Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is a Helsinki-based experimental dance and performance art collective and it was founded in the year 2019 by artists Dash Che and Suvi Tuominen. MTBF works at the intersection of dance, performance art and conceptual art. Their works bring together humor, provocation, absurdity and physicality. They have worked with several performing arts institutions and festivals in Finland and abroad. During their Artistic Exchange Residency at STUK, MTBF will work with sound designer Oula Rytkönen, who is a long-term collaborator of the collective. Oula views performance and sound as facilitation tools for playful renegotiation of the social and aesthetic realms. In their work with MTBF they have lately been using sample based music making as a method of co-energising and -pacing the performance space.

During the residency at STUK Mean Time Between Failures will focus on dramaturgical and choreographic development of a new dance piece called DOWN BEAT.The work is a 1-hour humorous performance piece where two performers chew gum together with the audience and move to techno beats. The work has two parts: an accelerating dance show and a happening including audience involvement. In DOWN BEAT the performers enter evershifting intimate movement and posture formations while chewing gum, producing saliva and exhausting the body. Nudity and intimate entanglements that performers’ bodies engage in, bring forth the concept of queer siblinghood.