Kultuur by Maria Metsalu premiered at SPIELART festival in Munich

Maria Metsalu's new work Kultuur premiered at the prestigious theater festival SPIELART in Munich, Germany on October 31st, 2023. Kultuur is a co-production of Metsalu, Kanuti Gildi SAAL, SPIELART festival, TOASTER Copenhagen and Kiasma Theater and brings together an international and renowned team of artists.

Kultuur contemplates the Sun. Performance not as thesis but as experience – something between a piano concert and a finger-painted surface. Metsalu displays herself as an object of spectacle, then denies the spectacle. We face Kultuur as an audience, a collective body. This body will be fed, entertained and challenged.

The performance is divided into three baroque and splendorous movements – the parade at the hot dog cart, the concert of the Flower and the final consumption of the Sun, table d'hôte. Kultuur is a celebration of life – of its fleeting, sensual nature. A desire for simplicity exists in tension with the allure of excess.

Maria Metsalu is an artist who uses her own body to explore contemporary issues, often employing sexually loaded means of expression. She views performance as a radical space and performing deviance as a possibility through which new ways of looking and seeing could be created. Her work seeks to proliferate meanings rather than systematize them into a clarity. She is interested in an emancipated audience and in ways the position of the spectator can be challenged, destabilised or abolished altogether. Besides her solo work she is one of the founding members of Young boy dancing group.

After performances at SPIELART festival, Kultuur will be performed in Tallinn, Copenhagen and Helsinki in 2024.

The sound design of Kultuur was created by Artjom Astrov, the costume was prepared under the leadership of Kris Lemsalu together with Varvara Boutique and the Mexican designer CRUDACRUDA, the dramaturg is Jaakko Pallasvuo, the design and artifacts were created by Nikola Knezevic and Bruno Lillemets, Henry Kasch (Kanuti Gildi SAAL) is responsible for the lighting design, Karim Boumjimar created the food design and also takes part in the final act of the performance on stage. 

Photo: Alana Proosa