Artistic mission

The main mission of ReAct! – Actions moving is to raise questions about the rules shaping behavior in public spaces. The aim is to create situations that give an opportunity for people to question the limits of public spaces, in which they normally only perform themselves by following all the spoken and unspoken rules.

We want our work to be an entry point into performing arts for new audiences as well as an original experience for expert ones.

What triggers us to create?

The rules that conduct our lives in society are what triggers our creations. These rules can sometimes be constraining, shut down the need for us, as people, to be aware, and reduce our thinking and decision making, slowly turning us all into “urban zombies”. Therefore, we question and challenge ourselves in our relation to the public spaces and invite people to open themselves for surprises, and to improvise rather than follow the patterns of daily life.

What makes us different?

We are different from other site specific companies both in our methods and in our artistic approach to public space.

We aim not to disrupt the function nor the flow of the spaces in which our Actions take place. Our goal is to invite interactions rather than force them. We play with our audience instead of ignoring its reactions. Therefore, we use playfulness in our movements and social relations.

Photo from Up & Down

In terms of artistic approach, our main characteristic is that we do not only work with & from the physical spaces, but even more with & from the social space. For example, all libraries in the world are different in their architecture, but all of them share the same function and social space. For that reason, we take into account the individuality of each space but mostly focus on the characteristics of the social space. If site specific, we should be considered a social site specific company.

On another level we also want to question and challenge the rules of a performance as a social space, the relation between the audience and the performer. All of our performances are part of this process, and we build a new agreement with each new audience: “What am I allowed to do? What are you allowed to do?” It is a live performed negotiation.

We do not consider the performance the final result of the work but as part of the experimentation and exploration. We have a constant drive to find new possible solutions regarding our relations to the space and the audience. Only when shared with an audience does our work make sense and can start to be improved and deepened.