ART AS FORCE – situasjonisme og folkekunst

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen, and a and cultural critic. He has published a number of books on the Situationist International and modern art and politics, most recently After the Great Refusal - Essays on Contemporary Art, its Contradictions and Difficulties (Zero Books, 2018) and Hegel after Occupy (Sternberg Press, 2018). Other publications include En anden verden (Another World, 2011), and Samtidskunstens metamorfose (The Metamorphosis of Contemporary Art, 2016), and in English: Playmates and Playboys at a Higher Level: J.V. Martin and the Situationist International (Sternberg Press, 2014) and Crisis to Insurrection (Minor Compositions, 2015). Rasmussen has also published a number of articles about anti-capitalist activism and the revolutionary tradition as well as weking as a co-editor. Other recent activities include the exhibition This World We Must Leave (collaboration with Jakob Jakobsen) at Kunsthall Oslo, 2016/2017. 

André Eiermann is a lecturer at the University of Agder. He studied at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany (diploma and ph.d. ), and theatre studies at the University of Bergen (Erasmus-exchange in 2001). His ph.d.-thesis Postspektakuläres Theater – Die Alterität der Aufführung und die Entgrenzung der Künste (2009) received the award for the best ph.d.-thesis at Justus-Liebig-Universität in 2008/2009. Eiermann has formerly worked as substitute professor of the theory and history of theatre at Universität der Künste Berlin (2015-2016), theatre studies at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (2010-2011), and as postdoc at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen (2009-2010 & 2011-2012). Furthermore he’s active in the performing arts field, collaborating as freelance dramaturge with various other artists since 2013 in Norway and internationally.  

Knut Ove Arntzen is a Norwegian theatre theorist and professor at The Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at The University of Bergen. Arntzen has published a number of articles and books and is in particular known for his work with contemporary performing arts forms, related to the terms non-hierarchical and visual dramaturgy. Arntzen prefers the term "visual dramaturgy", which he defines as follows: "It indicates that elements or means of expression, such as space, frontality, textuality and visuality, are no longer arranged in the traditional sense of organic or hierarchic systems, but are equivalent, on an equal footing". Arntzen also has a past as a theatre critic for the newspaper Arbeiderbladet and has been a visiting lecturer at several universities abroad. 

Marika Reuterswärd is an art historian active as a curator, lecturer and writer. Since 2014, she’s been the Director of Kristianstads konsthall, Sweden, which every years holds a number of exhibitions with international and Swedish contemporary art, as well as discursive events and artist meetings. Recent exhibitions include Man and Biosphere and We have a dream. From 1999 to 2014 she was curator at Malmö Konstmuseum. She has also been chair of Skåne’s Art Association, Malmö (2007-2008), curator and co-founder of the art project Ocean, Malmö (1997-1999), and curator of Aura Art Association, Lund (1995-1996). Reuterswärd lives and works in Malmö, South Sweden. 

Elsebet Rahlff studied at the State Design School at Copenhagen to become a visual artist specialized in working with textiles. Since 1963 she participated in a series of exhibitions in Denmark, France and subsequently Norway, espescially afters ettling there in the mid 1960´s, and playing a major role in the presentations of new art forms, such as happenings and installation work. In 1996 her project Fahnen für unsere Welt (World Flags) was presented at the Alexander Platz in Berlin (Germany), Rio de Janeiro, Bergen, Århus and other place.s 2004: participated in the Research trip to Svalbard (Spitsbergen) organized by INST in 2004, and her video Blick auf Barentsburg(Gaze on Barentsburg) was presented at the IRICS-conference in Vienna, 2005. Rahlff has also been lecturing and tutoring students as an associate professor of the State School for Art and Design in Bergen.

Yzam is a scenography company based in Norway founded by Liam Alzafari. The company’s work crosses the disciplines of design, performance and choreography. In collaboration with various partners, Yzam explores scenography as autonomy, spaces of debate, and uncontrollable situations. The company was established in 2017 while evolving its first project ‘The Lab’. The Lab was a research project on staging politics and has taken place both in Norway and Catalonia. Queue-machines is a project developed with performer Nina Tind Jensen, the full performance of which will be realised at the Prague Quadrennial 2019.

Arnd Wesemann born in Cologne, Germany, is a journalist and, since 1997, editor of Europe's leading dance magazine, tanz. He is an expert in dance, criticism, and a founder of the platform „anti.dot - this is the future of the arts!“ His political and aesthetical research led to books like „The dancing feast“ (Immer Feste Tanzen), dealing with certain contradictions between staging a dance and our lust to dance, or, in „Made in Bangladesh“, questioning the reasons, why a state is supporting artists who eagerly answer with their penchant for (self-) exploitation. His reports on contemporary performing arts tendencies are frequently published in magazines and papers such as Theater der Zeit, the Swiss-printed magazine Musik & Theater and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Helena Waldmann is an award winning dance director based in Berlin. Her radical work has received international acclaim since 1993, and points to social sore spots, creating total works of art that go far beyond traditional dance-theatre. Her works have toured extensively around Europe, Iran and Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine, Africa, South America, East Asia, India and Bangladesh, and inspired other works, like “Heathunters - cutting the edges”(2004) and Letters from Tentland” (2005). Recent projects include "Made in Bangladesh"(2015), produced in Dhaka, concerning working conditions in the garment industry and in dance; and "Good Passports Bad Passports" (2017), which deals with borders and how nationalism stops people almost unwittingly to make free choices and think outside the „closed shop“. Her works have been described as nothing less than a godsend for the theatre.

David Elliott is an internationally renowned curator with broad experience as director and advisor for a number of different arts and cultural institutions. Working himself out of the last century from being an exhibition officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain (1973 to 1976) and the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1976 to 1996), bringing in art from all over the world, he setteled in Stocholm as the Director of the Moderna Museet (1996 to 2001). From 1998 to 2004 he served as President of CIMAM [google it!], then the first director of Tokyo's Mori Art Museum, and the first Director of Istanbul Modern. From 2008 a Guest Professor in the History of Art at the Humboldt University, Berlin and a Visiting Professor at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, where he still works. He held the Toshiba Lecture Series, 'Rethinking Art after the Age of "Enlightenment"', at the British Museum in London in 2009. By 2010, the Artistic Director for the 17th Biennale of Sydney'. By 2012 the Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennial of Contemporary Art. And so forth and so on. Moscow, Belgrade, New York, Hong Kong, Istanbul. A chariman on the move. Now for a short rest in Bergen.

Lisa Lie is a Norwegian director, performance artist, actress, playwright and author. Through Lisa Lie / PONR her works exist at the intersection of performance art and text-based theater. Previously she toured internationally with the award winning performance duo Sons of Liberty, that influenced the Norwegian performance scene through a mixture of pop-culture, trash and misanthropic honesty. Lie was awarded the Hedda prize 2015 for “outstanding artistic achievement” with Blue Motel, co-produced by Trøndelag Theatre, Black Box Teater, BIT Teatergarasjen and Turteatern/MDT. Other recent projects include I CLONI, Uår av Terje Vegen, Kaspar Hauser oder die Ausgestoßenen könnten jeden Augenblick angreifen!. Lisa is currently doing a phd at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Worm Winther is educated at Bergen Art School, formerly Kunsthåndtverkskolen i Bergen. In 1978 he joined the performance group Smugteateret, first as a scenographer, later as a performing artist, and was part of many other project theaters in Bergen that had its golden age the following years. USF Verftet was established as an art hub by local artist from different fields, and Worm took the initiative of using the old freezer in the former sardine factory as a performance space, where one of the first performances of Bergen International Theater Festival, now BIT Teatergarasjen, took place. Worm got a diploma in scenography at the Konstindustriskolan in Göteborg and was involved with Folkteatern in 1981 and 82, later at bigger venues and Den Norske Opera. From 1986 to 2011 he was a member of Baktruppen. One of the most important aspects of his work as an artist is that scenography and all the other elements in a theater production are given room and function along with its creator being on stage along with the others as performers. Making installations and visual art has followed him from his childhood, and Worm has held exhibitions both in Norway and abroad.

Ine Therese Berg is currently working on a doctorate degree in the drama and theatre departement at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds an MA in theatre and performance studies and has also studied history of ideas and directing for the theatre. She has worked with international collaborations and development in the organization Dance Information Norway, and as a freelance theatre critic in the publications Morgenbladet and Norsk teater og Shakespeare tidsskrift. She has experience from project management, evaluation and artistic consulting. Berg is a board member of Black Box theatre in Oslo, and was previously on the board of Norsk Scenekunstbruk. Initiated the project Teatervitenskapelig dugnad, an academic action for theatre studies in Norway.  

Samarbeid med teatervitenskap ved Universitetet i Bergen og KODE