PAB Local: BREAK(ing habits)
Bergen City Centre
Saturday, June 5
14:00-18:00 PM

In this edition of PAB Local, we aspired to awaken the city and breathe life into it through a program consisting of actual >PHYSICAL< live-performances!

PAB Local: BREAK(ing habits)!
We have selected four performances that we thought poked at a nerve in the time, about isolation, communication and longing.

During these four hours you are invited on a journey through the city, starting on a sailboat at Bryggen, passing by a character with a lot on their mind at Folk & Røvere, lifting the gaze through Jonas Reins gate for a balcony dialogue between a dancer and a bass, before ending up at a traditional Swedish Midsummer celebration in Nygårdsparken.

Participating artists

Photo: Madihe Ghraibi - Performance Vilde Jensen

VILDE JENSEN
The sailboat Milonga, Bryggen

I work relationally and intersubjectively with performance and rituals. Elements from rites of passage are often used in my site- and situation-specific performances. Playfulness and humour are helpful tools I use to pinpoint absurdities or make the abstract tangible. In a society that becomes more and more logical and disembodied, I try to add what I myself think is missing. Myths and stories makes it possible to elevate the little things we surround us with and create situations where the consequences of our actions and interactions can differ from everyday life, opening new opportunities of thought and action.

A boat and an apartment share the concept of being an enclosed space. In “Point of Departure we will investigate both their differences and similarities through conversations in and on Milonga, a 29 ft sailboat, which is also my home.

Photo: Madihe Ghraibi - Performance Ida Maardhed

IDA CHRISTINA MAARDHED
Folk & Røvere, Sparebanksgaten 4

Ida Christina Mårdhed is an artist from south Sweden, currently based in Bergen. Her works vary in media and audio/visual approach, but often repeats the same usage of repetitive rituals and other ritualistic re-arrangements, from a position somewhere in between private therapy/esotery and political social realism.

«I miss mantra» is a performance lifting a situation out of its singularity – out of its lonely, secluded, established and destructive confinement – into the presence of the public space, eyes and ears. It’s a prayer; a séance; a staccato; a loop; a voice and a typewriter and a person dressed in comfy clothes, just going on and on and on and on; they say pouring out your thoughts and emotions is good for your mental health, whilst dwelling is not. This is both.

Photo: Madihe Ghraibi - Performance Kristine Nilsen Oma

KRISTINE NILSEN OMA
Two balconies, 3rd floor, Jonas Reins gate 7a

Can the pandemic awaken a spirit of empathy?
The versatile bass player and composer; Ole Amund Gjersvik and choreographer and ME patient; Kristine Nilsen Oma, are improvising in response to each other.

Kristine Nilsen Oma’s dance-art of abstract shapes, movements and sounds embody years of isolation. As one of the activists behind #millionsmissingnorway she uses her chronic illness to express the stir-crazy embodied feelings stemming from being inside a chronically ill body for 10 years. This performance is performed from her quarantine on the tiny balcony, and the sounds of the instrument are coming from the tiny balcony beside her.

#millionsmissing
https://kristinenilsenoma.wordpress.com/

Photo: Madihe Ghraibi - Performance Iben Mansfeld

IBEN MANSFELD
Upper part of Nygårdsparken

Iben Mansfeld (they/them) is an artist and studies at the art academy in Bergen, Norway. Their work are socially critical with ambitions to break taboos and challenge how we perceive the world. Topics such as power structures, gender, body and mental health are consistent in their work. They aim to make the audience feel constructive discomfort and be able to put it in a larger context to see whats behind the structures and societal problems.

I welcome you to a day of traditional Swedish midsummer celebrations. The traditional food, drinks and maypole, presented in the distanced format we’ve become familiar with this past year. The mixing of this tradition usually associated with unity and social interaction and our new limiting circumstances, awakens a feeling of longing which I am excited to explore with you.

www.mansfeld.no

PAB Local: BREAK(ing habits) is curated by:
Tanja Silvestrini & Madihe Gharibi
Poster design by Atie Habibi