Small Door, Big universe

In November and December 2023, we found ourselves in individual residencies together at the Saari Residence, artists with diverse backgrounds and even more diverse practices. We found a deep connection, opened through collective and individual vulnerabilities, this helped form an immense energy and good will between us. We learnt how to live well together, in joy and complexity, with pleasure and passion. This undeniable collective energy shouldn’t be thrown away or wasted but we believe it should be channeled into a new collective artistic practice. Through this residency will further explore these collective connections through a new strategy of sharing practices, finding ways of sharing the landscape and inviting audiences into a radical care and hospitality – amplifying and sharing this good energies, changing the world through infectious joy.

Our practices range from Composition, Theatre, Film Making, Performance, Circus, Dance, Dramaturgy, experimental performance and linguistics. A complex array of powerful tools and practices are individually held which we hope to redistribute skills between us as a first step in making a collective artistic practice and identity. Saari summer residency becomes our laboratory, a space for us to experiment with our practices, be playful and harvest more of this collective power energies as we transform from individual artists into a collective.

aliveduo is a collaborative artistic partnership of Alena Starostina and Ivan Nikolaev, focusing on performative and visual art. Both were born in Saint Petersburg. In 2007, they graduated from the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts with a Master’s degree. In 2010, they co-founded the performative collective theatre post, which, over the next ten years, became one of the leading representatives of experimental theatre in Russia. They worked on plays by contemporary playwrights and also created their own original productions. A significant milestone in their artistic development was their work with pieces by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and Belarusian playwright Pavel Pryazhko. They have participated in numerous regional and international festivals, including Golden Mask, Territory, NET, Theatre Confrontations, TEART, Yes Yes Yes, Chaos, Karussell, Teatrtogo, and The Access Point. In 2022, they emigrated to Germany, where they founded aliveduo, now based in Dresden, and continued to develop their artistic practice.
In their projects, they work with the concept of “time” in performative practice and are always looking for a non-standard approach to the material they choose. They explore silence and inaction as part of theatrical language. They are interested in the performative possibilities of an actor’s presence, and in the relationship between the audience and the performer, as well as between the space of action and those who inhabit it. Drawing on their backgrounds in acting, directing, and performance, they create experimental works at the intersection of theatre, contemporary art, and multimedia.

Bek Berger is an artist, curator, and dramaturg originally from Australia, now based in Berlin. Her practice blends curiosity and innovation, creating new models of connection, collaboration, and reciprocity between artists and communities. Recent highlights include co-developing a new tarot deck with Gob Squad (DE) for their 30th anniversary, creating a new project for Belgrade Pride with Petr Dlouhý (CZ) at Heartefact, and collaborating with James Batchelor on a multi-generational dance piece spanning Australia and Berlin.
From 2020 to 2024, Bek served as the curator of the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre, Homo Novus, in Riga, Latvia, where she initiated a range of international collaborations, including Baltic Take Over Helsinki (LV, LT, EE, FI), The Shake Down with Rosendal Theatre (LV, NO), and The Festivals Path with ANTI Festival (LV, FI). Since 2017, she has worked as dramaturg with dance artist James Batchelor, premiering four works and touring globally to renowned contexts such as Centre Pompidou (FR), Tanz im August (DE), Dance Massive (AU), Spring Forward/Aerowaves 19, and ImPulsTanz (AT).
Bek is currently focused on exploring the magic of togetherness, fostering new conditions for collective creation, and improving the performing arts through pleasure-centered design. Her expertise lies at the intersection of festival curation, dance dramaturgy, and karaoke.

Noora Juppi works as a pole dance artist. She graduated as a circus artist from Koulutuskeskus Salpaus in 2012 and has since studied contemporary dance and choreography. One of her aims is to develop pole dance as an art form.
Her current artistic practice is guided by an attempt to transform both the internal and external matter of the body. Central to her work is the use of imagery, through which the materiality of both internal and external space can be changed. Various somatic practices have a strong presence in Juppi’s work. In recent years, her artistic exploration has been especially shaped by the themes of softening and sensitivity, concerning both the quality of movement and a holistic way of being.

Alvaro Nunez Carbullanca is a composer and bell ringer originally from Chile, now based in Italy. He focuses on the sounds, perceptions, images, and mechanisms that emerge from bodies in motion.
He received the Anna and John Laynor Fellowship Prize at MacDowell (USA, 2024), the First Prize in the XIII Premio Andrés Gaos de Composición Musical (Spain, 2019), and was a finalist in the Breaking Music Composition Competition with Ensemble Syntax (Italy, 2019). He has also been awarded grants from the MacDowell Foundation (USA, 2024), Kone Foundation (Finland, 2023), Now & Next Tanzhaus Düsseldorf (Germany, 2019), the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi di Milano (Italy, 2017–2018), the Fondazione Adolfo Pini (Italy, 2017), the Ministry of Culture (Chile, 2006–2008; 2015–2016; 2022), and the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program (Chile, 2012–2014).

Miradonna Sirkka is a performance and contemporary circus artist, director and performer. The artworks are multidisciplinary mashups and worlds to dive in; performances, installations, videos, sounds and media artworks. Inspiration rises from human contact, daily-life awkwardness and radical honesty. She holds a BA in circus arts (Turku Arts Academy) and MA in Visual Culture and Curating Contemporary art (Aalto University). Miradonna is the founder of the Finnish multidisciplinary art company Recover Laboratory. Her and Recover Laboratory group works have been seen in exhibition spaces, on and off stages both internationally and in Finland.

Christina Stark is an artist and linguist based in Berlin. Currently her artistic research focuses on inner speech, its form and function for us being singulär plural.