Unknown Pleasures – Bogdan Szyber & Carina Reich

Never give anything away for nothing

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client./William S. Borroughs
We theme-parked the future just as we theme-park everything. We theme-parked the past. We theme-parked the future, and visit it only when we feel we want some sort of glittery gimmick. /J.G. Ballard
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. /William S. Borroughs

"Unknown Pleasures", the third and final part of our "Melancholy Cycle" trilogy, loans its name from the debut album by Joy Division, whose singer Ian Curtis commited suicide in the early 80s. A time awash with A New Order in music, fashion and dance.

This period of the 80s imprinted itself upon us, filled as it was with dystopian aesthetics, existential bleakness and the breakthrough of the sampling-culture.

The actors in "Unknown Pleasures" finds themselves in a desolate playground. They are in the backwater of society, a limbo between the rural and the cityscape. Even their characters are dead-weight in a utility-oriented culture, wherein every individual unable to manufacture a public "self" becomes social residue. These people have even lost the very feeling of loss, since they never had one to miss in the first place, and do not even recognize the possibility of losing their future. They exist in a constant now, perpetually involving each other in endless transactions around their bottomless craving for immediate experience satisfaction.

Concept, direction, stage- and costumedesign: Carina Reich & Bogdan Szyber

On stage: Dag Andersson, Sandra Medina, Piotr Giro, Carina Reich, Bogdan Szyber, 
Movement- and method witness: Cecilia Roos

Sound-, light -, costumedesign: Siiri Eriksson*, Norunn Standal*, Bente Rolandsdotter*

Production: Kulturmaskinen/Bogdan Szyber & Carina Reich

Indentures/Tour management: Loco Motion/ Åsa Edgren & Magnus Nordberg

*graduates of The University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre

The piece premiers November 4th at Pusterviksteatern in Göteborg.