We have gathered here today

Electroacoustic cello-theatre performance about the data streams that shape our lives

Background

What have we gathered here in this performance space for? Something good, I'm sure.

We have gathered here today is a multimedia music-theatre performance rooted in gathering, expecting, presenting, projecting, waiting, and identifying. Who is this performer? Who is this audience? Why did [they] sit in [that] seat and not [that] one?

Exploding the framework of a cello recital which may or may not ever begin, its performer veers freely into psychological monologues, small talk, social media meditations, and data exhaustion. We wait for them to begin to perform with their voice or body or instrument, but their words or gestures are filtered through a failed mix of language and effort and desire. They begin to speak, but their words are replaced with a poor model of their voice, or by an instrument which cannot verbalize properly, uncannily disconnected while also intimate and direct.

Sliding freely between the ordinary and the abstract, We have gathered here today examines our agency over how/when our identities and expressions happen, the ways in which social relations are data-driven encounters, and playfully probes the barriers and bridges involved in being your self, and in being strangers, here, together.

Premiered 29/30 August 2025
Teater Viirus, Ung Nordisk Musik Festival, Helsinki
with Viktor Toikkanen (live sound processing)

Performance supported by the Taiteen edistämiskeskus (Taike)
Residency development at Ung Nordisk Musik Residency (Villa Vikan, FI) and Pavillon K (Vordingborg, DK) supported by the Musiikin edistämissäätiö (MES)

Credits

Wilson Tanner Smith (co-creation, concept, performance)
Lucas Xerxes (co-creation, technical production)

Performance photos by Tuomas Tenkanen