Invisible Lands
Literally, a journey across the skin.
There are tragedies we learn to view from a distance. Invisible Lands brings them back to our skin.
Sometimes all it takes is to look closer for what seemed distant to become relevant to us once again.
A back becomes an escape route. A knee, a mountain. A belly painted blue, the sea to be crossed.
In Invisible Lands, tiny human figures traverse landscapes built upon the bodies of Sandrina Lindgren and Ishmael Falke: a fragile and ever-changing geography in which the distance between the viewer and those fleeing shrinks until it almost disappears.
Born from the Finnish company Livsmedlet’s exploration of visual theater, physical theater, and manipulation, the performance tells—without words—the story of men and women forced to leave their homeland. Miniatures, bodies, and live video footage constantly shift scale and perspective: what appears distant and minuscule in the media suddenly takes on weight, vulnerability, and presence.
Acclaimed by international critics, the performance tells the story—without words—of one of the great divides of our time through a stage gesture of surprising simplicity: transforming the human body into a landscape and bringing onto our own skin what we are accustomed to viewing from afar.
What makes the performance extraordinary is the journey the refugees undertake: mountains, snow-covered expanses, deserts, and nighttime roads are created by the bodies of the two performers.
– Mark Fisher, The Guardian
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Credits
Concept and performance by Ishmael Falke and Sandrina Lindgren
Music by Niklas Nybom
Lighting by Jarkko Forsman
Dedicated to the memory of Dima Tulpanov
Livsmedlet, with support from Suomen Kulttuurirahasto / Arte Fondazione della Finlandia
