Teo Ala-Ruona
Teo Ala-Ruona’s Enter Exude is a performance where gender unfurls through the sleekness of a high-performance sports car. Exploring techno-trans-masculinity, merging gender with technology, Ala-Ruona takes audiences on a hypnotic joyride, a sensory journey examining themes of sexuality, family dynamics, and queer ecology. A co-production with SAA.
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""This text, too, arises from the car. I see it in my mind as a knot of interchanges composed of highway ramps, an accelerating landscape with multiple directions and lanes. I stand in the midst of that landscape, amidst the noise of highways, and I write.""
-Teo Ala Ruona and Remi Vesala
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Teo Ala Ruona and Remi Vesala
Enter Exude
Finnish multi-disciplinary artist and performer Teo Ala-Ruona combines performance, lighting, set design and live sound mixing to examines contemporary ideas around gender, technology and ecology. Described by the artist as a “cinematic auto-fantasy,” Ala-Ruona’s Enter Exude is a piece written for three performers––“techno-brothers”––and a high-performance sports car. Simultaneously erotic, hypnotic, and corrosive, the car is the centerpiece of the work: it represents both familial and trans narratives, as well as the power of the fossil fuel industry and the toxicity left in its wake. Ala-Ruona takes the techno-brothers and the audience on an ominous joyride through desolated highways, a high-adrenaline assault on the senses to a provocative yet considered exploration on masculinity and the altered environment.
Following productions at Kiasma Theatre (Helsinki, FI) and the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art (Vilnius, LT) earlier this year, Ala-Ruona will stage the North American premiere of Enter Exude at Performa’s Finnish Pavilion Without Walls, adapting the performance for a large-scale indoor industrial garage space allowing the artist to fully embrace its intended vision within a site-specific urban landscape. Juxtaposing the aesthetic cues of hypermasculine car culture with live soundscapes, atmospheric lighting, and costume design, Enter Exude is at once spectacular and intimate, transcending the confines of traditional performance and breaking the boundaries of the theater to create an interplay between reality and dreamscapes. A co-production with SAA.
Curated by Job Piston, Curator at Large
Notes for audience: Enter Exude includes talk about sex and death. The performance also includes close proximity audience contact, which does not require any active participation from audience members.
About Teo Ala-Ruona
Teo Ala-Ruona’s selected performances have been held at Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art, Vilnius (2023), Kiasma Theatre, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2023); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2023); The Place, London (2023); Organ Vida Festival, Zagreb (2023); Baltic Circle, Helsinki (2021); Bangkok Art Biennial, curated by Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Bangkok (2020); Mad House Helsinki, Helsinki (2019); and Human Resources, Los Angeles (2019).
Ala-Ruona has lead workshops or attended residencies at Centrale Fies, Italy (2023), Zodiak Laboratory Residency, Helsinki (2023); FABRIKKEN Residency, Copenhagen (2022); London Performance Studios Residency, London (2022); Theater Academy of Helsinki, Helsinki (2021); NAVEL, Los Angeles (2019); Museum of Impossible Forms, Helsinki (2019); and Spinnboden Lesbian Archive and Library, Berlin (2018). He received his MA in Ecology and Contemporary Performance, Theatre Academy of the University of Arts in Helsinki, and his BA in Art Education, Department of Art, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki.
Credits
Co-produced by SAA. Co-presented by the Finnish Cultural Institute New York.
Concept and direction: Teo Ala-Ruona
Choreography: Raoni Muzho Saleh, Charlie Laban Trier, Teo Ala-Ruona
Set and costume design: Teo Paaer
Sound design: Miša Skalskis
Lighting design: Heikki Paasonen
Performa producers: George Miller, Sunmi Yong
Curator: Job Piston
Original production credits:
Dramaturgy: Even Minn
Sound dramaturgy: Kaino Wennerstand
Producer: Sanna Ritvanen
Pre-production: Jonni Korhonen
Artistic dialogue: Remi Vesala
Supporters
The Finnish Pavilion Without Walls is supported by Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland, Saastamoinen Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Institute New York, FRAME, and Consulate General Finland.
Commissioned by the Kiasma Theatre at the Finnish National Gallery.
Produced by Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, Viernulvier, and Warehouse9.
Supported by Kone Foundation, Niilo Helander Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre, Wihuri Foundation, Oskar Öflund Foundation, Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, and the Finnish Cultural Institute of Denmark.
Performers
Raoni Muzho Saleh, Charlie Laban Trier, Teo Ala-Ruona
Production
Teo Ala-Ruona Production Team Credits:
Concept: Teo Ala-Ruona
Choreography and performers: Raoni Muzho Saleh, Charlie Laban Trier, Teo Ala-Ruona
Set and costume design: Teo Paaer
Sound design: Miša Skalskis
Lighting design: Heikki Paasonen
Performa Team
Curator at Large: Job Piston
Performa 2023 Producer: George R. Miller
Performa 2023 Associate Producer: Sunmi Yong
Performa 2023 Fellow: Jurgis Lusis
