Residentie: Human VPN: Someplace_else

Marina Orlova

Sat 17 May ’25 16:00

A work-in-progress performance on the topics of border politics and virtual presence.

Sat 17 May ’25

16:00

Sat 17 May ’25

16:00

Address: Nes, 71

Frascati, Amsterdam

Studio 2

Past event

During her residency at Frascati Producties Marina Orlova is working on her future dance graffiti-performance that questions border politics and virtual expression.

A VPN is a tool to misrepresent digital location. Dissociation is a coping mechanism of emotional detachment from reality. In information society reality and virtuality blend, absence becomes the new presence.

Social media gives us an illusion of witnessing catastrophic events elsewhere and misrepresents locations of migrants and displaced people. Movement across territories seems as virtual as web surfing, physical presence or absence are relative online. Are we more present when doom scrolling or avoiding the news? Protesting cruel regimes in a free country or hitting 'like' buttons to photos of local protesters?

Human VPN is a way of detaching the virtual, physical and emotional presence to escape political reality.

This work is an invitation to engage in a 'collective geography lesson'. Instead of othering and dividing, the intention of this project is to go beyond personal migration trajectories and to focus on our global interconnectedness.

Location: Studio 2, Nes 71
Not wheelchair accessible

Credits

concept, choreography Marina Orlova performance Marina Orlova, Xdzunúm Danae Trejo, Asya Deinekina dramaturgical advisor Asya Deinekina sound design Arieh Chrem

About Marina Orlova

Marina Orlova is an independent dance/theatre maker, tech-dramaturg and AI researcher based in Amsterdam. After studying sociology and cultural studies in Moscow, she graduated in 2021 from SNDO in Amsterdam.

Marina’s practice lies between dance and theatre and uses aesthetics of absurdism, tragicomedy and autofiction. It also includes writing, teaching and facilitating a support group for 'artists in distress'.

In her works she uses technology as metaphor or a tool to question social issues such as mental health, AI ethics, migration and border politics.

In November 2024, her latest performance I’m a Robot and I need Therapy premiered at Frascati.