UPSIDE DOWN (UPP OCH NER)
Performance Open House, SMFA, 2019
I hang upside down on a ladder to tell a story to a small audience. I make direct eye contact with each audience member, and speak improvisationally. I speak about life’s minutae, such as walking my dog (who is usually on stage) or spending my trust fund on a new coat. While I cheerily elaborate on business-as-usual, my audience expresses a nervous and contradictory laughter. They seem to enjoy the illusion that I am staying level-headed while challenging my body.
Ohio University, 2018
AREA Gallery, Cambridge, 2017
Ohio University, 2018
My grandfather invented the Wasa crisp bread in Skellefteå, Sweden. Exerting my body and storytelling enables me to examine the legacy of his invention.
Embodying precarity by shifting my own gravity in response to objects of the everyday, I reinvent narratives pertaining to class, gender, identity, generational trauma, and inheritance. While performing different characters mined from life I am in gestural dialogue with the audience, looking for cues that propel, affect, or bend the narrative arc. This essential collaboration is spontaneously generated in the moment from audience cues affecting the narrative outcome.
UPSIDE DOWN
Performed 2019
Upside down, I evade the weight of family dysfunction.