Work-in-progress: Binary the Trilogy

Will a nonbinary reality ever be possible? What could it look like?

Anna Cadia will start a two-year Residency Program for Impossible Performance with the Reality Research Center and ANTI Festival in September 2022. During their residency, Cadia will search for, study and explore nonbinary realities and examine what sort of knowledge the information related to gender, sexuality and nonbinariness entails in the context of the stage. Cadia will work together with the visual designer Minttu Vesala during the residency.

BINARY THE TRILOGY will be open for one evening at the 2022 Festival, allowing the audience to familiarise themselves with the themes of the artwork in the form of demos of different shapes and discuss them with the working group. At the end of the first residency, the working group wishes to share the results of its expeditions and provide information about its work in a nonbinary Kuopio. After its completion, the artwork will be presented at the 2023 ANTI Festival.

BINARY THE TRILOGY is part of Cadia’s doctoral research at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Their research questions include how to bring something as fragile and elusive as sexuality or gender to the stage, and what kind of a stage is capable of acknowledging nonbinary diversity.

Residency Program for Impossible Performance 2022–2023

The Residency Program for Impossible Performance is a part of the Reality Research Center’s main repertoire in 2022–2023. The ANTI Festival in Kuopio serves as its main partner. Reality Research Center selects a residency artist through an open call, and the residency produces a performance unlike anything seen before in the ANTI Festival programme. Unlike in previous programmes, the residency work now takes time over the course of two years. In 2022, the working group will be working in Kuopio for a two-week residency period. In 2023, the group will create an “impossible” performance for the ANTI Festival programme.