No Place to Call Home
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Artists
Photograph Eirik Slyngstad
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Naja Lee Jensen CAPITAL:OSLO
For many people living in the city is an attractive choice, but also an expensive one. Passing the windows of real estate offices seeing pictures of potential homes can make you dream of more space, more sunlight, and a better location, but after seeing the prices you realize having a home of your own might not be for everybody. Without the protection of a home human life is challenged. Homelessness is therefore not a condition that many people strive for. Today many of our fellow human beings have no choice about leaving their homes Capital: Oslo explored what it means to physically exist in public space without a home.
Naja Lee Jensen works in the in-between of stage and fine art. In her cross disciplinary productions she is fascinated by the relation between movement and non-movement. When working in public space she thinks of her works as Object Trouvés. Found objects that through re-contextualizing of already existing physical structures elicit what surrounds us. Her work has been shown at Festspillene i Bergen, Dansehallerne i København and Black Box Theater in Oslo. www.najaleejensen.com |
Photograph Eirik Slyngstad
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Sarah Maple A Man's house is his castle
Every person has the right to a place to call home. Past years have seen the worst refugee crisis of recent times. Thousands of people have been left without their families and homes. The right wing populist movement sweeping across the West encourages the idea of the other and sees these refugees as a threat. Challenging their idea of entitlement to country and heritage. In her new performance, A Man’s House Is His Castle, Sarah walked through the centre of Oslo whilst carrying a large cumbersome cardboard castle. Starting outside Deichmanske Library in Grünerløkka and taking several stops on the way, she ended her journey at The Royal Palace. The act of moving a castle, symbolic of home, aimed to mirror the current status of our displaced and homeless people in the world today.
Sarah Maple completed a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University in 2007 and in the same year won the '4 New Sensations' award for emerging artists, run by The Saatchi Gallery. Sarah’s artwork, film and performances have been exhibited internationally in Tate Britain (London), A.I.R Gallery (NY), AGO (Canada), The New Art Exchange (Nottingham), Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast) and Kunisthoone (Estonia). In 2015, Sarah was awarded a Sky Academy Arts scholarship where she will be creating a new body of work about 'Freedom of Speech' for a solo exhibition in 2017. www.sarahmaple.com |
Photograph Eirik Slyngstad
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Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir
Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir developed a new song for Oslo building on their repertoire of activist songwriting. The song talked about immigration and its global implications. Sung by a locally gathered choir the lyrics aimed to act as a conversation starter for the watching public. Score sheets were available to take away and learn, with the invitation to teach the song to others.
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir is a New York City based radical performance community. They are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists who have worked with communities on four continents defending community, life and imagination. Their activist performance and concert stage performance have always worked in parallel. www.revbilly.com |
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Suohpanterror Ellos Deatnu! La elva leve!
Suohpanterror created a new poster campaign which was spread across the city and installed at the Deichmanske Library in Grünerløkka alongside some of their other campaign posters and a video. The poster responds to the Deatnu Agreement which is currently (2017) being legislated by the Norwegian and Finnish governments and will take away 80% of Saami fishing rights in the Deatnu river. The act violates Article 15.1 of ILO convention 169, which Norway ratified to guarantee Saami populations the right to manage their natural resources. By giving the fishing rights to non-indigenous land owners and tourists the legislation is an act of discrimination.
Suohpanterror (suohpan is a lasso used in reindeer herding) is an anonymous group of activists and artists from Sápmi. Formed in 2012, Suohpanterror critiques the power structures of both Finnish society and the indigenous community by mounting a creative resistance and posting propaganda posters that exist somewhere between art and activism. Suohpanterror’s artivism and use of art as a political subversion tactic constitute a non-violent form of resistance against injustice. www.suohpanterror.com |
Photograph Eirik Slyngstad
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Charlotte Thiis-Evensen Line 5
With her starting point in her personal history, Charlotte Thiis-Evensen put a spotlight on the guilt and ambivalence she feels as someone who is affected by a privileged life in Norway. Charlotte’s project consisted of an installation made up of 200 pairs of socks knitted by Niculina Nitica who sits every day knitting socks in Oslo. A film inside the library and performance intervention outside accompany the installation.
Charlotte Thiis-Evensen has an MA of Literary Science from the University of Oslo and has studied art at the National Academy of the Arts. She is an artist working with documentarism in video, photo and installations. Several of her artworks are about how unspoken power structures seriously limit the individual’s freedom of action. Besides production of art she has been working as a journalist at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation for fifteen years both with documentary film and with journalistic programs. www.charlotte-thiis-evensen.com |
Photograph Eirik Slyngstad
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Garry williams & Florencia Guerberof Woo
Garry Williams offered his body as performance site for dancer Florencia Guerberof to use as a living moving stage on which to perform. All the while maintaining his role, as he attempted to traverse an improvised route through the Barcode and Sørenga districts of Oslo. Paralleling his gesture Guerberof explored seduction philosophy and images found in Chinese hexagrams as departure point for her choreography. The piece was offered as reflection and counterpoint to its public context.
Over the past seven years Garry Williams has lived and worked in Norway making works within the local environment using installation and performance, exploring the precarious nature of existence focussing on ideas, places and situations that are in tension or jeopardy. www.garry-williams.com |
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Poka-Yio Present Future
Poka Yio developed a private performance for himself and one invited guest living in unstable housing. The pair will spent one day and night together getting to know each other and the city of Oslo. Together they planned activities and explored the city through the opportunities presented by the day. Despite being invisible to eye the performance allowed the public to become curious about the people they meet, questioning if they too should be the ones spending 24 hours with a stranger.
Poka Yio is a multidisciplinary artist and curator living and working in Athens. He is a co-founder of the Athens Biennial. www.poka-yio.com |