«The Bird Ladies»

A room in total darkness where two practitioners navigate the room, working on the paper carvings using torches and lights. The room has three to five parallel paths with landscapes carved in paper and cardboard, an overgrown landscape attached to the floor that extends upwards towards the seal. The soundscape hangs like heavy fog in the room, thick, beautiful and penetrating in a soft way, almost like a lullaby. The practitioners interact in the dark room, they are two people who are transformed into an animal, into two bird shadows. An enormous bird's head carved out of black cardboard is attached to the heads of the artists as bird ladies. The bird ladies are embraced in black, in a dark afternoon dress, they are dressed respectfully to honor moments of loss in an exquisite moment of beauty and sorrow. An ongoing interaction with the audience will be shown. "The Bird Ladies" invites the audience into the shadows by giving them a flashlight. Our overall goal is to create secular ritual spaces for climate grief, a climate collapse in embodied ways. The performance will be part of Studium Actoris' contribution to "Kulturnatt" 2022 in Fredrikstad. Actor: Henriette Blakstad Director: Anne Mali Sæther Paper cutting artist: Guri Guri Henriksen Light designer: Paul Vidar Sævarang Sound: Silo Portem

The performance will be part of Studium Actoris' contribution to "Kulturnatt" 2022 in Fredrikstad.