Conversation In the Gallery

Ashes and Dust – static movement choreography inspired by Butoh

What is use the use of art? What is the relation between art and reality?

The framework through which we relate to artistic projects is always first and foremost that of life as such. Artistic expression can be articulated as a reflection. In art, we reflect and through the reflections, different aspects of our being become apparent. In this awareness, one can take a step back from the unity of everyday life and thus widen or narrow the focus that guides the everyday pursuit of meaning.

In this, art supplies the subject with alternative ways of looking at life and him or herself as well as people and humanity as such. For a while, limitations cease to exist and meaning that is usually more or less fixed becomes more fluent and open for redefinition and interpretation. In the openness of the artistic expression, reality as reality for the subject has a less determined character than how it usually appears to us. The process of creating human freedom becomes tangible.

Like the alchemist, the artistic way of relating to life can encompass the paradox of creating something new from something existing. 

Being an artist is like being an alchemist, trying to create something new from something that already exists. I live in a world of boundaries and limitations but I also live next to it, behind it and above it..  There are many levels of existence. We live in our world and we create our world. In a way, we live through creation, we rest in creation. Through this we are both empty and free, we can reinvent and fulfil ourselves through a constant creation while still remaining in a kind of sameness. For me, this flow of creation exists in every aspect of life, my own and others. 

I am an artist as well as a therapist and for the last decade, I have been guiding people through working with both physical expression as well as complementary medicine. Art in itself has strong therapeutic potential and this is especially clear when collaborating with other artists across style, expression and theory.

Dance for example is something I simply cannot live without. Through dancing, I get to feel my relation to the world. I am free but this freedom is a relationship between myself and the world. Through artistic expression, I can deal with emotions and feelings that can be hard to in the everyday life and its constants. Through my freedom of expression, my instincts are acknowledged and allowed to be articulated. The content is not different from that of daily life, only here it gets to break free from some of the habits and restrictions that apply in the “fixed” world.

It is a different way of communication, a way of relating to the world. 

In my meetings with other artists, we talk about taking things out of their context, and, by doing that, awakening new meanings. In going beyond logic, emotion and time we get to touch and open each other in ways different from how we were brought up by society. We get to connect with ourselves as subjects prior to our normal behaviour and the patterns of thinking that we wear as masks in our daily life.

We’ve been discussing issues like joy and trust, fear and distrust.

In the dance, I choose to communicate through body language in a way similar to the expression of the painter. I feel that I am drawing lines, sketching the rivers and dances about life and death that we all contain within us as humans. When I dance I go into a very simple space where everything can flow freely and turn into nothing without resistance. I turn towards an empty space from where life itself originates. In this relaxation or meditation, I recall the empty space that precedes birth and comes after death. 

The technique that I use is inspired by a Japanese theatre dance called Butoh, which allows for a very unique expression able to contain extremes in a very compact minimalistic way.

I play with different points of focus in relation to the image of a particular dance. I relate to different dimensions like weight, gravity, density, centre, balance and self-centring, making use of different directions in space, images and emotions from life and nature. I tell a story. I use narrative ideas from the art of writing, words and poetry. I play with words and the essence of their meaning. 

I like to live in a way where the art serves me, where the art is a part of my life, a part of my way of relating to the world and the people in it.

In working with other people through movement, we discover that when we stretch our muscles, we feel an outer as well as an inner extension that provides a special sense of centring, peace and confidence. We integrate the body and the mind and through relating to the world in a young and playful way, new perspectives on the world and on ourselves arise. These potentials of arts become even stronger and more explicit in the transgression between various fields of arts, like dance, painting and music.