Short bio
As an artist I move in the borderlands between performance art, stage arts, and scenography. I'm a spatial creator and performance artist educated in visual arts (Ålesund kunstfagskole) and scenography (Norwegian Theater Academy). I work both alone and in collaborations, the longest running collaborations being the performance art project "Sketchwork on TIME" and the stage art project "Happy Gorilla". I have in the recent years also deepened my knowledge on wood and woodworking through learning furniture making.
Stage productions
In these projects I am together with my collaborators responsible for the artistic direction of our productions from the initial spark of inspiration through concept development, process planning, applications, production period and performing. To shape the way a piece is produced is as much a part of the artistic expression as creating and performing the piece itself. I consider the work I have done with the two companies Happy Gorilla and LIVESTOCK as this kind of artistic work.
Happy Gorilla
Happy Gorilla is a Bergen-based theater company that I teamed up with in 2012. Through our collaboration with invited artists we have developed a sensory, ritualistic and poetic expression in pieces that might as well be performed in a gallery space as in the theater.
LIVESTOCK
LIVESTOCK was formed by four fellow students and me at Norwegian Theater Academy, though the group grew smaller over time. Our first piece was called Riding a Dead Horse and explored individualism in a collective setting and lay the foundation for the group. Our first professional production was about the Norwegian national feeling and it was re-made into a new piece two years later. With the challenge of collaborating over great distances we further managed to make the short piece 'Shooting from the Hip' within a project called 'Kunst-i-kit' and later to produce an outline for a piece called 'The Unknown' before the group drifted apart and finally was dismantled.
Performance art
I start with my body and materials to explore topics like time, repetition, cycles, exhaustion, presence and interaction. I am fascinated by how we can communicate with a language that only our bodies and presence can speak, receive and understand. In this art form I find the freedom to explore my more immediate ideas as the process of creation is much more flexible than in larger scale collaborations. I do both solo works and collaborations.
Sketchwork on TIME
Sketchwork on TIME is an ongoing performance art project i have together with artist Franzisca Siegrist. We explore our varying relationships to the abstract phenomenon TIME and we aim to create and perform once per year, something we've been doing since 2009.