Ann Lislegaard Malstrømmen, 2017 (still) Two-channel 3D animation, color, sound, 5 min. 7 sec. Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik/NNKS
From Anne Imhof to Alexandra Pirici, immersive performance art is trending in the art world almost as much as the proliferation of festivalism. The transitory nature of both, unconfined to permanent locales or costly material budgets, makes biennials and performance works amenable to our contemporary condition, wherein the pursuit of images seems to outweigh the collection of tangible objects.
Lithuanian artist Egle Budvytyte’s choreographies are no exception. Co-created and performed by Lucia Fernandez Santoro, Elisa Yvelin and Benjamin Khan, her dual live performance and video piece “Liquid Power Has No Shame” (on view at Lofoten International Art Festival this month) addresses our instrumental relationship to nature and the rigid linearity of history. A breathtaking vista of the fjords forms the backdrop for physical meditations on a possible future, where eroticism – beyond gender binaries or species distinctions – penetrates our exchange with nature. In the text chronicling the 7-minute video documentation of her site-specific performance, Budvytyté encourages a “public display of sharing pleasure as a strategy for forgetting extractive ways of being.”
Eglé Budvytyté, “Liquid Power Has No Shame”, 2017 Performance, 25 min. Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik/NNKS
Running throughout the month of September, LIAF is a contemporary art event that maintains an impressive connection to the local landscape and social fabric, despite the recent aforementioned turn to artistic nomadism. For its 2017 edition, the festival moved a short 25km south along the Norwegian archipelago from Svolvaer to the small fishing village of Henningsvaer, where selected artists were encouraged to imagine new political narratives, theoretically-informed by the work of Donna Haraway and a host of sci-fi visionaries. This year’s theme, “I Taste the Future” – proposed by curators Heidi Ballet and Milena Høgsberg – resonates at a turning point for the village, whose fishing industry has rapidly diminished over the last decades. Resource extraction is a weighty topic for LIAF this year, as the area is poised to determine whether or not it will open up to oil companies vying to erect rigs on its picturesque shores.
While many works presented at LIAF addressed the fraught contemporary relationship between man and nature, Budvytyte’s performance did so from a decidedly embodied position. The piece resonates with visitors for this very reason: arriving in this stunning remote region, just inside the Arctic Circle, there seems to be no better way to connect with its richness than through physical, sensory experiences. In this regard, the landscape puts up a tough competition for man-made works of art. Without efforts to integrate within the site, attempts to attract attention seem futile. A certain humbleness and subtly is crucial, here.
Youmna Chlala, “How Many Tongues Does it Take to Make a Color?”, 2017 (detail) Text installation with vinyl and neon Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik/NNKS
At the opening of LIAF earlier this month, a crowd gathered outside the Trevarefabrikken, the event’s main venue, in a semi circle around three metalic-hooded performers. With low and slow pelvic movements, the performers began to thrust themselves forward along a residential street, occasionally stopping to perform human centipede-like gyrations and slow pavement-pounding twerks, followed closely by the crowd. As we reached a precipice over the sea, wondering whether we might follow them into the abyss, the narrative reached its peak. The performers slurped seawater from each other’s bare belly buttons, spitting it out ceremoniously before chanting a ritualistic poem, verbally extinguishing unwanted mores and exchanging them for a series of endangered species: “Sanity, Vanity, Misogyny – Extinct. Octopus is back.”
The conversation between human and non-human enacted through saliva in “Liquid Power Has No Shame” is a kind of incantation, calling into being an eco-feminist future. Viewed after the live performance, on the second floor of the old factory building Trevarefabrikken, the video’s text guides us again: “Soft pelvic movements are performed to reverse the history of linear movements and thoughts.” Eroticism is proposed against functionality, as the performers become tentacular sea creatures through their pulsating movements on the rocks.
Adam Linder, “To Gear a Joan”, 2017 Vocal performance by Stine Janvin Motland, duration variable Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik/NNKS
Through her practice, Budvytyte investigates how our movements in public space reveal mechanisms of social control. In a talk during the opening of LIAF, she spoke of the strong romantic pull of Lofoten’s landscape – compared to the urban centres she usually works in – and the necessity to engage with it physically. Henningsvaer is a small town where bizarre actions will not go unnoticed. Rehearsing over the last month, Budvytyte and her performers gathered a small cult following of local children, who quickly mastered the choreography themselves. In this sense, the piece had lasting effects beyond the Instagram-frenzy of its opening weekend, gradually prompting residents to re-imagine how they might interact with their familiar streets and scenic lookouts.
This year’s LIAF featured a number of impressive performance pieces, from Adam Linder’s “wearable libretto” “To Gear a Joan” to Daisuke Kosugi’s participatory audio performance “Good Name (Bad Phrase)”. Considering the powerful context of the festival, Budvytyte’s piece stood out for its visceral engagement with the local landscape, informed by the collapsing of human, non-human and gender distinctions. By physically engaging with the topography of the archipelago – its rocky curves and deep waters – “Liquid Power Has No Shame” presented a true taste of an alternative future for the region, in which humans learn to undo their instrumental relationships with nature.
LIAF takes place in Norway until 1 October 2017