A performance-game created by Hesselholdt & Mejlvang in collaboration with Public Performance (former LIMINAL).
Performers: Jupiter Child, Pernille Koch, Johannes Lilleøre.
Trombone and trumpet: Ellen Pettersson, Göran Abelli.
Composition and music: Mika Forsling.

Let’s start all over, let’s build something new together. Let's play STOP START PAUSE
The audience meets three emissaries armed with banners, symbols, fanfares and beliefs. They have come to help us create a new beginning beyond our time’s well-known conflicts and problems. But how do we free ourselves from deep-rooted patterns, viewpoints and values?
Humankind is an amazing animal, we are incredibly good at recognizing patterns. As a result of this skill we are able to decode and adapt to the existing conditions surrounding us and also to create new complex systems ourselves. But it’s also our weak spot, because we see patterns everywhere - even where there are no - and we interpret these patterns based on habitual thinking and prejudice. We have a hard time leaving these general presumptions behind.
The patterns have taken us far, but they also dominate us, and now we see that they are destructive and create division and polarization. Never before in the history of mankind has the ability to rethink been this necessary.
STOP START PAUSE examines what happens to our understanding of ourselves and the society in a complex reality that seems to have exploded into uncontrollable pieces of different positions and perceptions of the truth.
What constructs a common ‘we’? Why and how do flags, national symbols and rituals become important to us in this reality? How is the nation state articulated? Who is allowed to be part of the community; who is included and who is excluded? Are there any new communities arising between the national and the global?

Supported by Statens Kunstfond, Copenhagen Municipality, Augustinusfonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, A.P. Møller and Hustru Chastine McKinney Møllers Fond til almene Formaal, Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Fonden and Wilhelm Hansen Fonden.

Shown in Koncertkirken, Copenhagen, Horsens Kunstmuseum, Teater Momentum, Odense, Denmark.

Photo: Malle Madsen.
Trailer: Helle Lyshøj.