Manifestations

Researtch is sometimes expressed and developed further through artistic manifestations. By the way of the feather; an approach aspiring to creation in alignment with nature, often with a strong aspect of collective synergies at work.

Below are some of the key examples, some milestones – an illustrated readers digest…

CAFE CYKL0N, Malmö 2001-2002. A Cyklone, is what potentially is generated, when stray winds meet – they certainly did and it certainly was: being open 4-6 days a week for one year exactly (13/8 2001 – 12/8 2002), at Kristianstadsgatan in Malmö, this cultural little society, was fully autonomous – and had equipment and social capacity, of making art and connection happen. The project was an example of situationistically oriented, progressive cultural activism, inspired by the Magical Theater as described by Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf, 1927), and of the notion of a possible other paradigm; of less inhibition and detachment, from the general manifesting of utopian dreams. I created and maintained this café on equal terms with three close friends, and we received help from hundreds of others, with perhaps a group of 30 people being more regular in their engagement and support.

The café, in close collaboration with Bio Prevost, Studio Sapiens, Studio Sibirien, Studio Yindi Garra, and the growing techno scene of that time, was it ́s own counter-cultural institution, counting around 3000 members. The fundamental purpose and activity of this non-profit café, was to create, nurture and sustain synergies among creative and/or free-thinking individuals in need of an oasis – an oasis in/from which growth of this Current could bloom and spread. The activities consisted of concerts, exhibitions, festivals, bazaars, workshops, lectures, film-screenings, poetry evenings, parties, performances, and much more.

The Researtch-then-as-yet-un-named, found during this intensive year, so much material and inspiration for further endeavor and exploration. From that point, working with cultural manifestations and collective creative processes, became key to my understanding – it also guided me into exploring theater and performing arts as a way to achieve personal and collective transformation through intentionally designed processes, in a playful dance of intuition and conscious adaptation of personal actions in everyday life, through a frame of personal symbolism approached in the way, that an actor approaches a role on stage – a personal exploration which continued and expanded from there.

Café Cyklon, was also the place where I became conscious of being in love with the creative spark in every individual, and of how concretely meaningful it was for me, to engage in the expansion of that in our shared world. Cyklon to me, was a beautiful and strongly confirmed, transformational leap of faith, and a point in the process of the early Researtch, where I understood that my work had meaning for others than just myself.

CLUB DE LA FAYE, Copenhagen 2007-2013. Formed originally out of acquaintances made during Black Rose Trick Hotel (2005) and Seven Tales of Misery (2006); two works by SIGNA, in which I was performer in the second and immersed audience for a week in the first, CDLF was for several years my main home of creative pursuits. A collective manifesting collective manifestations aimed at the re-enchantment of everyday life inwardly and outwardly. Main themes for CDLF, are rebellion, ritual, the temporary autonomous zone, site-specific installation, intervention, interaction and immersion, fiction, liminal process, transformation, ecstasy, group trance, imagination, sensuality, collective subconsciousness, art activism. CDLF over the years developed a strong internal culture that is active to this day, and manifests immersive performances in various projects under other names and mixed constellations. Club de la Faye is a group of existences living and performing in the cracks between reality and fiction – a simmering egregore of multiple themes, finding pathways into the worlds of perceived reality, ushering forth gems of perception beyond language by transmutation.

Massive amounts of time and energy was dedicated into this club and it ́s activities, among which were also two works manifested as Framesetter, including: Embassy of Untrue Reality: Dark Questions Matter – Rituel du Papillon (2013). This particular work, was an immersive performance with Club de la Faye at the Explosive!-festival in Bremen, Germany. Around twenty of the clubs members took part in the nine-month process and three-day manifestation. I was Framesetter together with Louise Yaa Aisin (Yaa Lioness), and we created and led a form and process for the group, which aimed to give enhanced room for the expression of personal drives and dreams within the collective manifestation, while at the same time bringing the group to a new level as a whole. The structure involved many elements from previous performances with Club de la Faye, including the Embassy of Untrue Reality, the Creature, the Fairies Dance, Swimcats of the Swamp, and more. The installation was built as a combination of various “Transformational Zones” interconnected by a centralizing system of keys and visitors passport applications, for gradual exploration and challenge, in what was designed as a kind of personal initiatory journey for each applicant/visitor. Each Transformational Zone strongly manifested each particular performers approach to the theme of the work – which was transformation into a new paradigm, in a meeting with the personal path of the applicant/visitor at that moment within the same theme – hence providing the space for the individual performers, to grow personally out of the collective, in a collective effort of mutual growth and success, and to spread memes of this work further into the world.

To be active in CDLF, was to swirl in a melting-pot of ideas generated and tested both collectively and individually, and many of my other Researtch-related explorations of that time, also one way or the other found their way into that melting-pot, from which then further understanding and experience flowed straight back into the Researtch and so on.

TOWARDS PERSONAL GROWTH (Crea 2), Århus 2012 During my Master-education in Theater Pedagogy at Universität der Künste Berlin through Metropoluddannelserne in Copenhagen (2009-2012), I developed a workshop format (Crea), mainly inspired by Per Brahes and Finn Hesselagers pedagogies, filtered through my visions, which would be formulated in my graduation work at the education, “Towards Personal Growth”, including manifesting Crea 2.

Crea was the next major step in the Researtch. A workshop format as a basic version of a theater pedagogical method for training, teaching and research, designed to find ways to make it possible for an individual to “connect consciously with her being, become better equipped to follow her urge to manifest the being through heartful action, and furthermore, to establish that connection in an ongoing process of personal growth (autopoiesis)”.

SYMMPHONNY PARALLEL ACTION, Copenhagen 2014. This work manifested a practical experiment to work with synergies between different artistic acts, in a model inspired by Viewpoints (Bogart/Landau). Sparked from our friendship around a mutual interest in co-creativity, performance, post-drama and organic self-development through artistic practice, a collaboration between me and Håkan Magnusson went on continuously through sporadic experiments and discussions during mainly 2014 and 2015.

We then created two large-scale manifestations (“postdramatic concoctions”) in the Dome of Visions (Copenhagen), one of them being Symmphonny Parallel Action, which involved contributions on the day by Charlotte Ravn, Ella Fogelberg, Ellen Spens, Elin Kattler, Herman Müntzing, Håkan Magnusson, Iwona Rejmus, James Brewster, Kalle Elofsson, Lena Fogelberg, Mads-Bech Paluszewski-Hau, Magnus Grenstedt, Melissa Henderson, Mia Lyberth and Peter Tommila.

To the Researtch, this was a welcome experience in making large-scale collective work with participants that were as-til-then mainly unrelated with each-others work, as opposed to previous projects, which were always rooted in one or other creatively social melting-pot, with a shared everyday-culture of memes at play.

EMBRYO, Lodtonduh/Malmö 2015. A collaboration with Robert Bolin during our stay at the Theater Work Center, Lodtonduh, led to the gradual learning, and then gradual development of our own enthusiastic rendering, of the traditional Balinese dance Penasar. Focused on topics of presence and lightness as a way to approach the Balinese notion of Taksu, this minimalistic variation of the traditional Penasar, manifested as an Embryo to the attempted birth, of a new kind of performance art as lecture-and-dance. At our reunion in Sweden later that year, we presented this Embryo during a visit at the Sisters Academy, during a cozy morning-gathering.

The traditional Penasar is the dance of the Balinese royal jester – overlapping with the role of the clown. Our teacher of the Penasar, was Ida Bagus Alit, in collaboration with Per Brahe. Balinese dance in general, is based on the energies inherent in the human body, in holistic relation with the Balinese mythological universe as much as with the personal, psycho-physical universe, of the dancer. It can be understood as an intricate choreography of mudras, in a ceremonial, partly improvised presentation of a specific character, which is also an aspect of the psyche of the performer. The work with this, has the effect of opening up, integrating and expanding the physical and mental liberty of the performer, releasing contraction, increasing inspiration.

The Embryo was a welcome outcrop of my fourth journey to Bali, and became an aspect of the Taksu-project as a whole, which is described more in full within Researtch Frameworks.

THE SHIP AS TEACHER AT THE SISTERS ACADEMY, Copenhagen 2017. This was an individual piece of work, within a collective manifestation. In preparation of this engagement as teacher, pedagogue and performer, including designing and creating my own Tableaux / Transformational Zone, for this one month durational, immersive, installatory and liminal work, I created and shaped a form-in-process which by it ́s nature also is an act of fundamentally personal and continuous artistic expression.

Within the collective creation of the Sisters Academy 6 the Boarding School as performative frame, with enough room given me by the organizers to develop my own thing, I continued my Researtch through practical sessions on students of various backgrounds, combining teaching, ritualizing and field-research, while simultaneously expressing and exploring my being and urge performatively, and, for 27 days of that month, non-verbally. During my preparations, I brought the Researtch further, with a deeper approach to the work, which had developed through the combination of, on the one hand, material and insights from Researtch on Bali in 2015, and on the other, precious insights and sentiments that had surfaced during the experience of a burnout during late 2015 – early 2017. I connected the dimensions of the Researtch into a form, which I found to be more integrated, workable and precise, seeing the aspects of my path coming together in deeper synchronization, as always with that old Current at heart.

The collective manifestation which ensued, blessed me to work with this daily and quite undisturbed for a month within the right setting, bringing my work further, deepening my Researtch and my own understanding of it´s general themes in practice, both within and without of collective manifestations of immersive performance art, and for that matter, official artistic manifestations in general.

LJUS LJUDER, Århus 2018. In this working, I applied elements from my Researtch in a strictly museal installatory format, at the OVERGANG exhibition at Museum Ovartaci (Risskov). The working was an experiment with applying direct magical thinking to my Researtch, in the construction of magic potentiality in a portal of Art. The – potentially present – performer, consisted of the creative impulse, within the visiting audience itself; I was (non-)present in recorded form.

Museum Ovartaci with it´s history, and in the context of it´s process at that time, seemed ideal to the manifestation of this working, seeing that my Researtch suggests a reintroducing of the irrational on rational grounds in an irrational era, to the benefit of humanistic resilience among generations to come, and the victory of art over mental captivity, on a certainly personal, potentially collective, human level. The result I defined as an interactive non-performance art installation and immersive hyper-sigil.