Liina Siib (EST)
MASS LINE
October 10-12 & October 17-19, 2013
Duration: 1h 15 min
Participants: Marte Edvarda Tidslevold, Anya Soldatenko, Lena Kronberg, Elisabet Stengård, Daniel Mårs, Vilija Židovainytė, Pether Lindgren, Kyllike Engström, Ebba Petrén, Angelica Larsson Asp, Filip Landell, Viktor Feuk, Joar Dahlskog, Mats Henning, Tomas Gilljam, Boris Nilsson, Zarina Izmagiq, Samuel Ydrefelt, Susanne Larsdotter, Rabia Sirag Ali, Helena Pataki, Märta Helander, Rebecca Augustsson, Lo Pettersson – Lundgren, Emelie Andersson, Louise Zurawski, Maria Lindh, Lisa Mårtensson, Emmeli Stenberg, Sandra Stjernfeldt, Vladica Culic, Selma Kjellson, Kristofer Jönsson, Ida Mårdhed, Ream Ghazi, Giselle Munir, Mira Adiani, Elinmaria Johansson, Emma-Christina Landqvist
“Red raspberries are red. All women hate mice. Smart is dumb. Dumb is smart.”
Lilith Performance Studio present MASS LINE a comprehensive performance by Liina Siib (EST) in collaboration with Lilith.
A ‘clash’ between bubbles and ideologies – about socialism, Beijing Opera and James Bond.
MASS LINE merges China and the western world’s political ideologies to a peculiar, thorough analysis and practice-oriented observation of systems, prohibitions and orders, both big as well as small ones. Throughout the performance, we ask us the question what space can we claim when there aren’t any.
With a reckless radical attitude that roots in Liina Siib’s long standing commitment in questions regarding social issues in relation to alienation and class differences, she’s now creating a new, her own, Siibic system. A system where western characters like James Bond can turn into a world leader and role model, and where the dictator’s propaganda machinery takes form as karaoke and entertainment for the people is a cheap western copy of a Beijing Opera.
The performance is divided into two parallel worlds that live under the same rules with simple regulations, but where things are not what they appear to be, like an illusion, a trompe l’oeil in real time. The performance is like 14 different film scenes unfolding simultaneously as several mise-en-scènes – everything happens in a loop, there are parallel micro systems that ignore and invade each other.
The scenes are divided into interactive scenes with the audience, tableux vivants - segments of everyday life that becomes social-realist sculptures and scenes with different characters that are drifting around as markers of unheroic daily life.
In the interactive part the audience is instructed to follow instructions such as write important sentences, recite, do gymnastics, hammer, do calligraphy and to sing karaoke. They are instructed where to go, sit and look. In the entrance the audience is asked to leave their belongings, take of their shoes and then enter a corridor and line up. A lady guard divides them into two different groups, one grey and one blue. The grey group enters a socialist office and the blue group enters the workers club, where they experiences different things.
Mass Line is distinctly political but yet at the same time a highly poetic performance, where most of the part is based upon the artist’s own observations and life experience from living in a closed country. In Mass Line Siib plays with big political and social systems we all have to follow in order to be part of the group. Systems whose intensions are to keep us occupied, to act correct and keep us in line.
Liina Siib is one of Estonia’s most prominent artists. Several of her work has a starting point in the experience of living in a both socialistic and capitalistic system, and in the antagonism that appears in shifting between two systems. 2011 she represented Estonia at the 54th Venice Biennale with the project “A Woman Takes Little Space”.
Mass Line is her first performance work initiated and created in collaboration with Lilith Performance Studio.
Lilith Performance Studio is the first combined production studio and arena for visual art performance in Europe.