Interview with Katarina Skår Lisa
Photo: Torgrim Halvari. Costume: Ramona Salo Myrseth.
Performance: Katarina Skår Lisa
Varanger / Finnmark, 25. September 2019
Q: Why / when / how did you start to work with performance, what is your background, how did you arrive at doing performance?
I started with performance as a part of my enquiry and interest for stillness and a certain feeling of ‘truth’ in my movements. After my formal dance education in 2010 I searched for ways of expression in a way where a personal vision could appear through an intention of honesty and clarity in actions. I met with artists / teachers / schools who worked with image-creation, performance and ways of ‘visual storytelling’ through both visual art and body-somatic practices in space and time, and they influenced me further in working with performance. Through Performance Art Oslo I have also been given the opportunity to witness several works and to perform. Korean performance artist and choreographer Kyuja Bae has been my close collaborator since 2014 and she has been an important supporter and co-creator for parts of my practice today. We worked amongst other things on how the presence of the body could share life stories through intuitive, poetic and visual frames. Right now, I am concerned with working with choreography and performance that conveys the relationship between landscapes and culture, human beings and nature.
Q: What is your process like when you make a performance, from idea to actual work?
The process of making a performance can consist of a choreographic practice, where I engage in creating room for interdisciplinary meetings / collaborations. The expressions from an interdisciplinary collaboration seem to strengthen the individual works and create a collective expression with different nuances. Other authors involved can also be landscapes and sentient beings. I may also have a ‘vision’ of themes, mental images and pictures that I reflect upon, organize and meet, one by one, and see where it brings me. For the performance at PAO festival I will collaborate with the artist and costume designer Ramona Irene Salo Myrseth. For a year we’ve explored the relation between textile, movement, costume and performance as storytelling, an exploration we will go deeper into at the festival.
Q: Can you tell us about your latest project?
I was engaged in a project called ‘Spacing between us’, a durational performance installation composed together with three other artists: Natalia Korotkova, Simen Korsmo Robertsen and Mingxuan Tan. The project was a collaboration between performance art, music, visual art, and design. It took place at Galleri Seilduken at The National Academy of the Arts in Oslo. It lasted for a week with three days consisting of an open exibition / performance. We explored; ‘Space of voice’, ‘Body space’, ‘Sound space’ and ‘Space of clay’. My element,‘Body space’, was stillness and movement in the meeting with the other elements. Being present and vulnerable in the space for three days, four hour each day, was both enriching and challenging. The space, the objects, the sounds and the stories told gave support and openness for introspection and reflection in a state that could be felt as timeless.
Q: What role does performance art have in your life / artistic praxis? Do you also work within other fields, like installation, sculpture, drawing, and other expressions? How do they influence / inform each other?
I think performance art gives me a space and courage to express the necessity, urgency and care for life and lives. I attended the performance studies with BBB Johannes Deimling in 2016 where we explored space, time, presence and material.
It made me see how much possibilities / potential that exists within each element and how each one of us carries personal and collective stories. Performance art reminds me that we all share stories within life, which reflects similarities, differences, colors, nuances and perspectives in unique ways.
Q: With what kind of form / material do you express yourself and use in your work and how did you arrive at using this material?
My main expression is choreography of movement in interaction with object, materials, space and landscapes! I find that objects can be a collaborative partner! I sometimes also work with text and photography.
Q: How do you experience or consider the audience / surrounding? What space / surrounding do you find interesting to work in? How does your surrounding influence your work? Do you involve the public? If so, how?
I read from another artist’s interview from PAO festival that ‘Audience is everything!’
I can agree with her and I wish to add to this statement. What if everything around us is the audience, but we are also ourselves the audience? With artistic practices we have a good foundation for possible creating networks of good relations between the inner and the outer landscapes, and from being to being, I feel.
Q: How do you find landscapes to be a collaborator in artistic works?
Landscapes are a necessary collaborator in my artistic works, because I am a part of several landscapes: historically, culturally, spiritually and physically. My past, present and future actions are co-dependent on the landscape. Interior and exterior landscape / space also exist with me. I view the natural, organic responses from the gaze of being human, wishing to listen with more sensibility to all that which exists through life. I find that I can witness and act out movement in an extended sense with the landscape as my collaborator.
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Q: Why / when / how did you start to work with performance, what is your background, how did you arrive at doing performance?
I started with performance as a part of my enquiry and interest for stillness and a certain feeling of ‘truth’ in my movements. After my formal dance education in 2010 I searched for ways of expression in a way where a personal vision could appear through an intention of honesty and clarity in actions. I met with artists / teachers / schools who worked with image-creation, performance and ways of ‘visual storytelling’ through both visual art and body-somatic practices in space and time, and they influenced me further in working with performance. Through Performance Art Oslo I have also been given the opportunity to witness several works and to perform. Korean performance artist and choreographer Kyuja Bae has been my close collaborator since 2014 and she has been an important supporter and co-creator for parts of my practice today. We worked amongst other things on how the presence of the body could share life stories through intuitive, poetic and visual frames. Right now, I am concerned with working with choreography and performance that conveys the relationship between landscapes and culture, human beings and nature.
Q: What is your process like when you make a performance, from idea to actual work?
The process of making a performance can consist of a choreographic practice, where I engage in creating room for interdisciplinary meetings / collaborations. The expressions from an interdisciplinary collaboration seem to strengthen the individual works and create a collective expression with different nuances. Other authors involved can also be landscapes and sentient beings. I may also have a ‘vision’ of themes, mental images and pictures that I reflect upon, organize and meet, one by one, and see where it brings me. For the performance at PAO festival I will collaborate with the artist and costume designer Ramona Irene Salo Myrseth. For a year we’ve explored the relation between textile, movement, costume and performance as storytelling, an exploration we will go deeper into at the festival.
Q: Can you tell us about your latest project?
I was engaged in a project called ‘Spacing between us’, a durational performance installation composed together with three other artists: Natalia Korotkova, Simen Korsmo Robertsen and Mingxuan Tan. The project was a collaboration between performance art, music, visual art, and design. It took place at Galleri Seilduken at The National Academy of the Arts in Oslo. It lasted for a week with three days consisting of an open exibition / performance. We explored; ‘Space of voice’, ‘Body space’, ‘Sound space’ and ‘Space of clay’. My element,‘Body space’, was stillness and movement in the meeting with the other elements. Being present and vulnerable in the space for three days, four hour each day, was both enriching and challenging. The space, the objects, the sounds and the stories told gave support and openness for introspection and reflection in a state that could be felt as timeless.
Q: What role does performance art have in your life / artistic praxis? Do you also work within other fields, like installation, sculpture, drawing, and other expressions? How do they influence / inform each other?
I think performance art gives me a space and courage to express the necessity, urgency and care for life and lives. I attended the performance studies with BBB Johannes Deimling in 2016 where we explored space, time, presence and material.
It made me see how much possibilities / potential that exists within each element and how each one of us carries personal and collective stories. Performance art reminds me that we all share stories within life, which reflects similarities, differences, colors, nuances and perspectives in unique ways.
Q: With what kind of form / material do you express yourself and use in your work and how did you arrive at using this material?
My main expression is choreography of movement in interaction with object, materials, space and landscapes! I find that objects can be a collaborative partner! I sometimes also work with text and photography.
Q: How do you experience or consider the audience / surrounding? What space / surrounding do you find interesting to work in? How does your surrounding influence your work? Do you involve the public? If so, how?
I read from another artist’s interview from PAO festival that ‘Audience is everything!’
I can agree with her and I wish to add to this statement. What if everything around us is the audience, but we are also ourselves the audience? With artistic practices we have a good foundation for possible creating networks of good relations between the inner and the outer landscapes, and from being to being, I feel.
Q: How do you find landscapes to be a collaborator in artistic works?
Landscapes are a necessary collaborator in my artistic works, because I am a part of several landscapes: historically, culturally, spiritually and physically. My past, present and future actions are co-dependent on the landscape. Interior and exterior landscape / space also exist with me. I view the natural, organic responses from the gaze of being human, wishing to listen with more sensibility to all that which exists through life. I find that I can witness and act out movement in an extended sense with the landscape as my collaborator.
<< Back