Reality Research Center & Anna Cadia: Binary the Trilogy – work in progress

The Residency Program for Impossible Performance with the Reality Research Center (FI), and Anna Cadia (FI) is starting a two-year residency at the festival, during which they will search for, examine and probe non-binary realities and stages. This work in progress will already be shared this year, and Binary The Trilogy will be premiered at the 2023 ANTI Festival.

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.

Anna Cadia
Anna Cadia is a performance artist, doctoral researcher and journalist from Helsinki (TeM 2013). In their artwork, Cadia examines gender, sexuality, representation and the construction of reality. A key part of Cadia’s philosophy is concerned with making room for nonbinary existence. In their previous artwork, Cadia has often explored bringing various concepts to the stage.

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.

The Residency Program is intended for artists at the start of their careers who work in Finland and have dreams related to performance art yet to be realised. Previous performances showcased as a part of the Residency Program include Mimosa Norja’s Dear Deer in 2019, Samuli Laine’s Nurture in 2020, and Emelie Zilliacus and Martin Paul’s Exhibit in 2021.