Modulation, 2021

Performance / Duration: Minimum 120 minutes

6 men. Each of them following an individual pre-recorded instructional script, which only they can hear through a single earphone. The scripts indicate how the men move through space, where they should stand and how, gestures, facial expressions, body tensions. Certain emotional states and memory landscapes are prompted, as well as possible relations to co-players and audience members. Positions in space are marked by vinyl numbering on the floor. The six scripts are synchronized, and unfold as coordinated motion sequences, tableaux vivants and choreographed formations. Audience walks in and out of the performance area, and also through it. The men are asked to constantly recalibrate their scripted sequences in relation to the status of the space, depending on the visitors that enter and the way they behave.

Modulation makes a nod to the musical term, referring to a change in tonality. It also resonates with the term’s philosophical definition - a mode of control, that seemingly creates a space for the individual, yet what they produce follows the logic of intangible forces. The piece is constructed in some accordance with the musical structure of The Scorpions’s 1989 power ballad Wind of Change. Within the dramaturgy of the piece, control shifts from a form imposing mode to a self regulating mode. The behaviours of performer and audience are mutually affective, and in continuous interplay.