The film Cuteness Overload is currently being created specifically for its premiere at Hangö Teaterträff 2020. The film is based on ÖFA’s performance Cuteness Overload, but experiments with how the film medium can collaborate with the performing arts in order to create something unique. They dream of giving the public a feeling of presence and of approaching the means with which the performance can be experienced in real life. ÖFA wants to explore ways of capturing the humour and aesthetic of the performance through film.
Cuteness Overload dives deep down into the cute, that which is categorised as the extreme, on the border, TOO cute, and examines when it goes overboard and becomes disgusting, repulsive, empty or voyeuristic. The performance uses cuteness as a projection surface in order to investigate power, gaze, subject and object.
Cuteness can be described as an affective genre that like pornography and horror affect us bodily. Cuteness Overload is a film performance that explores corporalities, verbal expressions, desires and the radical potential of cuteness.
Nadja Hjorton and Lisen Rosell are independent performing artists and members of the ÖFA collective with many mutual projects in their resume, like recurring collaborations with Amanda Apetrea where they explore desire, body, audience contact and humour. Their latest work include Harlequin, which was created with Blaue Frau and Losti Collective and had its premiere at Hangö Teaterträff in 2019, and Grottbjörnens folk at Turteatern. Hjorton and Rosell are active in an inter-art field where choreography and theatre seek nourishment from one another. They are co-creators and performers of Cuteness Overload.
Anna Efraimsson is a co-creator of Cuteness Overload for which she gave directing assistance. She is the newly appointed artistic director of MDT in Stockholm and before that, she was a lecturer in choreography and head of the Department of Dance at DOCH. Efraimsson has also worked with The Blob, who organised Stockholm Cat Video Festival. Daniel Åkerström Steen is a set, costume and light designer based in Stockholm. He studied set design at Stockholm University of the Arts and has through the years worked for various theatres in Sweden and Norway. Åkerström Steen is part of the creative team behind the artist Min stora sorg.
In order to create the film adaptation, the group has worked with Ester Martin Bergsmark, a cinematographer, director and PhD student at Stockholm University of the Arts. Petra Coppla Dahlberg is responsible for sound and editing.
Thank you to Nordic Culture Point, Jenni Godoy and Turteatern.