Colliding Worlds
Review of Our Time is Now, an audio visual installation and live performance with Dubmorphology, Risten Anine Gaup, Runa Bergsmo and Ellen Berit Dalbakk/Rámavoul Elle Bigge. Commissioned work at Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival (AMIFF), curated by Kjetil Berge, facilitated by Várdobáiki Sámi guovddaš / Várdobáiki Samisk senter (Várdobáiki Sámi Center) and the culture and music festival Márkomeannu. 09.11.2024, Evenskjer.
Despite lacking a strong conceptual coherence, this year’s commissioned work for Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival (AMIFF) was a welcome coming together of artistic traditions, as well as an adventure to the impressive Sámi museum, Várdobáiki.
Text by James S. Lee
Every year AMIFF acts as a meeting point for those engaged in moving image practice in the north of Norway. Often the same faces can be seen: the students from Filmkunstskolen i Kabelvåg who contribute to the daily morning seminars & present their short films every year, the art institutions who return to curate short film programmes or local artists who visit the festival. They all help make up a community feeling for each iteration, year on year.
This year, returning for the second year in a row to help develop and programme the festival in collaboration with director Helene Hokland, was curator Kjetil Berge. This year, he invited the London based duo Dubmorphology to create a work specifically for the festival. In turn, in what he calls a “relational” approach to curation (more on that term later), the duo created Our Time is Now! An audio visual and performative work featuring the Sami cultural communicator, musician and actor Risten Anine Gaup, cellist Runa Bergsmo, and duojár Rámavuol Elle Bigge / Ellen Berit Dalbakk.
This work, similar to many other commissions for AMIFF before it, surprisingly only contains a modicum of actual film or moving image. In the case of the piece This is our body by artist Hanan Benammar that I saw in 2021, a commissioned work for AMIFF can contain no film content at all. Still, the commissioned work usually – whether by accident or design – allows the audience to explore the Harstad area and gives a welcomed break from being inside the main cinema venue in Harstad.
This year’s commissioned work took place at Evenskjer (a 30 minute bus ride away from Harstad) at Várdobáiki – a marvellous museum dedicated to Sámi culture, history & language in the region Nordre Nordland and Sør-Troms.
When writing a review of an event, one can often neglect to mention the seamless nature of the experience from the organisers which really set the stage for the performance; as we arrived we were invited for a guided tour of the collection, as well as being provided food. The tours – described by one person I spoke to as “one of the best tours I have ever been on” (due to the tour guide’s expertise into the collection and Sami culture) were led by Mathias Eilert Olsen, who also happened to be a part of the commissioned work in a way, working behind the scenes as an advisor to the performers and Dubmorphology.
As I took my seat, two projections were playing on the wall behind the stage set-up, and would continue to play for the duration of the performance showing two films made by Dubmorphology. One film was projected stage right, which featured footage captured during their ventures in local nature. Projected stage left, was a film which featured objects from the collection of Várdobáiki.
The film on the right was pretty poor: a journey from mountain to ground, featuring some jerky drone work, slow motion shots of birds in the area, and many shots with jolting, handheld camera work. It was strange for a moving image festival’s commissioned work to contain such poor filmmaking. But this film was in stark contrast to the film right next to it which was very smooth, well edited and with impressive shot selection which brought intrigue to the objects captured- important sámi objects from the collection one had just seen several minutes earlier on the museum tour.
As these films played in a loop, Dubmorphology took their places behind a desk to the side of the audience and stage. Here they created an ambient audio wash of delicious noise, conjured from pre-recorded sounds, as well as found objects such as bones and or leather fabric, manipulated by hand and picked up by a microphone, and then distorted through an effects pedal. Throughout the next hour, Risten Anine Gaup, Runa Bergsmo, and Rámavuol Elle Bigge / Ellen Berit Dalbakk would all take to the stage individually, for roughly equal amounts of time, to perform “on top of” and to the sound-wash made by Dubmorphology in the background, and in front of the films playing on a loop from the projectors.
First to take the stage was cellist Runa Bergsmo. Most notable about her cello playing was the use of a plucking technique to create deeper and lower notes than what one would expect from a cello by playing an open string, followed immediately by using her non-plucking hand to glide over the strings to make ascending musical phrases. Her performance was mostly spent going back between utilising a bow in a conventional manner and then utilising her fingers with this plucking technique, creating bursts of frantic tension as the performance went on. For me, however, the choice to go back and forward between these contrasting styles, rather than build towards an almighty climax using this novel (and very loud) technique was a bit frustrating; the flitting between styles often just killed the momentum of the part that was being played. This left me a little disappointed at the end of this opening part (despite some interesting musical moments), as well as not quite sure what I was supposed to feel, or what kind of performance I was in for.
As she left the stage, on came Risten Anine Gaup. I saw Gaup doing a similar performance two weeks ago at Tromsø Kunstforening, with the artists Andreas Kühne and Polina Medvedeva who created an ambient soundscape and film. On that occasion, Gaup seemed nervous and inhibited – here, however, the opposite. Foregoing the microphone mid-way through the performance – and therefore the inevitable compression and EQ which changes the timbre of the human voice – she walked around the audience joiking two distinct melodic phrases. The acoustic use of the voice here really brings home the power and essential characteristics of joiking; using the ability to play with echoes, volumes, and directionality of the voice, she gave an otherworldly quality to something as familiar as the human voice.
Lastly, came Rámavuol Elle Bigge / Ellen Berit Dalbakk on stage. She proceeded to cut her gákti (traditional sami dress) that she was wearing. There were shades of danger, as one wondered where the performance might go, but became much more light and even comedic as the performance went on as we all collectively realised no bodily harm would be realised. By the performance’s end, the gákti was cut to her body’s shape, matching a second gákti she had on underneath. It was an engrossing performance that brought to mind performance art of the 20th century involving women, clothes and sharp objects (Yoko Ono or Marina Abramović ), and inspired by her own practice around creating non-binary/ non gendered gákti in sami communities. The latter was an issue which she talked very eloquently about in the post-performance panel conversation, stating her desire to fill in this gákti provision “gap”. The power of the performance came not from the art historical precedents nor her conceptual inspiration, but rather the combination of lightness and riskiness in which she performed, creating a tension which found a resolution in a punchline of sorts as she walked off with a smile, in a moment of breaking kayfabe, at the end of her cutting spree.
Returning to Kjetil Berge’s “relational” approach to curation then – which he describes as asking someone to make a work, who will then ask someone else to join in the process and so on it goes – meant the work ended up having five contributors (or six if you want to count Dubmorpology as two individuals). It is very difficult to make sense of why these three parts belong together in the same work – a trade-off in the “relational” approach to curation of course, whereby conceptual control is sacrificed for a willingness to let creative practitioners go where chance decisions or creative hunches take them. For example, the inclusion of the cellist was desired by Gary Stewart of Dubmorphology because a cello can introduce a “haunting or voice-like” quality, and not for any reason greater than that.
The whole performance – two london based experimentalists crashing the world of the sami tradition (joik, gákti crafting) – sounds like an awkward coming together, but out of this came undeniably intriguing artistic moments. The individual “chapters” all provided something of, if not wonder, then at least something near excellence as a stand-alone segment – and it was clear everybody seemed to be having a great time, performers and audience alike. Perhaps the casual setting by the museum shop added to a sense of allowing the performers to let loose a little, relieved of the trappings of a great theatre stage or museum hall. All seemed to be genuinely trying to stay on the edge – whether that be improvising uncomfortable cello lines, abandoning the microphone, or risking an awkward blood splattered scissor mishap. Sure, it meant at times certain sections went on a little too long, or meandered a little, but it allowed for a freedom that was internalised by all the performers as they improvised and explored certain capacities of their tools (cellos, effect pedals, the voice, scissors).
Throughout the peformance, Dubmorphology sacrificed their place in the centre and allowed others to shine. I had a great view watching them trying to respond and go with the flow too, adapting to the performers' intensities, as the performers adjusted to them. More selfish artists would hug the spotlight and musical space tighter, but they banged bones or rubbed leather cloth into a microphone to give the performance just what it needed at the right time, all the while situated nowhere near the stage but at the side of the room, very much in the background.
Sure, the whole thing was not brilliant from start to finish, and it was a bit of a conceptual mess. But If AMIFF is often a meeting point of familiar people, then this is a great example of what can happen when unfamiliar artists are given the chance to meet, become familiar with each other – and see what happens if they live on the edge a little.
