I am a multidisciplinary artist, my practice unfolds at the intersection of dance, performance and the visual arts, boundery of the body is the main subject to most of my work. I am captivated by the rythms I see around me, in the daily life: in the tension and the stretches. In the monumental, as well as in volatile movements and spaces inbetween.
For the past years performance art has been my main medium. From years at the sculpture department in Kabk I have started to treat at the human body as a living sculpture. Looking at the body in relation to its environment- its space.
I grew up around the sea which is a repetative element found in my artistic practice. The sea is beautiful, yet a dangerous force of nature. You can collaborate with the unpredictable and ruthless, but you have to respect its strength. H2O has become one of my main subjects in my latest performances. In one way it is the ultimate contrast to society, whereas society is constantly trying to conquer new domains, we are still subjected to the water, not vica versa. Perhaps that is why man has always felt not only terrified at sea, but also free.
GRADUATION PROJECT
'Coastline'
'Coastline' is a performance piece about the rising sea level. 'Coastline' is a site specific work and shows where the sea level will be if the global temperature would increase with 4,5°C. In the absence of policies, global warming is expected to reach 4.1°C – 4.8°C above pre-industrial by 2100. Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms.
In 'Coastline' a performer hangs from the ceiling horizontally in line with the potential future sea-level, creating swimming movements. The performer defines an imagenary line of where the ocean's surface would be in the worse case scenario within a decade.
THESIS
The World as a Stage
This thesis is an investigation of life, which to me is equivalent to the body. Life and body are certainly a different nature, a body can exist as a corpse without life and life entails so much more than the body itself. Biologically speaking, however, life is described as a self- sustaining process which can exist in various forms eg. fungi, bacteria, animals and plants. In the view of the fact that we experience life through the sensations and consciousness of our own bodies, the body has a apparent parallel to life. Since this thesis is its own body I will start with Act l - Birth, an exploration of the body and soul, in this chapter the materialisation of the concepts will also be discussed. Act ll - The social being, is an enquiry into the body in relation with others, not to mention the relationship between the performer and the audience. And at last, Act lll - Death and Memory. This chapter will focus on presence of absence and how the absence is stored in form of a void or an object. Post-performance: how is the memory preserved. During the research for this thesis I have come across various topics and fields of study. The text is a woven patchwork from personal experiences, biology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, art practices and art theory. In the process of writing I have been confronted with some challenging questions I would like to present as my research core:
Is it possible to eliminate the gap between life and art?
The art and the life of an artist are intertwined. Art has been used to depict subjects which are experienced in life or life itself, and the time in an artist life is dedicated to work: to create the art. In its parallel existence belonging to different worlds dividing art from life. Moreover, in contemporary art “found objects” are a common medium which means found material, it can be a sound, an item, or even an action. Not only does art become life, but life refuses to be itself. However the setting is different. I will give examples of artworks and artists who work in different medias, but I focus on performance art as it has a clear parallel to life in its four dimensional form.
Is it possible to distinguish presentation anrd representation?
I consider the main challenge with the medium of performance art to be theatricality. The theatre has a representational quality, it mirrors the reality whereas performance art aims to be something of itself. Nevertheless, I think it is important to address the spectacle that life and society carry and this makes me question:
Is the theatricality legitimate beyond the stage?
In life there is a certain implicit rule to what behaviour is expected and accepted in a set situation. This fact implies that a script is acted in order to support a culturally recognised social rule (from psychology referred to as social script). Is the script a genuine expression of the individual if is determined by culture and society?