Prøverommet at Østre

Androniki 

Androniki was raised Greek Orthodox. Jesus loved her, a bit too much maybe. On the way, she got envious of those 5 virgins of the parable, who forgot to stock up on oil for the Bridegroom and were locked out of the wedding chamber. Now she aspires to become one of them. 

In ‘Whole, away from Holiness’, Androniki takes up the preaching podium to tell her story, enriched with the use of archival material including photos, videos and SMS messages. A chantress, Chrysanthi Geropoulou, sings a traditional Greek tune honouring Androniki of the past, murdered for transgressing gender boundaries. 

The audiovisuals were developed during a residency at BEK – Bergen Center for Electronic Arts.

Content notice: the performance contains adult material including references to sexual assault.

Dienke Groenhout 

Dienke Groenhout is an artist/theater maker who likes to wrap big themes in small stories. Her work likes to visually impress and leave you puzzled and thinking. There is humour in her work and often the audience plays a role without noticing it.

At Prøverommet, Dienke will try out some scenes for a new piece ‘…and god saw that it was almost good’. We are in god’s work space where the latest creation is being tested with several try-out models. Is it a masterpiece? Or a total failure? When will it be good enough? In this try-out you will see some of god’s samples; multiple connected creatures. How can they move? How will they develop?

With dancers: Lorena Olguín, Katja Nyqvist, Malin Vangsnes Weaver, Eli Aurland Sæle, Ewa Lorenc, Ine Terese Hogstad and Joana Vilà Soriano.

The project has been developed during an artist residency at USF Verftet.

Frida Agger and Mo Menz 

We are Frida and Mo. Mo: I love music and play saxophone and some other instruments. I like swimming in the cold sea, coffee, cooking, deep talk, doing weird things with old computers and having good people around me. Frida: I love to read and write, sundays, to swim in the rain, to observe my surroundings through a lens of words and to be around people. We are excited to work with human connections through the performance, with the people coming to the venue and each other. 

A performance based on readings of haiku poems, improvised saxophone playing and connecting through arts. Based on the belief that love isn’t a cake, but a sourdough, that only grows, when you share it. And that listening is more important than fully understanding. 

Content notice: the performance involves some light audience participation.

Nina Eriksson 

Nina Eriksson’s work gives space to evasive, contradicting and malleable narratives of queerness and desire. Working in soft sculpture and text, she investigates what a queer sculptural and textual vernacular can be. Recently, her work with temporality, writing, and sculpture has led her to live performance.

To Prøverommet, Eriksson brings a second trial of the performance ’butch renaissance tear well: gay jobs’. The work employs fiction and humour to talk about the demands of capitalist structures, and touches on fetishisation of productivity: Is productivity the same as pleasure? Is pleasure the same as purpose? 

Content notice: the performance features partial nudity, and a brief mention of sexual harassment. It does not involve audience participation. 

Sean Minhui Tashi Chua with Ronja Fismen Michelsen

Sean Minhui Tashi Chua is a multidisciplinary scientist and artist working across earth observation and data science with a focus on polar regions, sound and immersive storytelling. He is a researcher at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen. Ronja Fismen Michelsen’s multidisciplinary work seeks to strip off layers of conditioning, revealing that which is raw and human.

Sean Minhui Tashi Chua’s project has been developed during a residency at BEK – Bergen Center for Electronic Arts.