'The Invitation' explores the power dynamics that emerge along questions that are asked in institutionalised situations. Being asked a question cannot be questioned. It is the very essence of every interview and audition that we find ourselves participating in. It is necessary, and it is unavoidable.
A question shows interest. It offers the opportunity to open up, to share, to create this inevitable intimacy one needs to be truly able to communicate.

This exhibition takes this idea, and boils it down to its most essential representations. As human beings, and as artists and performers, what does it mean when you are invited to read a text, or to answer a question? What position are you put in, when you are asked a question? How do power dynamics change, when one refuses to answer? Do they even change at all?
But also, how can being asked a question become a friendly experience? Does intention matter?

In the performance Susanna Melem and Chili Tomasson invite everyone present to answer five questions and fill out a form. This playful audition is the first part of a three-part performance. The project is going to reveal its full form to its participants as it proceeds over the upcoming months.

The film work contains separate video pieces that play out like a staged audition for a film that doesn’t exist. Each sequence explores a different angle of performed vulnerability in an institutionalised audition setting, with a different outcome, and hopefully different effect on the viewer. This aim of the work is to break down the artifice of staged vulnerability and connection between subject and viewer, and how this might relate to the larger performative self, and the larger thematics of the inherent power dynamics present between director and performer.