The HOUR: Bergen International Performance Festival 2020 was a 24-hour collective art event hosted by Performance Art Bergen at Kunstgarasjen in Bergen, Norway.
The main events took place over a continuous 24-hour window:
- Start: Friday, February 28, 2020, at 18:00, where artists entered the space one by one every hour.
- Finish: Saturday, February 29, 2020, at 18:00.
- Seminar: Sunday, March 1, 2020, which featured a lecture-performance by Kurt Johannessen.
It featured 24 performance artists from Norway and international countries sharing time, space, and materials.
Performance art and one day seminar at Kunstgarasjen, Bergen
Friday 28 February: 17.45
24 hours group collective performance
28 February: 18.00 continue to 18.00 on 29 February
One day seminar
Sunday 1 March: 14.00 - 17.30
HOUR is a performance art, collective encounter which 24 artists from Norway, Nordic and international countries migrate, interact within and share time, space and materials over a 24 hour period follow by one day seminar. HOUR is curated by Pavana Reid for Performance Art Bergen. .
On Friday 28th February at 18.00, artists enter the shared space, one by one, on the hour, every hour and remain in the space for the 24 hour period. The artists perform together and will end the performance collectively at 18.00 on Saturday 29th February.
Among the audiences, students from Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen (KMD) will take part in a writing workshop “Witness” Experiential Writing: text as a means to document performance which organised by Eleanor Clare and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen.
On Sunday1st March at 14.00, the seminar begins with About Real Time and Constructed Time a lecture performance by Kurt Johannessen. Follow by Reflection a panel discussion which Sylvie Ferrè, Øyvind Kvalnes, Douglas Park, Eleanor Clare, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Kurt Johannessen will share their experience with the 24 participants and audiences of the performance HOUR. The seminar will finish with short presentations by the students.
HOUR BIPF 2020 is supported by:
Performance Art Bergen, Nordic Culture Fund, City of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Kunstgarasjen, Hordaland County, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen (KMD) and H. Westfal-Larsen og Hustru Anne Westfall-Larsen´s Almennyttigefond.
The Artists, official observers, witnesses from KMD, audience and organisers straight after the 24 hour long performance was completed!
Entirely overwhelmed by overwhelming entirety.
Sightseeing bystander.
Serving on supervisory jury congregation fanbase squad.
Forecast and horoscope Delphic oracle consulted for reference.
Give or take joining forces with frontline voyeurism and some self-service consideration and ascertainment thrown in for good measure.
Hopefully, headed towards gradual arrival at estimate diagnoses verdict findings score.
The otherwise solitary, separate and even enclosed and discreet or actually private, hidden and secret; brought altogether and rendered into actual spectator, contact, competitive and blood sport, game, playtime and teamwork.
Pas certains petite accrochage et / ou salon vivante.
Mais quelque grande surprise, challenge and revelation, for creators, organization and audience alike.
Not HOUR, but full-blown DAY, WEEKEND, LiFETiME and ETERNiTY.
Associations came to mind.
Allan Kaprow — Happenings pioneer and inventor of that term — declared time to be a process, substance, medium and artform.
Wolf Vostell once used some sugar, bowl and spoon to demonstrate differences he identified between Allan Kaprow & other’s Happenings, George Maciunas’ Fluxus events and Wolf Vostell’s own Decollage.
Photographic-artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s time-lapse exposure etudes of movies on cinema screen, housebuilding and demolition, sea tides, archaeology and other durational procedures.
At the time, were any creators influenced by other’s presence, activity and input, then how, in which ways, causing what?
Suppose there could’ve been split–difference, common law-of-averages, missing link and hybrid cross-between some, much, most or all of HOUR’s highlights and general procedure.
I found myself trying to imagine being in the HOUR performer’s position.
Expectation, planning, accident, opportunism.
Respect, cooperation, ignoring, avoidance, challenge, testing, competitiveness, opposition.
I was rereminded about and unforgot something I once noticed (and doubtless others did too).
Perhaps encouraged and at least seemingly spontaneous outbursts of togetherness, support and rivalry amongst participants in historical (or legendary!) events:
Gustav Metzger’s 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium;
the 1968 Azioni Povera fair at Amalfi;
1969’s conceptualism and arte povera group shows, When Attitudes Become Form and Op Losse Schroeven;
Fluxshoe 1972-’73 regional UK touring survey show and festival.
Raphael “Ralph” Montanez Ortiz who was the “opening act” for Gustav Metzger’s 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium said he considered it to be some “Art Olympics” in which he was gonna “win gold”.
Did, might or will HOUR affect any survivor, during then, from that and now, since, later?
Open-ended, flexible, happilyforeveraftermore, conclusive, definite, finalized, whatever else.
Practical joke.
Physical humour.
Total art comedy.
Veriteville.
A regret about HOUR.
If only ensuing crime scene forensic evidence clue votive offerings were kept staying behind, whether explained or left as mystery.
Sown and planted, for growth, blossoming, crop, harvest, multiplication, spread, breakout, evolution and general afterlife.
A wish.
Attempt to imagine, make and use or even be a “Time-Mirror”.
No mere gauge or monitor of time.
But instead truly active generation, supply and control of time — and all that time is, does and causes — then what can happen within time.
HOUR forcibly dredged up some case-study specimens from my own track-record.
Norway, performance art, limitation and setbacks, potential and advantage.
In 2010, Artistspace in London commissioned me to write for their Unfeasibility Study group exhibition.
Unfeasibility Study concerned likelihood of progress, effectiveness, consequence or use-value to art, culture and whatever else.
At 1st, I came up with 2 (or rather, 1 & a 1/2!) “manifestos” for their website.
The most overgrown of them, Returning Back Again to the Crime-Scene, Only with a Vengeance this Time Around, For more of the Same or Different addressed cultural practitioners, output, organizations, venues and events becoming rife and epidemic — then, if anything better or some improvement could be necessary, possible, done or happening.
Whilst the briefest, Mission-Impossible Quota Score says just about the same — only a fraction as long.
Also, for the Unfeasibility Study’s catalog, I “defined” chosen works by 14 accepted submission entrants, what else they did otherwise and in general.
Unfeasibility Study’s selection was from an open-call, aimed at emergent artists, recent postgraduates and promising students — in particular, if they dealt with the problematics and context to their work, practice, medium and discipline — by itself and regarding external conditions.
None of them were people, artists or work I self-consciously knew.
Not dissimilar to other undertakings.
Beforehand, I’d written about multiple artists, sometimes at short-notice and occasionally hitherto unknown people.
Only this was far more demanding.
I’d never done more than 1 of those at once.
Until then.
This had to be written within a single weekend, alongside other things, only armed with some background gained from contact and research — reinforced by or backing up me doing my utmost and pushing myself.
Unfeasibility Study included Mimi Norrgren, UK based, expatriate Norwegian, performance artist.
At Unfeasibility Study’s launch event, Mimi Norrgren walked inside a cloth covered and wooden framework — through the outdoors courtyard.
Heres my “definition” of Mimi Norrgren’s exhibited artwork in Unfeasibility Study catalog.
Mimi Norrgren: In Bird, a documented 2-hour long body-art action (or “zerreisprobe” / endurance-test), Mimi Norrgren is shown with a blank canvas as interface protection between herself — and a real-live rhea (member of the ostrich family), whose advances she fends off from herself, while still feeling their full brunt.
Bird, provokes pondering human concerns of constant vulnerability and desperate need for survival — but also the craving and desire for experience, risk-taking and even danger. Even in this day and age, gender-politics enter the equation, given the author (and heroine or star) is female and young.
Furthermore, only a single still photograph of just 1 scene from Bird is in Unfeasibility Study; no moving image footage, audio or relics.
However, being in black and white as well as fact theres limited material to “go on” serve as reminders that much earlier post and cold war era performance and other work is only “known” from vintage records or even 2nd-hand “reality”.
Additionally, the past / present / future status of live-art is called into question, with cases argued for-and-against.
+ Just some of my connection to performance art (and Scandinavia).
1 of my recidivistic serial collaborators in crime is Richard Crow.
An important part of Richard Crow’s life and work was his early to mid 1990’s Institution of Rot event venue, at his North London domestic and working space, where he inhabited from between the early 1980’s until 2009.
Richard Crow’s ventures include Institution of Rot appraisals.
Live events.
Such as the 2009 eviction and departure ceremony, festivities, mourning, “wake” or “exorcism”, A Demised Premise.
A readymade housing and property term.
Then, 2013’s A Rotten Corpus, “séance” or “invocation” for the Institution of Rot, at Goldsmiths College, London.
Both involving me.
Another resurrected phoenix arisen from the Institution of Rot’s ashes was Richard Crow’s A Demised Premise dossier and black museum, published in the Dokument, Dispositiv, Deskription, Diskurs, number of OEI anthology, Stockholm, 2011.
1 page is an image of me performing, with my own summed-up impressions and aspects of the Institution of Rot; but ideally both halves should be prelude and sequel, at opposite extreme ends of A Demised Premise.
I sometimes recite this and other works by me, with Crow’s found material, when we perform, record or are filmed.
Earlier, it was released as audio track (with quoted extracts on sleeve) on Richard Crow & Institution of Rot’s 2009 A Demised Premise cd and cassette.
Disembodied, free and loose, but injured and sickly voices gasp their very last breath; remains compress, adhere, fuse, solidify and fossilize; leftovers, resurrecting into cadavers and wreckage which never quite die out; instead, they stumble, falter, slow down and halt during course of duty as active bodies and live places, not at standstill.
Substance-fatigue claims derelict bodies and dead places; afflicted victims fracture, shatter, crumble and dissolve, until evaporated away; all fumes and sand survived by burns, rust, debris, stains, mold, shadows and clouds lurking behind afterwards; immortalized voices patrol, haunt and reign, becoming unhindered meteorological weather.
