PLAY OVERLAY by Teo Ala-Ruona

*Photo: Sala Mboup. 2025. Courtesy of Zodiak.* PLAY OVERLAY, Teo Ala-Ruona.

What are you wearing?  PLAY OVERLAY is a solo performance about putting on everyday roles. How can they be shaped, fractured, slip away, and be shed?

Teo Ala-Ruona’s choreography explores the friction between the body’s internal experience and the layers of clothing that we wear on top. Each garment that is removed, and each part of the body that is revealed, invites you to examine the ways in which you project categories upon others. Clothing is central to PLAY OVERLAY, here framed by Ala-Ruona as a technology that can be applied and discarded, layer by layer.

Undressing roles becomes a moment of collective attention and renegotiating assigned categories. The performance seeks to uncover clothing’s ability to shape the body – both architecturally and symbolically. In this time and place, selfhood is not fixed but performed. You are invited to share your presence, participating—if you wish—in the act of creating new roles for the artist, in real time.

The choreography is co-created with dancer-choreographer Pauliina Sjöberg with sound design by artist Tuukka Haapakorpi, costumes by fashion designer Ervin Latimer, and production by Sanna Ritvanen.

Program

17:30–18:00 Arrival
18:00–18:40 Performance: PLAY OVERLAY with Teo Ala-Ruona
19:00–19:30 Conversation with Teo Ala-Ruona, James Taylor-Foster and other guests.

Please note that the performance will be video documented and that there will be a moment of nudity in the performance.

Friday, November 7, 2025

18:00–20:00

Torget

Free of charge. Limited seats.

English

Read more about accessibility at ArkDes here.

Teo Ala-Ruona is an interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki working within the expanded field of performance. In his work, he experiments with the possibilities of somatic fiction to influence our perceptions of the human body, exploring the interplay between linguistic, semiotic, and biological existence, while engaging with themes of techno-trans-masculinity and eco-normative narratives of ‘naturalness’.

By using his own body as a site for the various speculative stories to take place, he experiments with how fiction can alter both the performer and the audience’s ways of perceiving. He approaches the trans corporeality as an arena in which various normative processes of naturalisation and standardisation become unfeasible, and seeks to disrupt the heteronormative biases permeating research in biology and gender.

Ala-Ruona is dedicated to the transgressive potential of performance art to open up our understanding of humanity, challenging our comprehension of bodily limits and perceptions of normalcy and conventionality. His work derives enjoyment from the peculiar and the perplexing, while crafting carefully considered and choreographed audience engagement, deeply practiced performers’ practice, as well as emotional and psychological tension.

Ala-Ruona’s work has recently been shown at the 2025 Biennale Architettura (Venice), Performa Biennial (New York), The Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art (Vilnius), The Finnish National Gallery Kiasma (Helsinki), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Sequences Festival (Reykjavik), Centrale Fies (Dro) and Toaster/Husets Teater (Copenhagen).