Member of the month: Marit Tunestveit Dyre

What makes you work with performance?

Performance is a form of expression that requires the presence of both artist and audience, as well as the time it takes being present, this I can like. Personally, I am not particularly fond of being in the spotlight, and one's physical presence is essential when working performatively. I think there is something in this discomfort that I experience that the focus gives that appeals to me about performance as a form of expression.

The location, the surroundings, the weather and the desired or unwanted human interaction affect how a work takes shape, and what I further focus on. The present is reflected in the work. The fact that there are so many uncontrollable factors when working with performance appeals to me.

In addition I like the role and material value of the body. When I work performatively, I often use my own body actively to "verbalize" and visualize actions that often reflect my own embodied experiences. At the same time, I always use my own body actively while reading the performative works of others.

Do you have any rituals before performing?

When working solo, I am in need of some quiet time to gather myself, to go through the idea, and to talk through the actions I have planed. When working with collectively, the needs of the group are emphasized.

What was the best performance you have done so far? Why

I am quite self-critical and rarely satisfied with the performances I do, which is why I find it difficult to "favor" a previous work. But from experience there is always something, for example specific actions and or material elements that capture my focus and continue to be part of my further work processes. In addition, I really like it when I don't quite know what I'm doing, when there is something unresolved that doesn't quite make sense. This drives me forward.

Are you currently working on any performance?

Always. Right now, the focus is on a work grant application with a deadline on September 1th. I work performatively with text when I try to verbalize ideas and areas of interest, which are internalized in me, but not previously verbalized to others. I strive to evoke a curiosity in the jury for "that" what captures my focus. I move back and forth, physically and mentally. Very critical of how it all fits together, right up until the application deadline.

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

Apply to PAB OPEN 2027! The Application portal opens on 4th of September at 09:00. For more info: https://performanceartbergen.no/en/program-overview/open-call-pab-open-2027/

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

The list is long, here is a small selection: Frauke Materlik, Henrik Koppen, Ian Nesbitt, Anikka Kahrs, Cheng Xinhao, Amber Ablett, Kurt Johannesen, Pavana Reid, and Rita Marhaug!

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Member of the Month: Alwynne Pritchard

- 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.

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Member of the Month: Anne Marte Eidseth Rygh

Where were you born?

Volda, Sunnmøre

Where do you live?

Stavanger, Rogaland

What pronouns do you use?

She/her

– What makes you work with performance?

The live element, the risk which unfold excitement. Ephemeral gifts exposed through action,

The raw exchanges and connection with cocreators. The here and now-as never the same

– Do you have any rituals before performing?

I do a series of breathing exercises to heighten awareness and similarly voice exercises echoing site related observations. Spending time in silence to sharpen the senses. The rituals respond in relation to how long the action is intended.

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

I would include all experiences throughout as valuable in its own right and can share one: It was a duo work and collaboration that was mutually meaningful and we performed a durational piece where the audience decided to bring sleeping bags and hang out through the night and stay with us till sunrise. When we prepared to leave, audience members responded with inviting us for breakfast in their home. We were bruised and exhausted and was taken care of until healed. This experience and response will always have a special place in my heart and motivates me still. This experience also led me to start and found PAS (Performance Art Stavanger) A durational organizational work I consider an act of response; the act of service and giving back to an extended community.

– Are you currently working on any performance?

Ideas for performance are shaping continuously and in recent years geology have been a focus that have brought depth to a series of exercises with enduring stones and soft listeners

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

Don’t let ideas get stuck on paper too long, get up and do it- trust that a trained ability to play will exercise the full potential of an idea, feed and enrich the work by total commitment. Shift focus from solo mindset to a common cause, what is good for an extended community will be good for your individual practice, so get involved, become an active member of a performance art union or any ideal collective and engage in creating future premises

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

I am inspired by artists that stood the test of time when performance art was and sometimes still is a minority, the ones that did not give up or shift their practice content for capital gain but got creative and continued through bad and good times, the ones who support their fellow artists in addition to their own practice, the willingness to contribute to societal change by endurance, the ones who planted trees for future generations to enjoy.

I am also fortunate to be teaching performance at an art school for over a decade where students show unmatched courage diving in to performance for the first time. Some of them continue and witnessing their start point develop to a professional expression or life/art practice, is something that serves as perpetual inspiration.

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Member of the Month: Mia Øquist

-Where were you born?

Born in Lofoten – Hadsel in 1980

-Where do you live?

Bergen

-What pronouns do you use?

She/her

– What makes you work with performance?

Moments are just there in the present, you never get them back, just through photos/videos/stories. Moments bring pleasure, sorrow, fear, boredom, surprises, knowledge, concentrations, meditations, actions, visualizations and so much more. The performance art presents all this live, it`s so many strategies and methods. The diversity is so exiting, both to perform and be an audience. I think that’s why a large part of my artistic practice is performance art.

In my childhood, art and theater were around me. My parents and their friends worked with art and scenography. I was going to a theater school, and I could go to the theater at a reduced price. The scenography, visual elements, and the moments were so inspiring.

So, when I studied at Kunstskolen in Bergen and Rita Marhaug taught us performance art in 2003, I understood that art could be produced live. The art for me got a new energy.

After that course, a lot of my work has been performance art works up to now in 2026.

– Do you have any rituals before performing?

If I perform together with others, I remember to say good luck, or have a good performance, etc.

Put on high-heeled shoes when I perform a woman I normally am not in daily life.

Physical performance requires me to be in shape and gives motivation to train in the weeks and months before the performance.

Prepare visual elements for the actions.

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

The best performance moments have been at festivals, or when I have produced performance projects or improvisations that involved more people than just me, and we feel we have done something exciting together.

It is difficult to choose one performance, since I have produced many performances and used different strategies in them.

– Are you currently working on any performance?

An old artist said to me that the most important thing about being an artist is not to give up, and to always have something in the art you are engaged in. So, I do a performance every Monday morning at the same time and place in 16 locations, with a duration from 07:50–10:05. That’s a performance art and drawing project I have done almost every Monday since May 2022, and every Monday in June since 2016. I have done drawings of the actions; some of the drawings are artworks, and some are printed out and used in the performance, a drawing on a bottle, a drawing on a postcard I send, etc. So, in a way, I activate the drawings every Monday.

Apart from the Monday performances, my next performance will be in Bergen on the 8th of March with my friend Anette Friedrich Johannesen, and I will join the improvisations at PAB Open sessions that will be arranged. And I will be in the workgroup for the next PAB Open 2027.

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

Let the performance be something that is important to you, something you believe in. Artistic practice you have already worked with, a story that is important to you, a craft that you believe in. Do it with your heart, and play.

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

An inspiration is the people who have created a way to think about art without the frames, and art that is in the moment. The experimental schools Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. The leader of the stage workshop at Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer, who produced the Triadisches Ballett with geometric shapes in 1922. The artists in the Fluxus movement, where life became part of the art.

For the contemporary performance art scene, the Array Collective with Belfast-based artists who won the large British Turner Prize. And all the committed artists who work to give knowledge of performance art, such as Johannes Deimling at Performance Art Studies. And also all artists who work for diversity in the performance community in Norway, such as

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Member of the Month: Rita Marhaug

- Where were you born?

Bergen

- Where do you live?

Bergen and Lofoten

- What pronouns do you use?

She/her

– What makes you work with performance?

In general, I work within a wide spectre of methods and materials, and performance is one of big importance in my art production. I started out as a ‘picture’ maker in the -80ies, but entering the -90ies I looked for more confronting and direct ways of presenting art. Performance became the solution. I still consider myself a ‘picture maker’, where also live situations is included along with my installations, sculpture and video works.

– Do you have any rituals before performing?

Before starting, I like to concentrate at least for 30 min. I do not eat heavy meals during a day of performance and I like to work through my body; emphasising nails, skin, and hair as well as warming up or stretching a bit.

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

That is very hard to tell, I have done a big number over the years with many variations, in materials and teams, alone and in collaboration with one or more partners.

– Are you currently working on any performance?

This spring I am preparing for the event Håsong at Osterøy that will take place Saturday 27th of June. I really am looking forward to develop something new, to surprise myself and hopefully also the audience! Probably the outcome of this work will partly result in my contributions to Kraft Gallery and the group project VEGGEN that will take place between 8th of May and 26th of August, also this year.

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

Be curious and brave! Listen to your inner voice, but also to your colleagues and to the audience. Do not be afraid of cutting details and work on simplifying the whole of a composition. I have never regretted doing that myself.

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

This is of course very difficult after having worked with art for over 40 years. There are so many inspiring artists. It is easy to mention big important artist like Gina Pane, Meret Oppenheim and many more, but to be honest, for me the local art scene has been of greater importance, artists I have seen doing beautiful performances, feeling their intensity of the moment. The first performance I ever saw, was done by Kurt Johannessen in 1984. He later has become a good friend, a discussion partner and fellow organizer of performance art. Other inspiring artist from our local scene is Anette F. Johannessen and Pavana Reid. Both representing a sophisticated and personal artistic language. Finally I will mention Marilyn Arsem for broadening my horizon of time, a fantastic performance artist!

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PAB is Moving!

We are starting 2026 with great news! Performance Art Bergen is moving into its own premises at C. Sundtsgate 38 – formerly the home of artist-run space aerial.

The space is 60m2, which is too large for PAB alone, so we are looking for two performance artists to share it with us and become part of this exciting performance hub. The artists must be PAB members or be willing to become members when joining the space.

The monthly rent is NOK 2500 per person, including electricity and internet. The artists will have access to a shared kitchen and bathroom, as well as the main space upstairs, which can be used for performances, meetings, workshops, etc.

Available from 1 February.

For the ones interested, please send your short bio and some images of your performance practice to Nayara Leite: nayara [at] performanceartbergen.no. You’re also welcome to get in touch for more information and to arrange a viewing!

Member of the Month: Carol Stampone

-where were you born?

I was born in the corridor of a hospital in a small city in the countryside of Brazil. The place smelled like café com leite and social inequality. It received an indigenous name, Guaxupé. Most of us did not learn its meaning. When I was nine years old, someone told me that in Tupi-Guarani it meant ‘valley of the bees’. Strange. I do not recall many bees in my first home.

-where do you live?

I live by a mountain where, during summer, I always see bees. My apartment is small and it has big windows. It is perfect for me. I can see the sea, smell the rain, and be in the center of Bergen in 10 minutes by bike. During autumn, when the sun shines, I feels like I live inside a painting.

-what pronouns do you use?

She and her, most of the time.

Some days I wonder if they would be more appropriate. Inside me, there are so many fragments, so many versions waiting to become a part of the world.

– What makes you work with performance?

I like the smell of aliveness and the surprises that performance brings me. More than that, it is the closest I get to my own face.

In part, I like performance because there I can just become, without labels.

Once, I was knitting in front of a painting and letting my water dance with it. I took my time to contemplate. Some people stopped me to ask if that was a performance. I did not intend it to become one. But it was. Because the encounter between some of my pieces and some of the obsessions poured into that painting was witnessed by strangers.

Perhaps what I like the most about performance is that it creates sites for us to witness one another, without judgment. Other times, it becomes a playground or a place to heal, for a moment. Alone and together.

When I perform and I am really into it, when I reach what I like to call “a performative high,” my little pains, my marks, do not suppress me. Instead, I am present with what is. How wonderful it is when one feels the taste of the messiness that makes life roar.

– Do you have any rituals before performing?

Yes. I like to shake, shake, and shake. I put on some music and use a good hour to move my bones. I acknowledge my fears and choose not to let them eat my joy. I refuse to multitask. For that precious, limited amount of time, I allow myself to become the monster that lives in me.

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

I don’t know. And I am not sure if it makes sense to give attention to this question.

What I hope is that each performance will become a place to encounter a stranger, for a moment. Sometimes that stranger might live in me, other times, in others.

If I think of “best” as the one when I fully fulfilled what was expected from me, then I would say my birth. I was born in a hospital corridor. The nurse was repeatedly telling my mother to shut up. She had enjoyed making me, now it was time for her to endure the consequences and do her job, push me out. I did my part and went through my mother’s vagina. I was told I came out full of shit and that I screamed very loudly in that nurse’s face. My mother felt a little bit better for a second. But fiction apart, we are just coadjuvants in our own births, aren’t we? I should not take credit for my mother’s work…

If I think of ‘best’ as the one who gave me the most intense feeling of aliveness, then I need to return to my initial answer. That feeling can not be measured. Perhaps it should not. As a performer, for me, a good performance is not one that someone else labels as such, but one where the sense of aliveness comes to me and to others. It is one where, at least for a moment, something unexpected happens. I hope that before I die, each one of my pieces can taste, smell, and touch aliveness, for an impossible second at a time.

– Are you currently working on any performance?

Yes. At the moment, I am working on a performative lecture which will be shared as part of BEK symposium next month. Like a lot of my current work, it is inspired by books, which I like to call my companions. This one is on Change, Time, and the Burnout Society. I am lucky, and the Brazilian composer Késia Decote will accompany me with some improvisations on her little piano.

At the same time, I am trying to find the steps for the work in progress I will share next January as part of Dans en fest. This time, I am playing with how to translate my latest book fragile certainties, into a performance.

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

Do it!

Jump into it. Lick it. Dance with it. Write a silly text and say it out loud. Go out and start a conversation with a stranger to warm up. Whichever way works for you, dare to do it.

If you are shy, maybe you can find a beautiful soul and invite her to do something unusual with you.

Ps: When I read this question, I immediately remembered Mary Oliver’s last sentence of the poem Summer Day. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

For me, performance is a reminder that one must dare to ask oneself this fundamental question, again and again. This fragment of a poem can remove you from survival mode and carry you back to the liminal spaces where aliveness knows how to flourish.

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

There are so many, known and unknown. I will name the last two that touched me.

Last spring, my dear friend Rita María Muñoz Farías gave birth to a poetic and strange performance on memory and language that made me feel so many different things at the same time. It was pure gentleness supported by a very honest and vulnerable creative process.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed Version(s) by Dorothée Munyaneza in collaboration with Christian Nka and Ben LaMarGay, as part of the ongoing São Paulo Bienal. Again, a work that started with what is personal and left open, in front of my skin, pains that are children of injustices. I laughed, thought, and felt with it. It was beautiful and ugly. Relatable and so strange. It astonished me. It left me open, staring at some of my undigested preconceptions. Later, I noticed a little desire to start boxing growing in my left arm.

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Member of the Month: Marte Dahl

- Where were you born? Bærum (Norway)

- Where do you live? Oslo/Bærum (Norway)

-What pronouns do you use? She/her

– What makes you work with performance?

I work with performance because it offers a mix of unpredictability and control. I enjoy the spontaneity of live performances, where anything can happen, but I also appreciate performing for the camera, where I can control the final outcome.

Performance also provides endless opportunities to explore the body—through movement, costume, space, place, and materials—and how these elements come together to shape a compelling experience.

– Do you have any rituals before performing?

I usually take a few minutes to myself to clear my head or go through my plan—if I have one. Finally, I switch into “performance mode,” which is like flipping a switch in my head. It’s a different version of me, ready and focused on the task at hand.

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

It’s difficult to choose the best one, but if I have to, I’d say “Paper Cut (come play with me)”, performed during PAB OPEN at Hotel Villa Terminus in 2024. This performance was really fun because I got to be more playful and invite the audience to participate. I also had the chance to perform it six times, with each iteration being similar, yet always unique.

– Are you currently working on any performance?

Yes, I’m working on a solo exhibition in February 2026, where I plan to incorporate performance. Right now, I’m in the process of figuring out — what, how, when, and who. I’m also creating a performance for Hanna Pherson’s exhibition in November 2025.

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

Go for it! Push your own limits, but only as far as you're comfortable with (don’t let anyone else push them for you). Read about it, explore images, drawings, and videos of past performances, and definitely check out some live performances too.

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

I’d like to mention a few artists who inspire me across performance, choreography, music, and costume design: Rebecca Horn, Ingrid Torvund, Tori Wrånes, Oskar Schlemmer, Yvonne Rainer, Martha Graham, Bruce Nauman, Erwin Wurm, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage.

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Between Sky & Sea VII: Flying Blind

From August 26 to September 8, 2025, Longva AIR and Performance Art Bergen invite you to the 7th version of Between Sky & Sea, an international performance initiative that takes place every three years on various Norwegian islands. The festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Between Sky & Sea VII: Flying Blind is a multifaceted project that facilitates artistic production, conversations, seminars, tours and outreach events. 7 international artists are invited to develop new performative works inspired and informed by discussions with invited guests and the surroundings as part of the work stay on Skuløy/Flemsøy. Read more about the invited artists here.

On Saturday, September 6th at 14:00 we would like to welcome you to an open day with performances with international artists in the area around the large, red boathouse in Longva harbor on Skuløy/Flemsøy. The event will be held outdoors, so dress according to the weather! We will round off the performance program with a communal dinner for artists and the public at the Longva AIR. Registration for the dinner will be available.

Between Sky & Sea VII: Flying Blind is a pluriperspective project, which wants to investigate the possibility for specific materialities', or peculiar places’ immediate impact on us by way of something we might sense. Could we call those places «privileged points»? If this is the case – what implications might such «privileged points» in the landscape carry with them for the development of more-than-human communities? Could we envision collective experiences - in investigating processes, with a group of artists, or together with a wider public – as something to break open for new ways of looking at our communities, from the local to a planetary level?

These are the basic questions of our time and for this project. They are also fundamental questions for the given place on Nordøyane/Skuløya, Longva AiR, and the already started future of a growing development of artistic activity on Nordøyane – as a value on its own, as a practice with spreading consequences for the local environment, and as a node in an extended network of similar (rural) places in the Nordic countries.

Between Sky & Sea VII: Flying Blind is organized in collaboration between Longva AIR and Performance Art Bergen (PAB). Longva AIR is an international art arena under development for professional artists, writers and others with ties to the contemporary art field. The main goal is to strengthen the professional infrastructure for art in the region. Located on Skuløy/Flemsøy, one of the North Islands that lies 24 km from Ålesund.

Deltakarane i prosjektet / The participants in the project:

ARTISTS:

Signe Lidén (NO)

Bent Erik Myrvoll (NO)

Marita Isobel Solberg (NO)

Elin Sundström (SE)

Kamilė Pikelytė (LT)

Ian Nesbitt (UK)

Anne-Marte Eidseth Rygh (NO)

LECTURERS:

Trond Lødøen, arkeolog I archeologist, Universitetet i Bergen (NO)

Harald Dyrkorn, samfunnsvitar I social scientist (NO)

Michelle Teran, kunstnar/forskar I artist/researcher (CA/DE)

Sissel Lillebostad, vitne I witness (NO)

ORGANIZERS:

Terese Longva

Rita Marhaug

Sabine Popp

Longva kunstnarresidens / Longva AiR

Performance Art Bergen

PHOTOGRAPHER:

Nayara Leite (BR/NO)

Mateo Christensen (NO)

PR:

Marit Tunestveit Dyre (NO)

Henrik Koppen (NO)

COORDINATOR:

Lillian Bjørdal (NO)

COORDINATOR FOOD:

Malene Pedersen (DK)

For more information:

www.nordoyane.no/

www.performanceartbergen.no

www.betweenskyandsea.com

@longva_air @performanceartbergen

Foto/Photo: Margarida Paiva

This years event is supported by: Arts and Culture Norway, Norwegian Visual Artists Fund, Møre and Romsdal county council, Nordic Culture Point

Member of the Month: Henrik Koppen

– Where were you born? Velsvik in Møre og Romsdal

– Where do you live? Reykjavík, Iceland

– What pronouns do you use? He/him

– What makes you work with performance?

I am excited about the direct encounter with the audience, and to explore and figure things out together with them. 

– Do you have any rituals before performing?

Stretching, and listening to music.  

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

The performance I am most happy with is also my most recent one. It is the performance “The Weeping Madonna” that was my master project in Iceland University of the Arts, shown in Reykjavik January 2025. The performance takes the form of a ceremony where different statues come to life through alchemical experiments. I was trying out many (for me) new things, the risks of that made it more interesting to me, and together with the audience I entered a truly weird space that I found really enjoyable. 

– Are you currently working on any performance?

Now I am working on a new performance from the same universe and logic as “The Weeping Madonna”. This time I am researching cabinets of curiosities, as a collection of stories or objects, where fiction and reality are mixed. It might take form as a lecture performance in Akureyri in the north of Iceland in May.  

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

Do it. Do things slowly. Do things quickly. And go to performance festivals and talk to people. 

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

Right now I am very inspired by artists like Antti Laitinen, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir and Julio Torres. 

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