels of the body. The group’s practice, which seems as natural as breathing: the playful questioning, the unhurried attention to things, the warmth the performers exhibit with each other and the audience, don’t just happen out of the blue. Instead, it seems like each performer has once again taken a long journey into themselves and the world.
What is it to be a living being – not necessarily just a human being – in the Anthropocene?
What is it to be a living being – not necessarily just a human being – in the Anthropocene? How has art in general taken into consideration its role as part of the Anthropocene? I begin my exploration with the performers, because it is their presence that once again makes me feel a wide range of things, without being forced into anything by their way of being and performing. The massive subject matter has not stiffened the performance; Oblivia responds to the demands of a big subject matter by being abundant, generous, continuously outgoing. In my opinion, its characters carry with them a non-humanity, humanity, otherness and a humaneness. They are both highly individual and a bunch of impersonal organisms. No “great and serious question” appears onstage without a distorted weakness or awkwardness. After almost an hour and a half of watching the performers, I am intoxicated by all the nuances of presence that the performance fritters away.
Deep, dark and all the other times
The performance begins with the musicians and singers emerging from any which place. The performance takes place in a kind of marketplace in the middle of a cultural building with an auditorium to the side, but it can be experienced from different parts of the space, such as the lofts and the café. The human era is very short when you consider Earth’s 4.6 billion years of history.
The performance is divided into three parts: Deep Time, Dark Time and And All the Other Times. The first part seeks a relationship with the time of ash and volcanoes, the second explores a time when the oceans and other life began to emerge, and the third is the time with no future and no possibility of returning to the past. I interpret it as the Anthropocene, our geologic epoch.
We begin with something exceptionally fragile: the quiet floundering of the dodo, a bird that is perhaps lost in modern times, long since extinct. The performers make fumbling movements with their arms, looking for something to latch onto. Slowly emerging, all the performers – Oblivia’s members and guests alike – are, at first glance and unlike Oblivia’s usual style, somewhat clear. Wearing pink overalls designed by Tua Helve, with little winged stumps on their backs, they have a simplicity reminiscent of Disney or children’s animation in general. Naivety is always present in Oblivia, but rarely in such an endearing, childlike way. This endearing quality and the clear, broad movements and sounds somehow make the performance more of a work that evokes and challenges its surroundings than one that curls in on itself.
From the beginning, Turn Turtle Turn contains air, space, time and a state of being that allows the audience’s mind to rest meditatively on infinities and themes larger than humanity. They sing about ash, sediments formed over millions of years, the cattle of the sea. Of the infinite. And, in a very Oblivian manner, about the very meaning of infinity as a word and concept:
“I was wrong there are beginnings and ends beginnings without endings and endings without beginnings eternity is a well measured entity a finity at some point or then no.”
So. What is the dramaturgy of the Anthropocene? When the birth of humanity is at the same time the end of everything? What is the arc of such a drama, when there is no arc, when the end already exists at the beginning – not as potential, as it does in drama, but precisely so that birth and end happen at the same time?
Where traditional music theatre explores destruction through story and drama, Turn Turtle Turn does the opposite. Rather than depicting destruction, it lives it, seeks a relationship with it. Alongside the life cycles of turtles, fossils and animals that may have become extinct long ago, the political questions of today seem to stretch, mat together, melt away, and a different kind of existence emerges.
All this lives in the performance, but above all in Yiran Zhao’s music. Zhao’s composition seems to be composed of vast areas that stretch time and space and transcend the human perspective, interspersed with pieces of entertainment, operettas, operas and even pop sounds that are recognisable but somehow stick out as strange amidst the rest of the music. It’s as if in her composition, humanity’s traces on Earth are those strange, unworldly elements, momentary anomalies.
For me, the performance is most clearly structured by the performers’ configurations in the middle of the space. At first, Oblivia’s performers and musicians are on stage, as it were, with the singers acting as a choir up in the loft, followed by Oblivia’s own part. Finally, the dancers act as soloists along with Oblivia’s movement, and the musicians perform as part of the orchestra. At the very end, the performers disperse again.
The movement in Turn Turtle Turn strongly suggests that it is all about turning. Turning to others, to the world, to the new, to the old, to the self. As such, the moment of turning, of change, is the strongest. Meri Ekola’s giant shimmering stones reflected in the ceiling remind us that the performance takes place in a larger context, within an entire geologic epoch.
There are innumerable turns – the stage is overflowing with them.
In constant change
At least social norms – with handshakes, forced smiles, desperate attempts at ostentation – are present in the repetitions, but now somehow lonelier than ever before in Oblivia’s works, against infinite time, more feeble than before. These veterans of Finnish performing arts proceed in clear periods. Last year Oblivia completed its three-part series Emotions and Politics, which focused on the often poorly understood affects that dominate society beneath the surface.
The world of Pleasure (2023), which ended the Emotions and Politics series, is, I think, very far removed from Turn Turtle Turn, which is refreshing. Pleasure dived deep into the problems of pleasure and was an exceedingly solid and crystallised work that showed how paralysed modern people are by their own thoughts. Now, however, the performers don’t seem to be in knots at all; instead, they are helpless. Even grand gestures cannot help fear and helplessness, but turning to others does bring some hope.
Munich’s performance comes closer in form to the second part of the Emotions and Politics series I saw in Wuppertal, Obsessions (2022), which was also created with a large orchestra. Hearing classically trained singers alongside Oblivia’s long-honed voices links the two works together. Turn Turtle Turn, however, is even more monumental in its structure. The works are also political in different ways. Where one could read explicit references to Putin and the rise of extremist movements in Obsessions, Turn Turtle Turn dives into issues that go beyond the politics of the day, even the current global situation. Then again, dismissing them is partly an illusion, so often does the work turn to the present moment. In reminding us of Earth’s different geologic periods, a chant occasionally slips in: “Cold times, hot times, not so hot times/ Me time, you time, our time/ Take your time.”
The Jurassic Period and our self-help era collide for a blink of an eye.
What I find interesting about the performance is that as a viewer, I feel I am constantly in a kind of limbo as to whether it’s about humanity’s relationship with other species or humanity’s relationship with the kinds of animal characters people have created and the kinds of stories people tell about them. At the same time, however, the issue that is perhaps less discussed today when we talk about encountering animals from other species is the view of how everything actually has a common, universal ancestor. Oblivia doesn’t shy away from going there, and the perspective becomes infinitely large.
“We are the children of the dinosaurs/ We are the oceans’ breed”
Travelling with Oblivia in its spiritual homeland
Founded in 2000, performing arts group Oblivia found its way into the hearts of Central European audiences many years ago – renowned critic Esther Boldt chose Oblivia as Group of the Year in Tanz Year Book in 2011, after all. Oblivia, founded by Annika Tudeer, “could be a dance group for its choreography, it could be a theatre group for its performers, it could be a performance group for its visuals… but it’s not really any of these things; it is, first and foremost, Oblivia”, is what I wrote last fall in an article for Helsingin Sanomat, and this definition still seems the most fitting. Germany has a strong performing arts field, with roots, a well-written history and groups with long-established practices. In Germany, one can quite freely have different worlds on stage, and no one baulks at combinations that are considered unusual in Finland, such as opera and performing arts. As such, there are more venues for groups like Oblivia.
In recent years, I have had the opportunity to travel with Oblivia to various parts of Germany. From Wuppertal in the western Ruhr area in January 2023 to the German capital Berlin in the east in May 2023, and most recently Turn Turtle Turn in southern Munich in June 2024. In all of these places, it feels like Oblivia has been at home – Oblivia was more than at home in the Bauhaus atmosphere of Wuppertal, in the shabby but inventive atmosphere of Berlin, and now in the relaxed and beautiful Munich, a landmark in the music world. And Oblivia’s connections to Germany are, above all, connections to art, like the pioneers of performance and performing arts, groups like She She Pop and Showcase Beat le Mot. Or those farther afield, like Joseph Beuys.
Could Germany, then, be Oblivia’s spiritual homeland?
Oblivia’s art has been shown all over the world, but apart from their latest works, I have seen their performances only in Finland. I’ve always known about their connections to Germany and have been able to identify some role models, but before my travels with Oblivia I always thought these connections were primarily philosophical or related to the fact that they’ve referred to an artist from said region. In addition, I’ve always thought that Oblivia is at home wherever there are people like them. And that’s what Oblivia is, of course – certainly no representative of any country or countries.
The idea of a spiritual homeland proved to be a much more complex and contradictory definition than I could have imagined. How do you attach yourself to a country when attachment also risks becoming monstrous when it solidifies, and yet there is something beautiful and vital in permanence – even if that permanence consists of criticism rather than being lulled into something safe and sound?
In some ways, the idea of a spiritual homeland is strongest in Turn Turtle Turn, which for the first time in a long time is also a work not performed in a black box theatre. Oblivia started out doing a lot of site-specific performances, but at some point the group’s founder and artistic director Annika Tudeer realised that the black box’s possibilities – and its limitations – were more fascinating. In Munich, in a public space, Oblivia once again becomes attached to the city in a way that is more intimate than would be possible on stage.
However, Gasteig HP8 is not just any space, but a building with a library, a café and a variety of other spaces. In that sense it is perhaps interestingly positioned between a stage and an open urban space. Perhaps in some sense I feel that the marketplace inside the building is closer to the Ancient Greek agora than any other place.
I was left wondering that maybe being attached to a place isn’t such a bad thing after all, nor does it have to mean constricted nationalism. Nowadays, when we can travel anywhere virtually, we might feel that the place doesn't really matter anymore. But for all that, it’s precisely the place and its history that matter. Only certain people can move freely in the world, while most are tied to a place and their movements are restricted. But that doesn’t mean that life stays still; big changes are constantly taking place.
The fact that Turn Turtle Turn took root in that precise location and history in Munich is essential. It’s not about reaching out to anyone anywhere (like online, on social media, on TikTok…) but about a unique, imperfect moment between mortal bodies in this very city and its people. And in Munich, Oblivia has implemented this search for connection most powerfully by breaking out of the black box. Turn Turtle Turn is indeed a massive performance, as I said at the beginning, but at the same time it has a huge amount of small human scenes, and is therefore closer to social sculpture than many of Oblivia’s other works.
Perhaps the biggest question that ultimately remains is this: if showing human frailty and need and weakness is art, a kind of glue for social sculpture, what does it mean today?
Finally, we must return to the performers. Turn Turtle Turn adds yet another layer to the social sculpture: humanity is too narrow a definition. One could also ask what Joseph Beuys’ ideas mean today. Should humanity be extended to other species and nature, should they be seen through the Anthropocene perspective? And not just consider human-to-human warmth as a social sculpture and therefore only that as art?
That is the question posed to us by Oblivia’s dodos. Would the Anthropocene ever have come into being if social sculpture covered all living things and did not remain only between human beings?
Maria Säkö
The author is a theatre and dance critic, journalist and non-fiction writer. She was chairperson of the Finnish Critics’ Association in 2016–2021, and has taught writing at Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy. As a theatre critic, she was written in newspapers and magazines such as Lapin Kansa (2001–2008), Uusi Suomi (2007–2009), Teatteri&Tanssi+Sirkus (2005–), Nuori Voima and Helsingin Sanomat (2009–).
Säkö has been a panel member of Yle – the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Jälkinäytös since fall 2009. She has written articles for several books, such as Nykyteatterikirja (2011), Jumalainen näytelmä – dramaturgisia työkaluja (2012) and KOM-kirja (2013). Together with Eeva Kemppi, she wrote an article on the history of Q-Teatteri for Q – Skavabölen pojista Kaspar Hauseriin (2016). Säkö has founded the project Teatterin Uusi Alkukirjasto – TUA with Heidi Backström.
Photo by Judith Buss
Translation by Essi Brunberg
The Turn Turtle Turn performances were part of Münchener Biennale on 5–9 June 2024.