Human.VPN/someplace_else (dance graffiti) by Marina Orlova (Try out)
Immersive hybrid dance and digital performance that connects topics of virtual presence, border politics and psychological dissociation.
VPN is a technology used to misrepresent digital location. Dissociation is a coping mechanism of emotional detachment from reality. Information society makes it easy to feel that we are witnessing events happening elsewhere. It is hard not to become emotionally affected, especially for people with migrant backgrounds and those around them. Doomscrolling blends real and virtual worlds. “Human.VPN” is a metaphor for the mismatch between one’s emotional and physical geolocation.
Two dancers interact with a projection of a digital map that is operated live. By relating their bodies to it, they create physical, digital and fictional trajectories, offering the audience to montage with their own experiences of geopolitical presence/abscence.
This project is a “collective geography self-study” focusing on global interconnectedness and suggesting to use shared geopolitical disorientation and ‘not knowing’ to create togetherness.
The performance is followed by facilitated discussion with the audience.
Choreographer, performer: Marina Orlova
Performer, collaborator: Valeryia Le
Dramaturgical advisor, performer: Asya Deinekina
Sound designer, performer: Arieh Chrem
Advisor, collaborator: Maria Mavridou
Research collaborator: Xdzunúm Danae Trejo Boles
Producer: Marina Orlova, co-producers: Irina Prostakova, Nils Rottgardt, Frascati Producties, Orangerie Theater.
Development support: Un-Label Studio, The Grey Space in the Middle, 4bid gallery, Plantage Dok.
Financial support: crowdfunding campaign at Voordekunst, Cultuurfonds, WE Jansen Fonds.
Big thanks to: Irina Orlova, Frederike Manders, Sonia Kazovsky, Burkhard Körner, Martina Novak, Ulrike Neumann, YuJing Liu and all the donors of the crowdfunding campaign that made this project possible.
Marina Orlova (1987) is an independent dance/theatre maker, tech-dramaturg and AI researcher based in Amsterdam. She received education in sociology in Moscow and in experimental choreography at the Amsterdam Academy of Theatre and Dance.
Marina works with topics of human-AI relationships, mental health, migration and border politics. She creates interdisciplinary performances that combine her background in sociology, curiosity for technology, choreographic methodologies and lived knowledge of marginalised communities. Marina mediates between engineering logic and theatrical devices, using technology as metaphor and mirror to societal issues. She works within aesthetics of absurdism, tragicomedy and autofiction.
Marina’s theatre performance “I’m a Robot and I need Therapy” was presented at Frascati Theater in Amsterdam, Veem House for Performance, Flam Festival, Next Level Festival in Dortmund, Worm Rotterdam. Her lecture-performance “Why robots need therapy” was presented Next Nature Digital Wellness Show; Society 5.0 Festival; de Balie; Mesh Festival (Basel); Korzo Theater; Iterations Symposium; and in various academic settings.
Marina’s artistic practice also includes writing, teaching and facilitating a support group for “artists in distress”.
