WEEPING MEN
A co-production between CuntsCollective (Denmark)and Pikene På Broen (Norway), WEEPING MEN is a hybrid performance which dares to utilise the sauna format - as a space of relaxation, health and socialising - in order to craft a loud performative ritual which fosters a caring yet "unsafe" environment, offering an alternative take on a collective cleanse from oppressive systems within ourselves and the societies we live in. The work is performed by members of the shouting choir HUUTAJAT (Finland), known for their unconventional approach to vocal expression, delivering rhythmic complexity which spans from straightforward intensity into fragile vulnerability.
Premiering at Barents Spektakel in February 2025
Created in connection with the performance, the videoinstallation and photography together form a cohesive visual language that encourages reflection on identity, oppression, and vulnerability. The video installation, suspended from the ceiling on transparent mesh, allows viewers to engage with the projections from multiple angles as the video unfolds on semi-transparent fabric. Accompanying the video, a curated series of photographs delves deeper into the themes, capturing pivotal moments from the broader narrative. These still images offer insight into the characters, landscapes, and emotional dynamics, enhancing the immersive experience and inviting deeper contemplation.
Collaborators
Huutajat is a choir that doesn’t sing a note. 20-40 properly dressed men enter the venue with military precision and begin to scream, bellow and shout excerpts from national anthems, children’s ditties or international treaties. Sometimes the text is delivered as a complex rhythmic structure, sometimes as a simple-but-loud reading. The choir was founded in the late 1980s. It all started with surprise performances for unsuspecting audiences anywhere in the Oulu region: streets, community events, spectacular nature spots… Now Huutajat has become one of the most popular ambassadors of Finnish art. The choir feels equally at home in prestigious music festivals, museums of contemporary art, country fairs and underground clubs. Petri Sirviö is the founder, composer and conductor of the group. Sometimes when the choir is out of reach or resting, he sets up installations with videos, transcriptions and audio devices.
Co-director
Aris Papadopoulos is a dancer, maker and performer based in Αthens.
Aris is very keen on the notion of landscape as a cultural construction and juxtaposition of both man-made and natural environments, therefore seeing it as a heavily charged field of potentiality for action, exploration, playfulness and composition, and is distilling that into his own experimentations through visuals and movement. His current personal interest and artistic research explore the multitude of visual and physical representations of everyday encounters with the urban landscape, the designing of processes and concept-writing, interdisciplinary approaches in the urban landscape as a field of potentiality, and the reciprocal scheme of embodying landscape vs shaping an experience.
Collaborating artist
Lise Johansson is a visual artist and photographer based in Copenhagen. The starting point for Johansson’s artistic practice is to create a sense of a distorted reality, where the inspiration for this comes from the borderland that exists between the conscious and the unconscious. ‘The unseen’ takes place in the familiar, and locates itself in the field that blurs the line between reality and fantasy.
Johansson works around the themes of identity and belonging. The images often take departure from physical miniatures of landscapes and architectural spaces, combined with textures and objects photographed to use as building blocks in post processing.
Johansson is interested in people’s shared or individual feelings for the spaces or places they inhabit. Why do we feel that we belong in some places and not in others? Place and identity are closely bound together and people often strongly identify with the places they live in. Their environments shape who they are, and the bonds between person and place can influence culture, politics and social life.
Co-producer
Pikene på Broen is a collective of curators and producers based in the northeastern Norwegian town of Kirkenes. Pikene på Broen was established in 1996 and has spent the past 20 years realising large and small scale cultural projects – they call these ‘border-crossing exercises’ which provide new perspectives on the north while initiating discussions on themes relevant to the Barents Region
Artistic Director
Tone H. Lorenzen is a director, clown, and performer working in the expanded field of theater and performance art. She is the artistic director of the international performance company CuntsCollective, co-founded in 2018. With a Master of Fine Arts from Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in the USA (2016), Tone specializes in self-producing and co-creating projects that explore profound aesthetic, sociopolitical, and queer feminist perspectives. Her approach blends collective and nomadic principles, fostering collaborations both nationally and internationally. Tone prioritizes challenging geographical and creative boundaries.
In WEEPING MEN, the process and symbolism are rooted in the Edda, ancient Norse texts that guide the performance's exploration of masculinity, power, and transformation. By returning to these foundational myths, the piece examines cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth, with a focus on the evolution of masculinity and the oppressive systems that have shaped it. Petri, the conductor and sauna master, embodies the trickster archetype, reminiscent of Loki in Norse mythology. He guides the choir through a ritualistic journey, blending chaos with order as he confronts toxic brotherhood and steers the men toward vulnerability and emotional release. The sauna serves as a metaphorical womb, where the performers undergo a physical and emotional stripping, breaking down layers of societal conditioning. The use of rhythmic breathing, lamentation, and the vasta (birch branches) becomes a symbolic act of purification, helping the performers reconnect with their ancestral roots while shedding the oppressive ideals of masculinity that they have carried.
The performance speaks to the urgent need for new systems and ways of navigating a world that is controlled by violence, toxic power structures, and oppression. The symbolic use of water, steam, and birch trees emphasizes the possibility of renewal and healing, but only through the difficult process of facing these ingrained systems. Weeping Men challenges the performers and the audience to confront not just the personal pain that stems from these systems but the collective societal structures that perpetuate them. By immersing the performers in the sauna’s intense environment, they are forced to release the internalized violence, domination, and isolation that define toxic masculinity. Ultimately, the performance pushes toward a new understanding of masculinity—one that navigates the world with vulnerability, empathy, and a rejection of the old oppressive systems that have controlled and damaged for so long.