Winter Guests / Alan Lucien Øyen ^(NOR) Still Life 5-6 February 2025

Programme

One life. 21 000 630 moments. 255 million data points. 461 books. 97 walks in the forest. 29265 Hours of television. 800 and 200 and 40 hours waiting. 763 podcasts. 10 293 hours of porn. 67 conversations on the phone with a close friend. 255 hours on my mother's lap. 213 screams of joy. 6000 hours spent looking at photographs of strangers. 983 hours envying someone I know. One afternoon spent alone with a librarian serving books in a quiet, sunlit room.

In Still Life Alan Lucien Øyen and the Winter Guests company have taken as their starting point a concern for the digital age. A visually powerful and personal duet, performed by dancers Daniel Proietto and Mirai Moriyama, creates a poignant work that reminds audiences of how we are frozen - like still lifes - in front of flickering screens. Through windows to the world around us, we witness forest fires, floods and environmental destruction - while drowning in an echo of our own desires, controlled by algorithms. Always connected, always disconnected.

Three torn jackets. 6000 hours spent looking at photographs of strangers. 983 hours envying someone I know. One afternoon spent alone with a librarian serving books in a quiet, sunlit room. One video clip of five men with black masks and no trousers in a hotel room standing around a naked woman on all four. One time clearing out my mother's wardrobe. 12 lies about my mother's life told in front of her dead body. 69 screams of fear.

Still Life is a work created for Mirai Moriyama and Daniel Proietto, two dancers who together share experiences from different choreographic and scenic expressions such as butoh, kabuki, contemporary theatre, film and television. The starting point of the work with Still Life is the role of humans in nature and how we need to reconnect with that part of ourselves - to avoid becoming a still life.

22,455 objects placed in my suitcase. 345 unanswered phone calls. 975 goodbyes. 9950 hours pretending to be myself. One major regret. A young girl in a pink dress smiling, holding out her hand asking me to dance. 55 missed opportunities. 26 last times. One endless walk from the door to our house to the end of the driveway next to three paramedics and the person I love. Seven passports. 862 birthday candles.