Performance group

Throughout more than two decades with Oblivia being a distinctive force in the European performance scene, the company has developed a specific work ethic of openness and collaboration which includes viewing each production process as if launching into a journey of the unknown together. With Oblivia‘s works shifting to embrace music theatre over the last years, for example with Verdrängen Verdrängen Verdrängen, which premiered at ECLAT Festival für Neue Musik in Stuttgart in 2020, their working practice of „Do what you saw“ has gained an extension with „Do what you hear“ to interlink multiple layers of sound and action with the utmost precision. The production process of Verdrängen Verdrängen Verdrängen also marked the beginning of a close collaboration with composer Yiran Zhao, whose acoustic and electronic compositions and sound designs add another level of shape and dynamics to Oblivia’s endeavours in music theatre.

Whether it’s our constant need for entertainment, our conflict with non-valued emotions or multi-leveled musings on postmodernism – Helsinki-based company Oblivia are known for their minimalist approach to the great subject matters which define mankind. Playful yet poignant, they manage to create cosmoses out of fragments and worlds out of words on a bare stage. At the very heart of each production there lies a grand idea – an idea almost too grand to encompass. Oblivia’s vibrant performances meet these notions full-on, all the while allowing for humour to linger almost constantly.

Founded in 2000, Oblivia have been creating performances out of movement, dance, language, sound, light and gesture for over twenty years. Oblivia’s performances develop a unique atmosphere of nonchalant vitality while pondering almost philosophical questions. It is this atmosphere which renders their works enigmatic and relatable to the audience at the same time.
www.oblivia.fi

Annika Tudeer MA, performer, artistic director.

Born in Helsinki 1964 she founded the international performance company Oblivia in 2000 where she is a performer and artistic director. Oblivia is working collectively re-informing the black-box by creating minimalistic, physical unstinting, intelligent and funny performances that tour internationally. Among the body of work is the ground breaking trilogy Entertainment Island, and the music theatre series Emotion and Politics (2020-23) with Verdrängen Verdrängen Verdrängen at the ECLAT festival and Theater Rampe, Obsessions, as part of NRW Kultursekreteriat NOperas! Project at Theater Bremen and Wuppertal Oper (2022) and Pleasure, at Theater Rampe (2022).

Annika also creates solo work like Annika does Swanlake, Annika’s Sacre and Annika goes stand-up. Alongside the artistic projects Oblivia investigates and contextualises their working methods in the Oblivia blog. At the moment Oblivia is investigating music theatre and how pleasure can be a guiding force in the working environment. Annika graduated from Helsinki University with a MA in literature after working as a dancer and choreographer in the 1990’s. She worked as a dance critic writing on new trends in dance and performing arts nationally and internationally until 2004. She is the founding member and initiator of the platform and studio spaces Performance Center (2008) and of Mad House Helsinki (2013), a venue for experimental work in Helsinki. In 2014 she was awarded a 5-year artist grant from the Arts Council Finland and has received several grants and awards since.

Yiran Zhao is a composer and performer, living in Berlin.

She is music director and composer of OBLIVIA, an experimental music theater company based in Helsinki.

Her works focus on various modes of expression incorporating both musical and performative elements, lighting, visual arts, and other media. With great interest in the physicality of performance, since she came to Europe she has been working extensively with the human body and other objects as compositional material.

Zhao studied composition with Guoping Jia, Caspar Johannes Walter, Erik Oña, Carola Bauckholt, and taught at the Anton Bruckner Private University Linz.

She has worked with numerous artistic groups and festivals in Europe, Asia, North and South America; including Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Recherche, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Ensemble Garage, Ensemble Asamisimasa, Ensemble Phace, ensemble this ensemble that, Pony Says, KlangLab, Dissolution Ensemble, Ensemble Lemniscate, Theater Bremen, Oper Wuppertal, Eclat, SPOR, Ultima, ZEIT RÄUME Basel, WIEN MODERN, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Münchener Biennale, Musiktheatertage Wien, and many others.

She is recipient of Artist-in-Residence Munich 2024, the Musikfonds fellowship 2023, winner of NOperas 2022, the INITIAL Grant from AdK Berlin 2021, Berlin-Basel fellowship of HGK Basel & AdK Berlin in Atelier Mondial 2019, Berlin fellowship of AdK Berlin 2017, composer-in-residence and concert curator for the “Forum of Younger Composers 2016” at the Bavarian Academy of Arts, winner of Karlsruhe Composition Competition 2015, stipend of the Hochschule für Musik Basel 2014, the Deutschlandstipendium 2013/14, the State Stipend China 2010, Con Tempo Young Chamber Music Competition China 2009.

http://www.yiranzhao.net/about/

At KlangKunstBühne 2024 he will give the workshop Do what you saw and heard.