onemorequestion-collective

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Our R.I.P. SERVICES performance season at WUK Vienna was a success — we wish to thank the amazing WUK performing arts team, our generous audiences, as well as our supporters and co-operation partners:

Frame Contemporary Art Finland, the Finnish Institute in Germany, the Finnish Embassy in Austria and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna/Institute for Education in the Arts !!!

You’ll find our text “just one more question…/nur eine frage noch…” in the golden bilingual WUK performing arts magazine number 5 (January-February 2019)!!

(Photos from top: Ulli Koch, Joonas Lahtinen, Ulli Koch, Luzie Stransky)

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We wish all our partners, spectators and collaborators a Happy New Year 2019!!

Our onemorequestion team ended our 2018 and started 2019 with the set-up of R.I.P. SERVICES at WUK Vienna — hope to see you on 05-09 January at WUK performing arts/Kunsthalle Exnergasse!! Advance ticket reservations are recommended.

For more information, please visit: https://www.wuk.at/en/events/onemorequestion-joonas-lahtinen-rip-services/

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Feature about R.I.P. SERVICES

Theatre Info Finland (TINFO) published a feature about the R.I.P. SERVICES performances in WUK Vienna!! (sorry in Finnish only):

https://www.tinfo.fi/fi/Kuolemaesitys_RIP_Services_syntyy_uudelleen_Wienissa

Kuolemaesitys R.I.P. Services syntyy uudelleen Wienissä

Helpotusta kuoleman tuomiin haasteisiin tarjoaa esitysinstallaatio R.I.P. Services, joka kaksi ja puoli vuotta Helsingin ensi-iltansa jälkeen sovitetaan taidehalliympäristöön Wienissä viiden päivän ajaksi 5.-9.1.2019. Yhteistuotannossa kumppanina on merkittävä, vanhaan vuonna 1980 vallattuun veturitehtaaseen kehkeytynyt taide- ja kulttuurikeskus WUK. Joonas Lahtinen soolotaiteilijana ja hänen johtamansa kollektiivi onemorequestion ovat jo aiemmista teoksistaan tuttu wieniläisellä esitystaiteen kentällä. Kansainvälisissä yhteistuotannoissa yhtenä osapuolena on toiminut brut Wien, joka WUKin ohella on keskeinen esitystaiteen solmukohta Keski-Euroopassa.

Valmiskeittiön rakentumisesta koostuva esitysinstallaatio EIN.KÜCHEN.BAU oli oikea kiertuehitti, joka vieraili Itävallan lisäksi Saksan ja Sveitsin tunnetuissa esitystaiteen keskuksissa osana Freischwimmer-festivaalin ohjelmistoa 2012-2013. Keittiöesitys nähtiin tämän jälkeen myös Helsingissä Stage-festivaalilla. Suomessa Lahtisen ja kollektiivin teosten tuotantoalustoja ovat olleet Stagen lisäksi Kiasma-teatteri sekä Mad House ja URB-festivaali, jonka siipien suojissa syntyi myös R.I.P. Services.

Suomalais-itävaltalaisen onemorequestion -kollektiivin teokset rakentuvat usein paikka- tai tilalähtöisesti, esityksiä on nähty esimerkiksi väestönsuojassa, barokkikirkon hautaholvissa ja teollisuusrakennuksessa. Tekijät puhuvat teoksistaan esitysinstallaatioina, joissa yhtä tärkeää kuin esiintyjät ovat tila ja katsojien suhde kulloiseenkin paikkaan.

Joonas Lahtinen on esitystaiteilja ja tutkija, joka on asettunut asumaan Wieniin ja omien taidetöidensä lisäksi työskentelee Wienin Kuvataideakatemiassa. Vuoden 2019 kuluessa Lahtiselta on luvassa yhdessä Miriam Lausseggerin kanssa toteutettava, pitkäkestoinen Wienissä julkisessa tilassa tapahtuva valokuva- ja tilainstallaatio “out there”. onemorequestion -kollektiivin ydinjäseniä Lahtisen lisäksi ovat Mikko Niemistö, Eero Erkamo ja Luzie Stransky.

(TINFO 12.12.2018)

Kuva: Luzie Stransky

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We warmly welcome you to the **Austrian premiere** of R.I.P. SERVICES at WUK performing arts/Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, 05.01-09.01.2019!!

Please visit:  https://www.wuk.at/en/events/onemorequestion-joonas-lahtinen-rip-services/

Performances:

Saturday, 05.01.2019, 19:30 Sunday, 06.01.2019, 19:30 Monday, 07.01.2019, 19:30 Tuesday, 08.01.2019, 19:30 Wednesday, 09.01.2019, 19:30

“The death rate is 100 percent. So it’s better to start dealing with dying right now...

Due to the enormous progress in medicine during the last decades, our lives can be prolonged in ways that were unimaginable for previous generations. However, we are also forced to take more control over life and death than ever before in history.

What are the limits of our self-determination today, as members of a technologically advanced consumerist society obsessed with optimization and individualism?

R.I.P. SERVICES helps you manage the challenges of death and dying in the most enjoyable way possible.”

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We are pleased to inform that our performance/installation R.I.P. SERVICES will premiere in VIENNA IN EARLY JANUARY 2019 – more info to follow! The project was first seen at the URB 16 Urban Art Festival organized by Kiasma Theatre/Finnish National Gallery in 2016. Stay tuned!

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Preparing for 2018/2019

This year we have been busy with other projects and commitments -- no worries, however, there is also a lot going on with onemorequestion too!! More info about forthcoming guest performances and new projects to follow later on ... meanwhile you might take a look at what we have been up to lately, both artistically and academically:

https://joonaslahtinen.wordpress.com

https://mikkoniemisto.wordpress.com

https://eeroe.carbonmade.com

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R.I.P. SERVICES trailer from URB 16 Festival Helsinki  (Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art / Finnish National Gallery!

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Yet another brilliant essay about R.I.P. SERVICES at URB16 !!

Mustekala culture webzine has published a brilliant philosophical essay – that employs e.g. Michel Foucault’s concept “biopower” – about R.I.P. SERVICES and Wunderkinder, another celebrated recent performance that discussed our possibilities for life control in the contemporary society. Please find translated excerpts below. You can read the essay in Finnish here: http://www.mustekala.info/node/37763

Fair of “good feelings” by Matti Tuomela, editor-in-chief, mustekala culture webzine

 (…) R.I.P. Services is a multisensory performance that took part in Alppitalo, in my case in a beautiful late summer evening (…) We could move freely on the site. There was a number of precise rectancle-shaped “boxes” marked on the floor that I associated with graves. In the middle of the room, a projection screen showed us footage of a wind turbine. This “cemetery setting” with all its associations made me think of the cycle of energy production. Little by little towards then end of R.I.P. Services, I realized what the “catch” of the performance was: it was sort of a fictitious advertisement event that aimed to sell us (as the name of the performance tells us) a service that will make our death as pleasant an experience as possible.

How does R.I.P. Services take part in the debate on wellbeing? Surely, it includes dark humour when making business about dying. In a theoretical sense, the performance can be seen to “fill” the “loophole” in Michel Foucault’s (1926-1984) concept of “biopower”. In general terms, biopower refers to a technology of power to discipline and subjugate one’s body into a productive entity. Also, at the macro-level, biopower is linked to the control of populations, institutions, and hierarchies. An easy example of biopower is the justice system: our society does not execute criminals anymore but, instead, tries to “cure” them, make them into decent citizens – in a sense, into servants of power. Death, as Foucault puts it, is the limit of power. A dead body is not a productive body. In this sense, death is a crime against power. Capitalism requires biopower that organizes life into productive activity (...) R.I.P. Services, perhaps also as a general critical comment on the consumerist society, toys with the idea that we may be able to productivize this ultimate limit that escapes power – the limit between life and death.

R.I.P. Services offers interesting parallels and challenging views regarding the side effects of our fixation on ”wellbeing” [Carl Cedeström & André Spicer: “The Wellness Syndrome” (2015)]. Already the thought of a “good” or a “better” death is a sarcastic notion about our contemporary culture. The performance propagates the view that we are afraid of the process of dying and death because it includes many issues that we cannot control, such as pissing one’s pants at the moment of death. At the same time, the performance asks: what if you had the chance to decide? The fictitious service marketed by the performance reminds me of the services of life-coaches: the “product” being sold is located within the spectator; you just have to take control over it, “grasp it, decide yourself”. The starting point of the service that offers a “good death” is the customer’s fear of death. However, this service does not aim to erase that fear but to offer various ways to keep it under one’s control. Once again, the “space” of the human mind is infinite: can we ever really accept death? If we can’t, it is possible to cash in with it until the very end. The principle of life-coaching follows the same logic, only in the contrary meaning: towards a fee, the individual is “trained” to reach e.g. the potential or happiness or whatever that resides in him. But where are the apexes of these so-called “potentials”?

In R.I.P. Services, the customer’s need to buy the service is evident: all of us will die eventually. This need also relates to the control and disciplinary society. Activity wristbands, heart rate monitors and the millions of apps that help us measure our sport performances are side products of wellbeing; they are ways for disciplining our bodies. Indeed, introspection and the myriad ways to measure our performance in various areas are good examples, first, of the biopower directed at subjects and, second, of how we produce data about ourselves. The data acquisitions made by websites and apps are part of the process that aims to capitalize on the knowledge production that we, as individuals, have done about ourselves. (…) I think that the test about the fear of death is essentially connected to the current trend of introspection, self-disciplining, and self-control. (…) The male performer told us that we can tailor the service to suit our individual needs: the company gathers data about the customer so that they can give him/her (playfully) the perfect dying situation.

 (Photo: Luzie Stransky)

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The brand new number 5/2016 of the most influential Finnish theatre magazine Teatteri&tanssi includes a superb review of R.I.P. SERVICES at URB 16 Festival / Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki! Full translation to follow later, here are some quotes:

“… R.I.P. SERVICES offered us one surprise after another; it was a very detailed crash course on dying preparation … Sounds distressing? Not at all, because the pleasant soundscape, the precise script, intriguing video projections, and the common breathing exercises guided us gently to reflect on these issues … The performance managed to “scratch” a crack in the untouched “mental foil” of the human mind that keeps the fear of death away … The hour-long performance also included humour. It offered “personal trainers” for “death management” … This service that chaffed at life-coaching businesses, was, I would say, a frighteningly brilliant idea.”

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The main Finnish radio station YLE Radio 1 made a long interview-based feature about our “R.I.P. SERVICES” (URB16 Festival/Kiasma) and “Ibsen: Ghosts” (Markus&Markus/Stage Helsinki Theatre Festival 2016) !! We were positioned as groups that address death and dying through theatrical means in novel ways (sorry, in Finnish only).

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R.I.P. SERVICES was reviewed very positively in the Finnish weekly KANSAN UUTISET on 05 August 2016 — here is the translation:

Installation at the URB festival urges spectators to ponder on death

 You decide on your life. Why not decide on your death, too?

The R.I.P. Services performance/installation by the onemorequestion collective asks us this provocative question. It part of the programme of the ongoing URB festival in Helsinki. The URB festival of urban art delves into the urban landscape and the society through contemporary perspectives. It promises to provide the visitors experiences that may arouse both emancipatory and distressing emotions. The visitors can view performances but also take part in workshops and devising processes of certain projects.

RIP Services -performance/installation promises to help us prepare for dying and death individually, respecting one’s individual wishes. Is it possible to productivize death, and if so, to what extent? Medicine makes it possible for us to live longer than before. We are required to take more and more responsibility for our retirement care and the end-of-life decisions.

The responsibility about getting older and is becoming more and more one’s own responsibility.

The Austrian-Finnish art collective, led by Joonas Lahtinen, invites each spectator to reflect on his death in this performance that lasts a bit over an hour.

The approach here is analytical, even clinical; the group has done their background research about dying well. The performance deals with death as if it were a product like any other. It also discusses experiences of people who have been very close to death. The physical aspects of dying are described as processes.

In the performance, the mental states of encountering death get crystallized into five different emotions that range from anger to the feeling of injustice. The approaching death, or a severe illness, makes us halt for a moment and urges us to assess our life in a new way.

 Already the entrance situation is surprising. The spectators are asked to leave their personal belongings and shoes in brown boxes reserved for them. Each box gets nametagged with the spectator’s name.

Having symbolically “stripped” off my identity, I am guided into a “big hall”, into an empty room. The performance is site-specific; it takes place in an anonyme urban house in the middle of the city. 

The rotating windmills in the video installation get laden with new significance in connection with the audio record about death that we hear. Everyone will die. The fact that we all die makes us equal, yet the society does not treat us equally in life or in the end of our life.

The performance also addresses the issue of money. Money is a limited resource; the decay and illnesses that result from our getting older cost the society. How long does the society cover our medical expenses? Many of us die in an “outsourced” institution, not at home, surrounded by our close ones.

The spectator is asked how he wants to die. Well, that is certainly something to think about when you are lying on a thin mattress.

Some spectators are called by their name to come to a customer interview about fear of death. The questions are based on a German psychological test about the fear of dying and about more mundane issues, such as: how much you are afraid of having to rely on others; of having to be fed; of bodily decay; and of what might happen to you after you die.

Everyone gets his results to take home. The interviewer – who is part of the theatre collective – says that none of the results will get archived or exploited in any way.

The performance is – on purpose – emotionless and expressionless but, at the same time, also very mundane. The spectator is halted and urged to reflect on his death by “distancing” it into facts, numbers, and processes. Yet this is not documentary theatre but kind of a performance that the artist collective and the spectators produce together during the hour-long event.

The performance can also be viewed with dark humour; to see its comic traits. The installation/performance R.I.P. SERVICES by the onemorequestion collective is an interesting experience.

It is possible to address even such a topic as death in a seemingly airy and distanced manner and yet, simultaneously, discuss fears and taboos that are related to it. The performance leaves room for the spectator to experience emotions by himself, for himself.

SIRPA PUHAKKA

KANSAN UUTISET VERKKOLEHTI KULTTUURIUUTISET 05.08.2016

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***Thank you!!*** R.I.P. SERVICES takes a break but URB16 is still going on!!: www.urb.fi There will be more about R.I.P. SERVICES on radio & in the press later in the summer! Stay tuned!

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The Finnish weekly "Kansan Uutiset" published an excellent review of R.I.P. SERVICES -- translation to follow soon! Our last performance today 7 August at 16:00 is fully booked.

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The major Finnish radio channel YLE PUHE interviewed us about R.I.P. SERVICES on Wednesday -- here is the link to the interview (sorry, in Finnish only -- the title translates as "When should we switch off the respiration machine?")

We hope to see you at R.I.P. SERVICES at Alppitalo today/Saturday/Sunday!! Please reserve your ticket in advance, there are only very few places available anymore!

 http://www.urb.fi/onemorequestion/

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***R.I.P. SERVICES Premiere tonight!!!*** -- hope to see you at URB 16 Festival / Finnish National Gallery!! 

http://www.urb.fi/onemorequestion/

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The last week of preparations for R.I.P. SERVICES has begun with the teaser — hope to see you at URB16 Festival on 4/5/6/7 August !!

http://www.urb.fi/onemorequestion/

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working hard on R.I.P. SERVICES… you find us also on Instagram!