Mette Edvardsen’s major work, ‹Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine›, was introduced in Ob/Scene Festival 2020 and left a deep impression on the Korean audience. This year’s retrospective brings this project again with 4 new living books.
For ‹Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine› a group of performers memorize a book of their choice. Together they form a library collection consisting of living books. The visitors of the library choose a book they would like to read, and the book brings its reader to a place in the library or for a walk outside, while reciting its content (and possibly valid interpretations).
The idea for this library of living books comes from Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, a future vision of a society where books are forbidden because they are considered dangerous, and that happiness must be obtained through an absence of knowledge and individual thought. The number 451 refers to the temperature at which book paper starts to burn. As books are forbidden in this society an underground community of people learns books by heart in order to preserve them for the future.
Learning a book by heart is an ongoing activity and doing. However much or well you learn something by heart you have to keep practicing it otherwise you will forget it again. There is nothing final or material to achieve, the practice of learning a book by heart is a continuous process of remembering and forgetting.
Chris Marker, 『Coréennes』
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 『Night Flight』
Kim Hyesoon, 『I do Woman Animal Asia』
Lewis Carroll, 『Phantasmagoria』
Concept: Mette Edvardsen
With Kim Hayeon, Yun Eunkeong, Choi Beumkyu, Pyun Jiji
Librarian: Kim Dahyun, Lee Juhyeon
Venue provided by The Book Society, Sulki & Min, Workroom
Graphic design print: Michaël Bussaer
Production: Mette Edvardsen/ Athome & Manyone
Co-production: Dubbelspel - STUK Kunstencentrum & 30CC (Leuven), Dance Umbrella (London), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), NEXT Arts Festival (Valenciennes, Lille, Kortrijk, Villeneuve d’Ascq), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), osloBIENNALEN FIRST EDITION 2019-2014
Supported by Norsk Kulturråd
Additional support by Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Flemish Authorities
Special thanks to Bibliothèque royale de Belgique/Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Sarah Vanhee, Els De Bodt
For the Norwegian dancer and choreographer, the critical point for the staged situations take place as an art form resides in the pulsating border between language and cognition. More of ‘situations’ of bodily cognition than crafted entities for display, her ‘art works’ are generated within a simple form by minute physical responses to linguistic stimuli or impressions. The artistic situations that she stages concoct inner spaces for each participant to explore, instead of exhibiting anesthetized bodily spectacles. The slight changes in the spatial and temporal common grounds, shared by the performer and the spectator, become the work itself for both intellectual and sensory exchanges. Such reconfiguration of “choreographic” processes stem from her firm belief upon the act of caring for, in lieu of admiring, little moments of sensibility, which she sees as the means to reclaim senses of art from the prevalent capitalism.