This Order Goes Wrong

Tickets £14 // Concession £11 // Under 30 £5
Advance booking required

Warning: this performance uses strobe effects

This performance will be followed by a discussion focusing on the issues raised in the work

Lora Kmieliauskaitė violin

Kristijonas Dirsė video director
Nidas Kaniušas projectionist
Rimantas Ribačiauskas dramatist
Morta Nakaitė costume design
Marius Čivilis sensor design
Rupert Entickna vocals consultant
Živilė Virkutytė movement consultant

Dominykas Digimas (Lithuania, 1993)
This Order Goes Wrong 42’ UK Premiere

Responsibilities, expectations, deadlines, bottlenecks, screens… Anxiety has become an expected part of contemporary living. As an observable phenomenon, it can be dated as far back as the time of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, discussed in its different guises and forms up until its appearances in Freud’s work and beyond. Writing in his book Turmoil – a journey into the contemporary self, psychiatrist Finn Skårderud proposes, ‘Steam engines existed in Freud’s era, and he borrowed his models from these machines – energy and pressure. We live in an era of information technology, and we borrow contemporary metaphors interactively and intersubjectively from computer networks.’

This Order Goes Wrong is a performance that takes inspiration from these metaphors, allowing anxiety to become the basis for experiments with music and digital technologies. How do involuntary body movements (or tics) – which often accompany panic and anxiety attacks – affect an instrument as well as the live performance of a musical composition? What happens to the sound of an instrument when a performer experiences anxiety on stage and allows the feeling to grow and take over the body? This Order Goes Wrong uses a synthesis of live and electronic music, visual art, and sensors attached to the body of violinist Lora Kmieliauskaitė to render these questions and feelings visible.

Underlying this experiment are the experiences of its creators, some of whom have experienced anxiety disorders, who wish to unveil this state sensorially and energetically. This Order Goes Wrong transposes an individual, subjective ordeal to a communal, more universal experience – one that may even be controllable and conquerable.

This performance will be followed by a post-concert talk.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Lithuanian Culture Institute and Music Information Centre Lithuania