Overcrowded loneliness

When buying a ticket, you must choose a 30-minute session on the day of the visit between 17:00 and 22:00.

The length of one visiting session of the theatrical installation is about 30 minutes.

The room can accommodate up to 5 visitors at a time.

Theatrical installation “Overcrowded loneliness” by Urmas Lüüs is a story that is packed into a single moment of time instead of a linearly diverging narrative. One big second has frozen to be watched as an installation. Lüüs sees himself as a playwright or poet who, instead of using words, creates concepts, connections, forms, networks of ideas and states with visual physical objects. His vocabulary of everyday poetry includes pots and pans, a dripping faucet, a wardrobe with a squeaking door, dust in the corner of the room. He speaks of man through his absence, of a painting through its frame. Each object has a human-shaped hole in it.

The theatrical installation uses the tools of theatrical butaphors to create a simulacrum environment. Just as on large turnstiles, the stage is divided into several different scenes by partitions, but the butaphorical walls also divide the STL stage into separate performance zones that the viewer passes through. Butaphors are not in the background, but the simulated objects become separate characters typical of technological theater. The installative and experiential environment created by Urmas Lüüs positions between performing and visual arts and looks at objects as choreographers who shape the viewer’s experience.

A fictional elderly person lives in the room. The concept of overcrowded loneliness highlights his or her various contacts with the world. The accumulated things tell about the contacts made during lifetime. Photo albums show intersecting roads. The objects deposited over the years are like modern archeology, which tells of the past experiences of a fictional protagonist.

“I’m making coffee. From Brazil, according to the package. I once got this jug from my sister. After her death, I discovered that she had received coffee cups from the same set, the cups she had kept for herself, beautiful cups, now I inevitably always think of my sister when I drink coffee. The picture of my sister is on the wall with my father’s. Instead of a picture of my mother, the wallpaper has a spot unbleached of the sun. It fell down once as I was swiping dust, the glass broke, you can’t put a broken picture frame up like that, my mother would also freak out if she saw herself broken there like that. Mother is in the kitchen drawer. I’ve looked at JYSK and Koduekstra here a few times to see if I can find a similar frame, the old one can’t be fixed anymore, but there’s no beautiful ones, I don’t want any plastic Chinese miracle and wooden frames are terribly expensive, maybe I can still buy a plastic one because of the glass, because the frame is intact, only the glass was broken, how long will my mother stay in the drawer, she wants to return to my father and sister, sometimes the tap drips, then I think, oh there you go, now mother is crying in the drawer. ”

Urmas Lüüs (b. 1987) is an artist and designer who works between the scopes of visual art and performing arts. In his work he combines video, body, performance, conceptually charged commodities, photography, sculpture, word and sound into a trans-medial whole. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in blacksmithing from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Urmas Lüüs supervises students at the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Department of Performing Arts of TU Viljandi Academy of Culture and the Department of Metal at the University of Gothenburg. He has previously also taught at the Rietveld Academy in the Netherlands, the Chinese Academy of Arts, Silpancorn University in Thailand, and Hiko Mizuno College in Japan. He also writes for various cultural publications on art, design, theater and contemporary crafts.

Director-artist-designer: Urmas Lüüs
Interior designer: Juss Heinsalu
Butaphor: Marko Odar
Technical support: Taavi Suisalu, Sigrid Kuusk, Valdek Laur

Opening session on April 12th, 2022 at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava
Visiting sessions on April 12th–14th, 18th–20th 2022 from 17:00 to 22:00 at Independent Dance Stage (Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava)

Photo: Sigrid Kuusk

Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia

https://stl.ee/en/lavastus/overcrowded-loneliness/