CPPM Manifestal'24: (dis)appearance: a swan song. Britt Kõrsmaa

Author-director BRITT KÕRSMAA (EST)
Visual artist MIKK-MAIT KIVI (EST)
Sound designer HENDRIK KALJUJÄRV (EST)
Scenographer RIIN MAIDE (EST)
Co-creators and performers MAARJA TOSIN (EST), RASMUS JENSEN (DK), SHION YOKOO-RUTTAS (JAP), SOFIA FILIPPOU (GR), TRIIN KAUBER (EST)

Production CPPM Manifestal and Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre

Supported by Estonian Cultural Endowment

“(dis)appearance: a swan song” is a site-specific performance that explores transience, impermanence, ephemerality, absence, loss and grief.

Pirita TOP was built in 1980, its hotel and spa facilities have been empty for the past few years as it is waiting for construction work that will renew the indoor spaces. That means, at first the rooms need to be demolished. Demolishment is to be started from the swimming pool area. The swimming pool is frozen in time, standing emptied of water, having lost its function, its life’s meaning. It is waiting for its death. It’s in a borderline state already decomposing but still existing in its current state. This is a long, stretched-out farewell.

This sense of an impending doom, an end that is sure to come, has put the empty pool in an absurdly tragic existentialistic situation. All of us are moving towards our end. The piece “(dis)appearance: a swan song” is a body-based, space-oriented performance which sets out to reflect the essence of human existence by responding to a place that has its own history, state and life span. Bodies interact with the place, giving it agency and exploring the interaction with it. How does the space with its architecture, atmosphere and state affect our perception, experience and imagination? What is the space telling us when we take the time to listen? What can we share with it?

“(dis)appearance: a swan song” is a send-off, a dedication, a lament, a rite, an invitation, a bathing in absence, an embrace of emptiness. It’s an attempt to find connection in a temporal, transient, interrupted world. Let’s meet in this place, in this time, in this moment, as long as we are here and can see each other on this side.