Wired with SIMONE WIERØD
“I want to make people feel, think and wonder – and hopefully question some of the presumptions and prejudices, with which they entered the space of the artwork.”
The following self-reflective conversation with SIMONE WIERØD, Choreographer and Founder and Artistic Director ofWired Studio, uncovers 5 unique performances produced by the art studio. We explore theQuestions and the societalAgendas that inspired the works, as well as investigatethe cultural, social, and political context that the choreographies areWired to.
THE PERFORMER
PROFESSION:Choreographer and Artistic Director
CURRENT LOCATION:Copenhagen, Denmark
INTRODUCTION:I am a Choreographer and the Founder and Artistic Director of Wired Studio. I have a background in contemporary dance, but find myself drawn to cross-disciplinary collaborations and new ways to explore choreographic expressions.
CONTEXT:Simone Wierød and Wired Studio have presented their works in over 25 countries and won several awards for their choreographic works, most recently for the dance films BEYOND and SOLUS. Simone Wierød and Wired Studio are currently elected as a part of “The Young Artistic Elite” by The Danish Art Foundation for 2023 and 2024.
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What are three values that you wish to mediate through your work?
My artistic vision is driven by a curiosity to explore and challengewhat we think we know, meaning challenging our expectations and perspectives on the world around us. I do so through working with optical illusions, materiality, and social relations and expectations. In my artistic work, I always start from a set of core values:
Believing in the audience and their ability to interpret, appreciate, and relate to abstract artwork.
A minimalist expression that values functionality over decoration, but in an aesthetic and visually enticing way.
A safe and transparent working environment with space for co-creation and sharing of voices.
What are three relevant problems that you wish to solve through your work?
I would not call them problems, but rather observations that I want to explore through a critical lens. In general, I have a curiosity about what happens in groups of people.
I am curious about relations, flock mentality, and “us-and-them”-divisions. One could say that that comes from political beliefs, but I would rather say it comes from deeply humanist interest and curiosity about relations—the relation to the people and space around us, the relation to ourselves and to our past, present, and future. I don’t want my artwork to solve problems, but I want to make people feel, think and wonder—and hopefully question some of the presumptions and prejudices with which they entered the space of the artwork. If any of those things happen, I consider the work really successful.
01 COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR
Is my behavior caused by my will?
Can a collective of people exist without shared norms?
Can individuals exist without relationships with others?
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR illustrates the symmetry between individual identity and mass identification. Through a complex scenography of mirrors, endless bodies appear on stage, making the dancers continuously multiply and become one, while time, space, and materiality are distorted. COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR is a dance performance that I created in collaboration with the South Korean arts duo Kimchi and Chips and we have presented the work in both Denmark and South Korea.
AGENDA
Cross-disciplinary collaboration
Distortion of time, space, and materiality
Individual identity vs. mass identification
WIRED
The above-linked photos and video trailer show moments from the second half of the performance where five semi-transparent mirrors appear on the stage, allowing us to create a single or endless reflection of the performers. In this scene, the performers appear and disappear in a complex choreography of light and movement. We catch short glimpses of movements being mirrored in either space through the reflections, or in time through repetition. Thereby, we see abstract illustrations of all actions having waves of impact—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, or delayed—and how people and their actions are interconnected.
The choreography in this part is made from 12 words linked to relational discrepancy and conformity. From those words, I made 12 main gestures that were then abstracted and versioned into many different physical versions of each word and gesture. The whole choreography can therefore be written as one long poem, with words being repeated in different versions, shapes, and tonalities, which created an interesting extra layer for the dancers and me while creating, but which definitely also shone through in the final result shared with the audience.
02 BOXED
What choreographic systems do we partake in, and what does it take for us to break them?
How can we create a participatory work where the audience has full control over the turnout of the performance while still being in charge of the overall dramaturgy and experience?
How can we create a safe environment for participatory work, where no one feels exploited, while still challenging the participants?
How can we highlight the hidden expectations and dynamics in a group?
How can we create awareness of flock mentality and our trust in authorities in a light and inclusive way?
BOXED is a participatory performance installation for the urban landscape. The audience is guided through choreographic instructions in headphones and collaborates on building ever-evolving sculptures of wooden boxes in the cityscape. During the piece, they are challenged on their individuality, group dynamics, and flock mentality in a light and fun way, accessible to both regular theater-goers and those who rarely experience performing arts.
AGENDA
Participatory choreography
Outdoor performance
Group dynamics and flock mentality
WIRED
In BOXED, all audiences participate under the same circumstances.
It is a meeting point where age, background, gender, and social status no longer determine the relations in a group of strangers. Being put in an unpredictable situation while being in the public eye together with others quickly creates a sensation of “us and them” between the participants and the outside spectators. Trust and togetherness are built during the performance until the group starts to receive different instructions and is challenged on their individuality and trust in the group. Thus, a big part of the performance takes place inside the participants’ minds, in the inner dialogues and dilemmas that occur there, while still giving a calm, sculptural, and aesthetic experience to the outside eyes of the passers-by.
After each performance, we do a short debrief with the audience, which can sometimes last a few minutes and sometimes be up to an hour, depending on what the group needs and how much they want to talk about what happened between them. This is always a very beautiful moment, to see strangers share their thoughts, beliefs, and sometimes even fears and dreams, and I am very thankful to be able to facilitate that through artwork.
03 AXIAL FIGURES
What happens when we build something together?
And what happens, when someone lets go?
AXIAL FIGURES is choreography on the vertical plane. Five rope performers move in a motorized scenography of five ropes to create geometric figures from the ground and from the air. With a precise and minimalistic aesthetic, AXIAL FIGURES explores the construction and deconstruction of systems linear as well as choreographic, geometric, and social. We activate the full space of the stage and create movements on all axes, with a voluminous expression but through quite minimal means. I have worked closely with the architecture company Standard Practice on the concept for this work, which is why the performance contains elements of choreography, contemporary circus, and architecture. This is a very exciting and new format for me and I am looking very much forward to sharing this work with an audience later this year.
AXIAL FIGURES will premiere in November 2023 in Aarhus and Copenhagen, Denmark, and will be ready to tour internationally after that.
AGENDA
Aerial dance
3D line drawing
Dance, circus, and architecture
WIRED
AXIAL FIGURES is still in development, but some of the recurring questions in our rehearsals are linked to the relationship with the ropes and the many symbolic references it creates: Do we manipulate our surroundings, or are they shaping us? Am I pulling the strings or am I being puppeteered? The performance contains very symbolic images of pulling, balancing, sharing weight, defying gravity and leaving the ground, crawling upwards and falling down, which all can be interpreted into everyday life and situations. That is where it becomes interesting for me as the artistic director and choreographer: when you can create big stories with relatively simple means, which is one of the reasons I am looking very much forward to the further creation and production of this work.
Another very exciting part of this project is its collaborative and cross-disciplinary nature, combining skills, knowledge, and methods from dance, choreography, circus, and architecture. The collaboration serves as a steep learning curve for all involved, which invites us to look for new ways of working, creating, and communicating, which I find extremely refreshing, inspiring, and informative for the artistic process.
04 SOLUS
Can we assimilate to different versions of ourselves in different times?
And if not, why do we even strive to assimilate to others?
What is my relation to my past, present and future self: are we one, or are we several selves?
SOLUS is a dance film created from a questioning of striving—the striving to achieve, and the striving to create the images and stories about ourselves that we want the world to see. With a subtle and poetic approach, the choreography revolves around this theme and slowly unfolds more and more layers for the audience to interpret. All roles are performed by the same dancer, which serves as an experiment on synchronicity and being alike as well as it serves as a subtle and symbolic comment on our time.
AGENDA
Dance film
Choreographing the eye of the audience
Dancing with several versions of ourselves
WIRED
SOLUS was my very first dance film. I didn’t initially intend to work with the film medium, but wanted to create an artwork, where one dancer could dance with several versions of herself. The idea and concept led me to the choice of working through the camera lens, which was an exciting extra choreographic layer to add to the creative process—not only to choreograph the body on stage, but also to be able to choreograph the eye looking at it. I believe in this process of always starting with the idea and then choosing the medium, format, and presentation afterward, to stay true to the idea and to explore different ways of expressing what you want to say as an artist before settling for a certain outcome. This process has led me to work with stage productions, dance films, choreographic installations for galleries, and outdoor participatory performances, which expands my choreographic language and way of thinking, which I believe is super valuable for me as an artist.
05 BEYOND
How do we deal with reconnecting to nature, now that we fear being beaten by it?
Can we learn to unlearn our civilized relationship with nature?
When we cannot go outside – how do we go “inside”?
BEYOND is the aesthetic response to one of humankind’s strategies for handling a global pandemic. Exploring new truths and roads to inner peace seems to be the only way to rise above collective anxiety. BEYOND presents a number of absurd and surreal tableaus—a human being’s awkward attempts on connecting with nature to only find herself more alienated than before.
AGENDA
Dance film
Human’s alienation from nature
WIRED
We see a woman in a pink suit, a symbol of civilized society and man-made regulations for behavior and expression. Seeing her in a different context, in a non-conformed physical position and with her body rolling in the mud on a cliff, we see the absurd meeting point between two worlds: the controlled, directed, and artificial and the natural, organic, and odd. The awkwardness of this scene is a reflection of what we saw in the rich and privileged parts of the world during the pandemic—a desperate attempt of being in contact with something we spent the majority of our life staying away from and controlling, in a blind attempt on finding new meanings, spirituality and a sense of connectedness, while leaving the rest of the world behind.
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This interview contributes to a new media format, where Creatives are in full control of their narratives. By exploring alternatives to narrative journalism, GAHSP starts unconventional conversations, emphasizing values and problems that shape our lives collectively. This content was developed in coproduction by GAHSP MEDIA for CIRCUS TALK. Written and Edited by Julia Horvath. Image Courtesy of Simone Wierød.
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