Performance Autumn

This autumn, we are presenting a series of entirely new performances created by artists from the north of Sweden exclusively for Bildmuseet. You will meet expressions blurring the boundaries between art, music, sound, and dance, taking place in various spaces throughout the museum: exhibition halls and stairwells, open areas and enclosed rooms. Take part in exciting art experiences that last a few minutes or several hours. You decide for yourself how long you want to stay in the experience.

Madelaine Sillfors, Kenneth Hansson Tornéus and Daniel Westman Sub Astra

SAT 30/9 14:00–15:00
SUN 1/10 14:00–15:00

Sub Astra, a performance by artist Madelaine Sillfors with sound artists Kenneth Hansson Tornéus and Daniel Westman.

‘The night, the starry sky, the pole star, the atmospheric, the low, sparse, dwarf birch-dominated vegetation – these are words and qualities that we have gathered around. The mysterious, solitary, magical, sparkling. The journey of the northern lights across the sky and the question of whether it makes a sound or not.’

Together with sound artists Kenneth Hansson Tornéus and Daniel Westman, artist Madelaine Sillfors presents the performative sound work Sub Astra. The work is based on sound recordings made in new and old Kiruna and on the audience’s movement patterns during the performance act. The result is an interactive performance, like a sound sculpture and a sound world of its own, which arises together with the audience.

During the summer of 2023, they travelled again to Kiruna together with Daniel Westman to make sound recordings in the old and the new town, and in Abisko. Using various microphones, they have collected the blast noise from Kiruna Mine’s nightly mining explosions and sounds from different areas that meant a lot during their upbringing. Houses and structures will be demolished, and all that remains will be enclosed nature. They try to understand the consequences of these changes – places that will cease to exist except in their body memories.

Madelaine Sillfors (b. 1982, Kiruna) and Kenneth Hansson Tornéus (b. 1978, Jukkasjärvi) och Daniel Westman (b. 1986, Långhyttan) is based in Umeå, During the last year they explored sound recordings from old Kiruna. Their first collaboration was for the exhibition Ostilla natt, which Madelaine Sillfors presented at Galleri Alva in Umeå.

Cecilia Cissi Hultman L_I_N_J_E_N

SAT 30/9 + SUN 1/10

L_I_N_J_E_N, a durational performance by artist Cecilia Cissi Hultman.

Like a nerve or a simplified drawing, Cecilia Cissi Hultman’s performance L_I_N_J_E_N finds its way through Bildmuseet’s rooms and floors. It is a kind of concrete mapping or response to the lines that already exist in the architecture, and which are varied in different chapters with different colours, thicknesses, and materials. The role of the line is similar to Hultman’s own role, strongly connected with being on the way, but at the same time being in the direct, in the present. To follow the line and be aware of the choices made in consultation with the chosen route. The performance lasts for two days and visitors can follow Cecilia Cissi Hultman’s subdued process through Bildmuseet, stay for a long or short time, and return later.

Cecilia Cissi Hultman (b. 1985 in Sundsvall) graduated from Konstfack in 2014 and works with both installations and performance. She has exhibited in many places in Sweden and abroad and is represented in several public art collections. Hultman sees it as the strength of her artistry to note details and show ways of seeing what already exists. This requires a presence and a watchful eye that chooses with precision, as well as a body that is attentive to the whole.

Irina Laaja She Wears Her Nerves on Her Sleeve

FRI 13/10 17:00–24:00
SAT 14/10 12:00–17:00

She Wears Her Nerves on Her Sleeve, a durational performance by artist Irina Laaja.

Irina Laaja asks questions about what a body is and can be, and about the relationship between the "body" and the "self". Her practice is both conceptual and confessional,with a strong focus on the process and her own body.

She Wears Her Nerves on Her Sleeve is partly a performance piece, partly a portable sculpture in which Irina Laaja took her starting point in a nervous breakdown and what this would look like if it took its own form. If we wore our nerves on the outside, what colours would they be? What shape, what movement? The sculpture is made from recycled clothes, which have been cut into yarn, crocheted, and sewn together into an abstract form. During the performance act, she wears the form and tries to move in it while relating to the exhibition spaces and situations in the building. The textile work becomes an extension of her body and at the same time an abstract form of its own.

Irina Laaja (b. 1989 in Vaasa, Finland) received her master’s degree from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Her background in fashion design has influenced her artistic practice. As part of the fashion industry, she took a critical view of its relationship to the body and materials, and as an artist she has changed direction and begun to include the body in a new way. Laaja mainly works with textiles and sculpture in mixed materials, often with techniques and methods associated with craft or pattern construction, and likes to use recycled, organic or otherwise environmentally friendly materials and methods. Crochet often appears in Irina Laaja’s work and the repetitive, monotonous work process interests her.

Gideonsson/Londré Ur arken

SUN 22/10 10:00–12:00
MON 23/10 9:00–16:30

Ur arken, a performance by the artist duo Gideonsson/Londré. 15 min, three people at a time. Pre-booking is required. Book here.

The artist duo Gideonsson/Londré is included in the exhibition Down North / Contemporary Art in the Arctic with the installation Ark. At each location during the exhibition tour, the duo has performed in some form. Ur Arken is the final part in an elongated movement from Portland to Reykjavik and on to Umeå. In various sessions with local groups, physical narratives have emerged using a game board and small arch-shaped objects. In the encounters, various bodily traces have been evoked, as remnants of previous generations and existences, marked by the landscape we inhabit. The artists now invite museum visitors to a 15-minute performance session, with a maximum of three participants at a time, where the collected stories will be shared and carried on by new recipients.

Gideonsson/Londré are Lisa Gideonsson (b. 1985, Linköping) and Gustaf Londré (b. 1986, Dalsjöfors) and is based in Kallrör. Through performance, installations, and interventions, they investigate our relationship with time. Part of their practice consists of positioning and using their bodies in new and challenging ways and breaking with ingrained movement patterns. They believe that such a strategy can release knowledge and experiences that have been stored in our bodies for generations, but that today’s people have lost touch with.

The artists would like to thank Dave, Katarina, Lars, Bergþóra, Brynja and Guðný.

Linn Lindström and Gusten Aldenklint Ett tvinnat tillstånd

SAT 28/10 14:00–15:00
SUN 29/10 14:00–15:00

Ett tvinnat tillstånd, a performance by dancer Linn Lindström and musician Gusten Aldenklint.

Ett tvinnat tillstånd is a cross-art performance where modular synths in a surround system meet dance and create an intimate and enveloping experience. Movement and sound are controlled here by the properties of elementary particles and our four fundamental forces – strong interaction, weak interaction, electromagnetism, and gravity. Information is stacked and shaped like different layers that sometimes give rise to truly entangled states. Together, we make our way in and out of different dimensions – interweaving, cloning, and breaking down existence. The work invites us to take a step back, stop, and view the life that is constantly around us. To explore and discover in unexpected places.

Dancer and choreographer Linn Lindström (b. 1998, Piteå) is based in Norrbotten and Stockholm. She is trained in the Ballet Academy’s professional dancer training in Stockholm 2017–2020 and has after her graduation freelanced in various projects in Sweden and Germany. For her, life and creation are part of a constant circular exchange. Playfulness and clear inner images are starting points for translating thought into movement. She also likes to find herself in cross-artistic collaborations. In such contexts, she asks herself how the participants can create environments for each other where space is given to achieve the full potential of the moment.

Gusten Aldenklint is an electronic musician and composer working in Gothenburg. He works with modular synths as his main instrument and has recently delved into speaker orchestras and multi-channel music. He appears with Anna von Hausswolff’s band, the norm-critical ensemble Elefantöra, or solo. Aldenklint is also active on the board of Levande Musik and writes music for experimental performing arts and concerts.

Maria K Olsson Korrosionens hastighet

SAT 18/11 14:00–15:00
SUN 19/11 14:00–15:00

Korrosionens hastighet, a performance by artist Maria K Olsson.

Korrosionens hastighet is an exploratory performance piece that moves in the borderland between the living and the dead. We are led into an industrial environment merged with the human body. In the work, the artist moves between different roles: technician, factory worker, and surgeon. The body and the movements of the machinery intertwine and become a rhythmic scene in the search for hammerbeats and heartbeats.

The steel is load-bearing – like the ore that is dug out of the earth and erects structures to then corrode and stain the surfaces where we were, like the liquid tracer that pumps inside the skin along with the oxygen, from the lungs and into all parts of the body. The work depicts a struggle for the living and a mourning process over what cannot be kept alive.

Maria K Olsson (b. 1993) is based in Umeå. She received a bachelor’s degree from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in 2021. Since 2020, she has been a member of the artist-run gallery Verkligheten. Olsson works with installations and performance based on the agency and interaction of human and non-human bodies. Time is always a factor in her art regardless of the form in which it is presented. The contrast between slow processes in natural environments and the rapid processes driven by man particularly interests her.