Real Doll, Arken Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark

Saturday, November 23 and Sunday, November 24, 2024, I will perform Raggedy Ann to Real Doll with Tim Lagasse at the Arken Museum of Contemporary Art. Real Doll is an immersive body horror experience in which one of America’s most beloved dolls will go under the knife. Witness-participants can step into the role of nurse, observing or aiding in the operating room as they wish.

Performance Times

Living in the US and having trouble sleeping? Catch the live feed on Live Arts Denmark’s IG @liveart.dk

The performances are part of Live Art Denmark’s 11th edition of Live Art for Børn Festival at the Arken Museum, themed Staging Identities in the Age of Social Media. This year’s festival examines how the body, identity, and roles are reshaped through media. With a focus on freedom, vulnerability, and the pressures of the digital age, the festival encourages all generations to reconsider how identity is performed both online and off.

In the US, laws restricting how we can define and regulate our bodies are spreading. Books are being banned. There is a moral panic about queer people working with children. Puppetry and dolls are often presumed to be children’s art forms. I have intentionally designed my work to appeal to adult audiences, so that I can address topics that are meaningful to me.

But this festival takes a different approach. Artistic leaders, Ellen Friis and Henrik Vestergaard select participant-based live art projects that were often originally intended for adults, with the understanding that they will be performed for children. Their website states that:

Live art, presented by the artists themselves, engages the children directly in projects and investigations of the world. Children are born explorers, questioning and investigating everything from the laws of nature to moral codes. Many artists in our festivals seem to identify with this, and create works that invite children to challenge and change real structures and relationships under the pretext of play.

My mind is blown by the international lineup of artists who don’t shy away from challenging topics for young audiences. They imaginatively explore gender roles in a consumer society, address mental health, and redefine our place in social media – all subjects that would be considered “adult content” in the US.

According to John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, on Danish public television, there are programs that include a puppet coming to terms with gender identity, a pirate who joins a Satanic cult, and even a night time sleep-themed loop that shows humans and puppets snoring and passing gas at random intervals.

John Dillermand, is a popular Danish children’s animated series about the embarrassment and fun of the body. The series is centered on a middle aged man with a very long penis who lives with his grandmother. He uses his penis as a pogo stick, a tight rope in a circus act, a tool to tame lions, and whips it around like a helicopter to save drowning children.

Children in Denmark sound kind of edgy (at least by US standards). And I’m honored to be part of this opportunity for cultural exchange.

Festival Artists

Tim Spooner (UK): “Performance with puppets” is an investigation into the peripheral, the feedback loop and the attempt to disappear. This little chaotic puppet show is an experiment in measuring the causes and effects between particular coordinates: the fingertips, the shoulder blades, the toes, the wall, the floor.

Rosie Gibbens (UK) interacts with poodle-like “body parts” and machines. Her practice revolves around absurd, mechanical, or automatic everyday actions and gender roles in consumer society.

Playing Up: Gender – a performance workshop developed by LADA (UK), Fundustheater (DE), Live Art Danmark, and other organisations. Inspired by works by Shaun Leonardo (US) and Cassils (US) they will develop some muscles and train wrestling-techniques.

Stine Marie Jacobsen (DE) In “Group-Think,” participants film themselves in groups for TikTok. The project explores social media and political group identity formation.

Louise Orwin (UK) presents two works over two weekends: “FAME HUNGRY” – an interactive performance about social media – and a workshop where participants develop their own social media persona.

Jörn Burmester (DE) showcases his “Weltmaschine”; an installation where children create live images projected and interpreted by adults. Speech is computer-translated into texts displayed as part of the exhibition.

Boaz Barkan (DK) “Our other body”: A dissection of Israeli Boaz’s naked body. A performance lecture on the location of the body’s racism organ.

Rosana Cade & Ivor MacAskill (Scottland) screened The Making of Pinocchio, which joyfully embraces the importance of imagination in queer world making and the idea of transness as a state of possibility that can trouble fixed perspectives and inspire change.

Arken is Danish for ‘the Ark.’ The museum building is deconstructive and nautically-inspired. Arken’s formal plan incorporates assembled building parts, split to create a fragmented ship form and a floor plan with slanted angles. Contrasting colours of grey to red walls, variably sized rooms, and slanted building angles with curved galleries creates visible deconstructionist styles.

Conceived by Queen Margrethe, the museum was designed by Søren Robert Lund and inaugurated in 1996. The Arken’s collection contains major works of over 400 Danish, Scandinavian and international post-war art. Arken, due to its synthesis of contemporary art, maritime architecture and landscape, is also considered as a milestone in Danish architecture. The museum focuses on an overview of contemporary and modern art, presenting cultural and research-based exhibitions, architecture and design, sculptures, paintings, prints, site installations, and mixed-media displays.