OMFAVNE MEG, HOLD PUSTEN MIN / EMBRACE ME, HOLD MY BREATH
Performance (2021)
Performance (2021)
The two sisters Maren and Vilde, who throughout their lives have spent more time in the water than on land, make an attempt to become underwater creatures and swim out to sea.
This live performance was developed for the exhibition “To Live as A Mayfly”, a series of interventions in public space curated by Failure, Understanding, Care, (& Kunst), Tromsø.
“Omfavne meg, hold pusten min” starts at the Tromsø waterfront, where the two sisters in wetsuits enter the saltwater and start making attempts to stay underwater. They swim out further and further, staying under the surface longer and longer, until they eventually disappear into the sea.
This live performance was developed for the exhibition “To Live as A Mayfly”, a series of interventions in public space curated by Failure, Understanding, Care, (& Kunst), Tromsø.
“Omfavne meg, hold pusten min” starts at the Tromsø waterfront, where the two sisters in wetsuits enter the saltwater and start making attempts to stay underwater. They swim out further and further, staying under the surface longer and longer, until they eventually disappear into the sea.
The performance is accompanied by the following text:
“How does it feel to wash in on a beach, to collect in a cloud and fall down over the earth, to be pressed out into a tree branch, a grass straw? You are a forest pond, a mountain lake and the open sea. The water floats in and out of you. Your body is a dam.
Can we understand something new about ourselves and our world if we can take the perspective of the water? Let go of control. What does the water want? If I become one with you, what will I long for?
This performance is a thought experiment, a question and an attempt. It’s a dream about becoming one with the everchanging sea, about breathing underwater, being embraced by the big blue, the shimmering and the menacingly dark, dissolving and merging, frictionless and weightless.
The water in your body is pulled like a magnet towards the large body of water in front of you. You feel the caressing of your skin, the pull of the current, you came from the sea and the sea you will return to, a small rill becomes a spring flood, your bounds cease to exist. You have become something else, you have become what you always were.”
Review in Norwegian:
https://www.hakapik.no/home/2021/9/14/en-kunstnerisk-vandring-langs-tromss-dystopiske-vannkant
Documentation photos by Petter Cohen except first one by Anna Näumann.
August 2021 @ Failure, Understanding, Care, (& Kunst), Tromsø, Sweden
