- Where were you born?

Glasgow. But I moved to England when I was about a year old.

- Where do you live?

Ytre Arna. Bergen's best-kept secret.

- What pronouns do you use?

Whichever get thrown at me. Because I'm bald, I sometimes get mistaken for a (very short) man from behind.

- What makes you work with performance?

I don't only work in performance, and I love the quiet solitude of sitting at my desk to compose or write. When I do perform, my experience is contingent to some extent on the context—giving a concert is very different from performing art, and improvising is not the same as playing from notated music. But they do all share a demand for one to be absolutely present, which I love. And improvising a performance of any kind is one of the most exciting, life-affirming experiences I know. I always approach these believing I can bend time, space and perception through my actions: in some small way, the world will never be the same again.

- Do you have any rituals before performing?

If possible, I sleep for a bit. And do some yin yoga.

– What is the best performance you have done so far? Why?

I can't say. I sometimes think I've done a great performance and then look or listen back at documentation and am not so sure. And vice versa: I've done some performances that didn't feel great about that were received very well and I wonder why my experience was the way it was. Performance is slippery like that. I did love performing inside Dan Mihălțianu's black water installation, The Capital Pool & the Associated Public, in the Romanian Pavillion, at Venice Biennale in 2019, though.

–Are you currently working on any performance?

As a composer, vocalist and director, I have quite a few projects on the go at the moment, but I'm not making a performance art piece of any kind. My mum died last December and, as I slowly pull myself together after the shock of her totally unexpected disappearance from this earth, I am beginning to gather threads that I hope will lead to a performance drawn from her life—and from my family's experience of her as a human being. I'm also off to Nigeria in August, to collaborate with a talented young dancer called Femi Adebajo.

We'll continue our work at WRAP in Bergen in October, so I'm excited to see where that project will go, and to share it with the people of my home town.

– What advice would you give to someone who is interested in working with performance?

Keep your belly to the ground and your head in the clouds. Sniff things out. Take your time.

Be deadly serious. Keep it light. Be resilient. Have compassion. Don't bull-shit.

– Can you give us a few names of performance artists who inspire you?

Stretching the definition in some cases, but here goes: Buster Keaton, Bruno S., Eddie Izzard, Phil Minton, Leigh Bowery, Gerhard Stäbler and Kunsu Shim (with whom I've worked quite a lot), and closer to home (literally as well as metaphorically), Kurt Johannessen, who was one of the first artists who got me interested in performance art as a practice myself, and I'm still really drawn to the vulnerability, warmth and humour of his work.