![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Lislegaard_Still.png\")
Ann Lislegaard Malstr\u00f8mmen, 2017 (still) Two-channel 3D animation, color, sound, 5 min. 7 sec. Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik\/NNKS<\/p>\n Ann Lislegaard Malstr\u00f8mmen, 2017 (still) Two-channel 3D animation, color, sound, 5 min. 7 sec. Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik\/NNKS<\/p>\n
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.<\/span><\/p>\n Lithuanian artist Egle Budvytyte\u2019s choreographies are no exception. Co-created and performed\u00a0 by Lucia Fernandez Santoro, Elisa Yvelin and Benjamin Khan, her dual live performance and video piece \u201cLiquid Power Has No Shame\u201d (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, Budvytyt\u00e9 encourages a \u201cpublic display of sharing pleasure as a strategy for forgetting extractive ways of being.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019s theme, \u201cI Taste the Future\u201d – proposed by curators Heidi Ballet and Milena H\u00f8gsberg – 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.<\/span><\/p>\n While many works presented at LIAF addressed the fraught contemporary relationship between man and nature, Budvytyte\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n At the opening of LIAF earlier this month, a crowd gathered outside the Trevarefabrikken, the event\u2019s 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\u2019s 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: \u201cSanity, Vanity, Misogyny – Extinct. Octopus is back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The conversation between human and non-human enacted through saliva in \u201cLiquid Power Has No Shame\u201d 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\u2019s text guides us again: \u201cSoft pelvic movements are performed to reverse the history of linear movements and thoughts.\u201d Eroticism is proposed against functionality, as the performers become tentacular sea creatures through their pulsating movements on the rocks.<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Budvytyte_1.jpg\")
Egl\u00e9 Budvytyt\u00e9, “Liquid Power Has No Shame”, 2017 Performance, 25 min. Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik\/NNKS<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Chlala_3.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/LinderPrePress1HIRES.jpg\")
Adam Linder, “To Gear a Joan”, 2017 Vocal performance by Stine Janvin Motland, duration variable Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik\/NNKS<\/p>\n