Borrowed Landscape

The poetry of the supermarket

Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki prefer to present their performances in unexpected locations. They have already performed Borrowed Landscape in a shopping mall, a supermarket, a show house and other places.

The title is derived from the Japanese shakkei, a technique in traditional Japanese landscape gardening in which the design is integrated into the surrounding landscape. In the same way Avdal and Shinozaki bring different realities together in the locations they explore. The performers and the performance become one with the space they occupy. They adopt the habits and customs, warp them slightly and so force passers-by to examine them more closely.

Using inventive and humorous interventions, magnified movements, absurd actions and a surprising soundscape by Fabrice Moinet, Avdal and Shinozaki introduce poetry into the spaces that define our lives. Borrowed Landscape focuses on our routine behaviours and makes us aware of our everyday surroundings and how we move through them.

‘The acting of the performers at first sight looks close to everyday movements, but their movements are also cartoonish exaggerated silent gestures, exquisitely in between raw reality and theatrical fiction. And it works wonderfully with the artificial “everyday” atmosphere of the building itself.’ – the Korean dance magazine MOMM on Borrowed Landscape – Yokohama (Dec 2011)

as part of the colloquium on art in public spaces, by VTI & het Theaterfestival