Resort//INTERNATIONAL

The story revolves around a couple that has gone on a holiday to a resort to fix their relationship. They begin a role play, where they pretend to be two strangers that meet in a hotel bar, but as they try out different scenarios, they slowly lose their sense of self. At the resort everything appears porous; nature and culture, identities, and relations, and past, present, and future coalesce. Small and big movements affect each other: plate tectonics and relationship dynamics, a breakup and/or the end of the world.

THE CONTEXT

"Resort" enters into a conversation with the climate and biodiversity crisis that we find ourselves in right now through the lens of a relationship crumbling. The work explores our failure to act when it comes to big and small catastrophes. It's about global warming and narrow perspectives, empathy, and escapism in late capitalism. Through the project I try to find a language for climate grief, love, and loss.

THE COMPANY

Filip Vest(DK, b. 1995) holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Through performances, installations, films and texts, they examine queer love, loneliness and desire in the 21st century. Applying rehearsal methods from theatre, they test the relationship between the script and the body to investigate the different ways we perform our identities and relations. Vest’s universe is inhabited by a vast network of small and big things affecting each other: climate change and crumbling relationships, role-playing, doomsday karaoke and reenacted kisses, a bird falling in love with a statue and a frog having a breakdown in the middle of a striptease. Through mobile phones, walls and windows, the characters communicate and miscommunicate across species and time, while they try to make themselves legible to the outside world.

Filip Vest has previously shown their work at The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen Contemporary, Møstings, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Charlottenborg, Roskilde Festival, Tallinn Kunsthal and for Manifesta13.

INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY

The scene for transdisciplinary performance between visuals arts and theatre is very small in Copenhagen and Denmark, so I seek to explore new venues in the Nordic countries, Europe and across the world. What is most important for me is interesting venues that are willing to show experimental work. I'm looking to meet presenters from theatres, art institutions and festivals working with crossdisciplinary performance art - ideally with a focus on eco crisis and queer themes. I want to focus on co-producing with international venues, using local casts and reframing/revisiting the work for the new context. The performance can be fitted to a black box stage, but ideally it will be shown in alternative spaces like an old villa or hotel, where I can make use of the existing architecture and modify that. "Resort" is written in Danish, but in November 2023 an English translation of the script will be published through Art Hub and I'm also open for translating the work into other languages.

FORMAT AND SUSTAINABILITY

If the performance takes place outside of the Nordic countries, it will be made with local performers in the specific country to minimize travel. There will also be a focus on touring to several venues inside one country or countries in proximity to each other. It will make use of already existing architecture similar to Møstings where it was first shown, to minimize the scenography that needs to be transported. Smaller props, costumes etc. will be recycled and can be easily packed into suitcases. Whenever it is possible, slow CO2-friendly travel will be used. The mission with this project is to create works that don't just get staged once, but being able to recycle, reframe and recontextualize a work several times, to allow for both mental and ecological sustainability.

CONTACT PERSON

Filip Vest - filipvest@gmail.com / +4531607074

TRIGGER WARNINGS

None

TARGET AUDIENCE GROUP

+14

LANGUAGE

Danish

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

Working from theories about safer spaces, I always strive to create a safe and mentally healthy environment for my employees, using check-ins, evaluations and one-to-one sessions to take good care of everyone on the team as well as making space for special needs. Boundaries are always discussed before any scenes, that might involve intimacy or other sensitive material. Gathering a diverse team of people from different backgrounds is really important to me, to help work against the homogenization of the Danish performing arts scene and provide a platform for marginalized performers.

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WHY THIS PIECE WAS SELECTED FOR CPH STAGE

Behind RESORT is the young, up-and-coming talent Filip Vest, who last year was selected for the Danish Arts Foundation's development program "The Young Artistic Elite". We recommend RESORT because it offers the audience an exciting installation at the intersection of visual and performing arts. In addition to being an aesthetically interesting experience, RESORT also touches thematically on several of today's most important topics such as the climate crisis, empathy and escapism.