"traps" can be seen as a confluence of different actions, dragged by linguistic elements. A hypnotic zoo invites the viewer into its trap. By featuring the unknown as a source of compositional information, where words, bodies and configurations morph, a collective playground is created. It is not a game, but rather an overt observation of a hidden manifesto.
Work “traps“ finds itself between the wet walls, inhabited by mediated identity that seeks to make eye contact with the unknown territories of its being. The body functions through mannerisms and ways of communication, searching for emergence of physicality. Like a reflection of a sudden diagram between fiction and reality, territories constantly (re)create us by adopting different fictions. “traps“ falls into the intimate within estrangement and dares to gaze back to reflect its own sociality.
“traps” seeks to capture an absent image and trace our forgotten belongings. ‘traps’ is a trapping pulse and a raw meat programmed to consume. It’s a place where drugs and identities are sold and dissolved. It’s a tongue hole, wasted head, a person's dirty mouth, and a leaky engine. It travels, restricts, attrapts (?), pokes, and strokes our presence while we’re caught in our own traps.
In 2023 “traps” was nominated for the Estonian Theatre Awards in dance category.
Johhan Rosenberg (1997) is an Estonian choreographer and artist working in the fields of dance and performance art. With a background of dance and music studies, he graduated in 2020 choreography studies in School for New Dance Development. He has presented works in Amsterdam (Frascati, Dansmakers, Veem House for Performance), De Hague (Het Nationale), Moscow (ZIL), St.Petersburg (SDVIG), Berlin (Studio dB), and Tallinn (EKA Gallery, EKKM, ULM, and Kanuti Gildi SAAL) and has also participated in several projects as a dancer and dramaturg. He received the Estonian Theatre Prize Dance Award 2022 with Jette Loona Hermanis for their performance “Eden Detail”.
The choreographic haunting of his work constructs environments and artefacts of movement, mediated through the self and the gaze of the public. Seeking for the unknown environments and pluralism of characters - in his practice, the functionalities of language and identities become embodied contexts towards the process of creating surroundings. Through raw vocabulary and playfulness, he layers body, text, and sound to meet-cross in the architecture of collective consciousness.
There was an artist talk moderated by Liisbeth Horn on the 6th of May
