Performance Therapy (2021-ongoing)

March 19-20-26-27

Workshop Fri 25, 4-6pm (please register here)

Stand-Up performance Sat 26, 7pm (public)

“Performance Therapy is my most ambitious project yet.

If I can turn my therapy into my work, then I am my work.”

As part of Are You Coming? Krõõt Juurak will expand the research of this ongoing project taking over Shedhalle during two weekends in March. In addition to a selection of works from their repertoire to be experienced on site, on Saturday March 26th, Krõõt will turn Shedhalle into a comedy club with an original stand-up routine for a live audience. The previous day they will hold a workshop to continue asking the question, what is “Performance Therapy”?

So what is “Performance Therapy”?

“Something between performance and therapy? The opposite of performance? Failed therapy? Performance for ourselves, therapy for the audience or the other way round? Well, there’s no way to know. Anyhow, “Performance Therapy” is something we do when we are not doing something else, or in fact it’s like listening to a podcast, while doing something else.

“Performance Therapy” is an attempt to engage with these open and failed processes as both modes of resistance and ways to directly, and accidentally, address an audience.”

– Krõõt Juurak

Performance Therapy was originally commissioned by Shedhalle for the SHED and developed through weekly calls and conversation that took place throughout March – April 2021. From these conversations between Krõõt, the SHED’s programmer and producer, Michelangelo Miccolis and nick von kleist, Performance Therapy began to take shape online, later manifesting physically at Shedhalle as part of Protozone3: You’re So Busy.

Krõõt Juurak (1981, Tallinn, Estonia) is an artist, performer and lately a stand-up comedian, who studied dance and choreography at ArteZ Arnhem and Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. Their work addresses both human and non-human audiences and is self-sabotaging by nature. Recent exhibitions and performances include the Baltic Triennial 14: The Endless Frontier, Vilnius 2021; “You’re So Busy” at Shedhalle, Zürich, 2021, 2022; “Thinking Like an Octopus”at Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, 2021; “Art for Animals: A Perspective Change” Opelvillen Stiftung, Rüsselsheim (2020, 2021); “Cohabitation” Silent Green, Berlin, 2021 i.e. Juurak lives and works in Vienna.