Patchwork
Performance by Runa Carlsen in Maia Urstad's exhibition
Thursday 20.06.24
Thursday 20.06.24
Patchwork is a cyclical performance piece with five dancers created by artist Runa Carlsen for Kunstnernes Hus. The work will be presented in Maia Urstad's exhibition Do You Hear That Whistling Sound? in the right skylight hall. This is the third in the series of cyclical and site-specific performance works for Kunstnernes Hus, which is repeated every seven years. This time the performance takes place during the summer solstice and lasts just under an hour.
About the work
The work is performed by five creative dancers; Ingunn Rimestad, Jens Jeffrey Trinidad, Hanna Filomen Mjåvatn, Hanne Os Wold and Øyvind Jørgensen. The dancers each contribute a solo sequence that overlap and together form a coherent choreography. Based on their own dance practice, they will respond to Urstad's site-specific soundscape, to each other and to the building's architecture.
In this work, Carlsen explores how time is linked to the cyclical aspect of people's lives. The dancers' ages range from 30 to 70, and the same dancers intend to participate in future performances as well. All the cells in the body are renewed through a cycle of seven years, thus the body is renewed every time a new performance in the series is presented.
The two previous performances in the series assumed audience participation and grew out of a desire to fill the rooms with human energy and warmth. In 2010, during the group exhibition Gentle Actions, Carlsen invited a yoga session in the skylight halls open to the public with the title Patience vs Panic, and in 2017 she invited the public into Kjell Varvin's exhibition Free Geometry in the performance Breath and Push. Here, tai chi master Pamela Hiley conducted a tai chi course introduced by a performance with Marthe Ramm Fortun.
See the artist's website for pictures: http://www.runacarlsen.no/
The project is supported by the Norwegian Cultural Council.
About the artist
Runa Carlsen (b. 1964, Oslo) is a visual artist who works cross-artistically with performance at the intersection of performing arts, textiles, text, film and urban interventions. She is interested in digging into what has been lost, or which has ended up in the shadows in our collective memory. She examines the field of tension between individual recollection and experience and the collective history. Location sensitivity and collaboration with other artists and professionals are the hub of her artistic practice. Carlsen has, among other things, exhibited at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo Kunstforening and Fotogalleriet in Oslo, Den Frie Center of Contemporary Art and Charlottenborg Kunsthall in Copenhagen.
