Red Cues

Ilana Palmgren

Performance Art

Red Cues is an interdisciplinary performance by actor and performance artist Ilana Palmgren and sound artist Joni Salmela exploring the non-visual, emotional and physical multilayered meanings of colour red growing from personal to a collective experience. The project began in July 2024 in Berlin in the SomoS artist-in-residence program by Palmgren and developed into a collaboration with sound artist Joni Salmela. Video, text, sound and performer’s body create a dynamic interplay inviting the experiencer to rethink their own connections to red, turning personal reflection into a collective experience. “Say the red part” - what is it for you? Red Cues is the first part of CUES - an ongoing research performance trilogy committed to interdisciplinary dialogue and exploratory curiosity, realized by performance artist Ilana Palmgren and sound artist Joni Salmela. CUES is a transformative trilogy of performance art that explores the unseen resonance of colors, merging body, sound, and space to push the boundaries of perception. Guided by feminist post-humanist perspectives, CUES examines the complex interplay of bodily and psychological dynamics with sound and movement, uncovering layers of personal and collective experiences within the Anthropocene. Through the three performances series follows the evolution of colors as cues—signals moving from hidden to visible, erupting as collective experience. This project reimagines coexistence, challenging traditional structures and imagining new possibilities for living.