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avantgardeners@liviarita.com
Booking: Ellora Prior booking@liviarita.com /+44 7549 245499 / +41 77 259 78 48

We are looking for co-producers for a new show in 2024 called PARTY WITH ALIENS (for DYSTOPIA WETLAND shows in 2023 click here).
The performance will build up upon the interdisciplinary practise of Livia Rita and the Avantgardeners, using dance, mystic eco-pop, sculpture and ArtFashion for immersive speculative world building. We plan to work with a live band, 2 - 4 dancers as well as an artist for pre- and after show rituals.

The narrative of the show evolves around an encounter between humans and aliens, for whom interpersonal love is something completely new and who want to learn about it. The humans are caught up in an apocalypse after failing to love their environment, in contrary to the aliens who are very much part of their planet’s ecosystem. They both ask the question ‘What is love’. PARTY WITH ALIENS explores love through an otherworldly perspective, dissecting its societal binary structures and expectations. It re-invents love in relation to all things earthy and cosmic, with the aim of creating cross-species communities and a new sense of expanded, inclusive identity.

Besides the interweaving of musical and visual ambiances, the theme is explored through physical transformation into the ‘radical others’ - the aliens - by working with prosthetics, ArtFashion as well as intrinsic movement. Words are planned to mainly only be used as part of lyrics for pop songs who will be part of the sonically immersive soundscape. .

The motivation for this performance is our belief that emotional connection, love and care are an important ingredient to evoke change and to create organic, sustainable, accessible intersectional progressive movements. We feel that as artists we have to play our part by imagining other possibilities and offering audiences enticing, emotionally connected interactions to complement politics. We try to enact change and explore future visions, with focus on nature and future identities.

The performance will be based on a new Cli-Fi (climate fiction) film with the same name, which explores the theme through a much more linear narrative. The arts-film will be shot as 3 short films in 2023 & 2024, adding up in story to a feature length film.

We currently have a treatment and are developing the narrative, also through a process of collective story telling, into a script in the Bündner Rigi Atelier between March 2023 to November 2024. Formerly a mountain guest house, the Bündner Rigi Atelier is situated in a remote alpine location, surrounded by radical nature, and ideal for reflecting themes around nature and community as well as offering space for fruitful collaborative efforts. It is organised as a Zwischennutzung by the Avantgardeners Productions.

The film project will allow us to research and explore the theme already in-depth through a diversity of art forms before entering the rehearsal space, offering a nurishing ground for the live performance to grow on. The cli-fi film will first be available for screenings and festivals, followed by online streaming, and will serve as extremely helpful marketing material for the promotion of the shows. The music of PARTY WITH ALIENS and and the video also allows people to connect to the work before or after the live shows and create further meaningful bonds to the themes’s ambitions in their private time and space.

ArtFashion are wearable visual art pieces that transform humans into mystical creatures through glitchy textures, manipulated body shapes and prosthetics. These ArtFashion forms give the performers movement information in terms of physical qualities, guiding them on the search into how to awaken an ‘illusion’ of an otherworldly living being.

The movement practise is inspired by the mask technique from Commedia dell’Arte, but applied to the full body and based around the transformative ArtFashion pieces. The dance practise serves the aim of bringing the creatures to life. The movement is based on instinct, listening and care and devised to be easily accessible for different kind of dancers and movers, giving equal weight to individuality as well as connectivity. It invites every dancer to bring in their interpretation and movement qualities, whilst the ArtFashion and structures of the songs / dramaturgy keeps it all intertwined and together.

Our dance company / community: THE GANG OF WITCHES

Mystic Eco-Pop wants to enchant and bewitch, offering a new style of sensual, intuitive pop music from the occult world that casts spells upon the future. For PARTY WITH ALIENS, we are interested in mixing very intimate sounds and pop elements with the radical other - and what exactly this otherness is and how the sound will be generated, is still a big question. The music aims to be performed live by a band of 4 musicians and combines digital sounds with musicianship

Livia Rita is alpine witch and an emerging avant-pop artist, choreographer, designer, based somewhere/everywhere/nowhere between London, Zurich and the alps. Having grown up in the rural Obertoggenburg, Livia Rita studied 1 year in fashion to then leave for London for a BA in contemporary performance and acting. Livia Rita’s debut album FUGA FUTURA was released this October and is a collection of 11 songs that combine to create a world of dark fantasy, queer mythology and hope. Through speculative world building, singing an alternative realm into being, they gave birth to the in-between eco-system FUTURA, a space of endless possibilities as well as home to all the creatures. Though the exploration of anxiety, desire, identity, ecology, love and community, Livia Rita wants to awaken the otherworldly within; claiming the future as a space for our utopian dreams to thrive at the edge of existence. At the heart of her work is a desire to infiltrate your eyes, ears and mind with new ideas, conveying a sense of urgency.
PARTY WITH ALIENS (and DYSTOPIA WETLANDS) builds upon the world FUTURA and continues to grow the creature community.

Below: songs of FUGA FUTURA

As collective fears of an uncertain future intensified, we saw our relationship to community and intimacy permanently altered. In response, we choose to stand closer together to overcome the challenges of our time, developing a life-affirming togetherness in the face of an unstable world. To this end, the Avantgardeners wishes to explore community building through creative projects; they wish to create an open, constantly transforming community of artists, creatives and activists. Our swampy garden plants the seeds to imagine and manifest future identities and worlds – a space for creation and possibilities to emerge. As eco-feminists immersed in LGBTQ+ and climate strike communities, we believe in a world outside of gender binaries and physical conformity. We believe in nurturing and celebrating intimate encounters with our precious ecosystem.
The Avantgardeners sprouted from the varied collaborative efforts connected to the work of Livia Rita, while steadily becoming its own ecosystem; our collaborative approach enables us to layer fresh perspectives.
Additionally, the Avantgardeners are building an archive of dreams, fears and desires as a means of shifting into this next epoch with care.

A SPACE FOR CROSS-POLLINATION
Our creative roots stretch across boundaries, creating a fertile garden for discussion, creation and possibility to emerge. The future is a collective term - it cannot be faced alone.

 A COMMUNITY GARDEN FOR NATURE’S FUTURAS & ALL FELLOW CREATURES
Our generation’s tears fall freely in our garden. We reject the modern world’s destruction of potential in the name of pure progress and growth. Our work is future-focused: we explore queer utopias, environmental dystopias and everything in between. We seek to inspire a youth-led vision of change by daring to dream and refusing to conform. We uphold nature as our guide and core as we grasp for a new, tangible futures together. We turn observers and critics into active participants in the act of world-building.

Avantgardeners Productions - more info not the Avantgardeners Productions
From concerts to workshops, dance performances, exhibitions and films - the Avantgardeners Productions are responsible for making ideas tangible.

Avantgardeners Community
We are a borderless growing web open for anyone who wants to interact with us. We are elevating each other over rivalry / competition. We want anyone to be able to grow into our community - from audiences to people on the other side of the world.

 Avantgardeners Studio
The studio is the making-atelier of the Avantgardeners, to be based at Bündner Rigi until spring 2024 Creatives share their skills to make objects for projects and productions. Interdisciplinary dialogue sparks new adventures in making alongside others who share a similar vision.

We developed an alternative, interactive merch stand, where people can meet the FUTURA world on a multisensory level; from smells custom made by our herbalist, a physical spell books combining the lyrics with photography, VR glasses to the world of FUTURA to gamey tarot cards of the creatures they will meet onstage. Audiences are invited to grow into a temporary community, joining for small rituals to propagate their superpowers and stepping through the gateway between this world and the next.

Below; examples of the creature game cards for FUGA FUTURA

Below: FUGA FUTURA @ Zentralwäscherei 2022

Below: FUGA FUTURA on UK tour 2022

Below: A bigger shows with more creatures @ Colour Factory London

Below: Screenshots from the DYSTOPIA WETLANDS short film

Below: A video from our performance @Colour Factory in London.
We had the space for one day only, and worked with local creatures (mainly amateurs) to create a creature transition into a party. We transformed the performance space towards the end into a club.

Below: A video from our performance @Zentralschäscherei.
We transformed the performance space towards the end into a club.