HAPPY FEELINGS when someone writes so WELL about what we have been done for the last 10 years! Lilith 10 years YEAH !!
An article about the birth and history and future of Lilith by Sune Johanesson – Kristianstadbladet
”A central scene in Ruben Östlund’s the Golden Palms-prized film” The Square ”consists of a thanks dinner for contemporary friends and patrons. As a initiating appetizer, a powerful performance with a half-naked man is offered.
I guess the couple and artist duo Elin Lundgren and Petter Pettersson are not surprised. This fall, their performance studio Lilith Performance Studio, based in Malmö, is celebrating ten years and during these years, not only have they seen an increased interest in their own business, the entire performance art has climbed straight up.
But they also mention how this has meant that performance artists are increasingly seen as an extra spice, an unexpected and party-enhancing feature in a variety of contexts. Just like in ”The Square”.
Lilith Performance Studio is based in Malmö, but the couple Lundgren and Pettersson live in the neighborhoods around Linderöd. ”On”, as Kristianstadsbladet’s photo director Tommy Svensson puts it, ”Classic TV Swingmark” – a car race in the neighborhood. We drive there to get answers to how they will celebrate the 10th anniversary this fall, but we start wondering why performance art has become so popular in recent years.
– The strength of performance art? says Petter Pettersson, thinking for a while.
– It does not have the same tradition as the theater, it is more free in that way. There are no heavy, hundred-year-old institutions that take care for performance art. Still, there are theater professors who hit people in the head when it’s written wrong somewhere.
Elin Lundgren continues:
”It would not have been any safe zone for us to work in the theater tradition, rather a burden. We want to invite artists in our own taste, but we always looking for personal artistry with varying expressions and from different parts of the world. It provides interesting collaborations and shows how wide today’s performance art is, and it is not only about one single distinct genre.
”We definitely do not operate within the theater, we are moving within our own system. It is a great freedom, says Petter Pettersson, and this conversation -baton is taken by Elin Lundgren
” It is incredibly difficult for us to follow a certain tradition and never want to be put in a a certain tradition or discipline. What we really do is punk.
It was precisely this artistic freedom they were attracted to when they entered the 21st century, and felt that they Malmo-based theater group Theater Lilith began to stagnate. No matter what they put up, they did not reach out more then to a faithful and homogeneous group of visitors. ”It was,” as Pettersson formulates it, ”it was as though we could knew the personal numbers of everyone in the audience.”
However, they knew two things: that they wanted to continue with an artistic activity, but that it needed to change.
”I’m from the theater, my background is as an actress, while Petter’s background is in the visual arts. We wanted to combine these expressions in some way, and tested by arranging some performing arts festivals. Lilith by Night, we called these events and what happened, suddenly we reached a bigger and new audience, says Elin Lundgren and continues.
– This raised the question, what would happen if we gave the visual arts the same conditions that exist in the theater world? By setting up different performances by artist from around the world and where artists are paid, just as an director in the theater gets. Then our studio was born.
The name Lilith was kept, but Theater was replaced by Performance Studio. And the new journey began to accelerate, through collaborations with a number of people who in a short period of time resulted in several performances.
”What made this start possible was a contribution of 1.5 million from the foundation Framtidens Kultur ( the culture of the future). The foundation’s purpose was to see ahead and dare to invest in the new things. I am incredibly happy and grateful for this early support, and because that we in Sweden have this type of cultural support. Our society needs to invest even more resources on culture, not least to help create different kinds of free zones, rooms where people are given the opportunity to meet something new and completely different from what they usually do, explains Elin Lundgren.
After ten active years, they have done around 45 performance performances, most in their locality in Malmö or elsewhere in the city, but also outside the city environment. Like Jillian Mcdonald’s vampire and zombie horror movie-like performance in the beech forests outside Svedala 2009. This is – along with the approximately 200 women made up as they had been abused, in a square in Malmö – still their most notable projects. Many wanted to follow into the darkness of the forest.
Nowadays, the annual premiers have been limited to 3-4, in order to be able to devote each performance to the time they require. Often, many amateurs are engaged, so far, they estimate that around 800 people have participated in their performances during these ten first years. Petter Pettersson: – ”Certainly, it’s a luxury to be able to shut down for several months to create a new performance, but it’s absolutely necessary for the results to be good. Here is also our future challenge, to make really big complex productions. Next year there will be a performance with almost 100 participants.
The expressions are changing all the time, but also the contexts. No wonder, Lilith is constantly looking for new artists around the world to work with.In addition, there are no classics to dust off into new versions. Performance art is always in this way new and now.
”Freedom of thought is a key word for us. If we do not understand what the invited artists want or think off their performance but we think it seems good anyway, yes, the we dare to just go.We do not need to have two pages of theory to dare to say yes to an idea, does it feel good is it good. But when we have said yes, then our commitment is total and we always express our views, we are no comfortable yes-spokesman, says Pettersson and adds that it can take up to two years for a performance to be completed.
” Our big trust in our feelings, is actually in the art form itself” Lundgren says. That there is another part of the mind that thinks, one that you can not control in the same way. In addition, we also think very much of our audience. We think people love to think what things are, which is something we encourage; that our audience enters the room and is allowed to think exactly what they want about what they meet.
”We are easily accessible without compromising. We never choose a topic for the audience to recognize, an anguish I sometimes see at the big theater houses, ”says Petter Pettersson.
Today their studio is established. The audience comes, they have been awarded (Skåne’s Culture Prize 2015), several artist contact them, and invitations from other art forums and festivals around the world are constantly coming in. Last year, the couple Lundgren & Pettersson were in Indonesia and worked, next year a festival in Canada is waiting. For example.
The tenth anniversary is the next challenge, and when they began thinking about how this birthday would be celebrated a few years ago, thoughts went in different directions. Eventually they landed in order to arrange a number of different dinners. Because there is something familiar, solemn and ceremonial in just bigger dinners, while it is an appetizing form that can easily be varied.
”This is the first time we work on a theme, and it’s also the first time we invited artists we have previously collaborated with. That’s because we wanted to know the artists this time to get quite different dinners, ”says Elin Lundgren. And so will be, this is what what our five artists ensured.
The room and the number of the audience are common between the autumn’s dinners, not the edible.
”Although not all details are set, it seem that not all of them will have anything edible,” says Elin Lundgren. In one of the dinners, at least I know there will be food, though it will be served in a very unexpected manner.
Lilith Performance Studio
Founded in Malmö by 2007 by the artists Elin Lundgren and Petter Pettersson. Earlier, they ran the free theater group Theater Lilith together.
During these ten years, they have invited several artists from many parts of the world, and together with them they have produced around 45 performances.
Their studio is located on Ystadsvägen in Malmö, but their productions can be installed at various locations in and outside Malmö.
In 2015, they received the Kultur Skånes cultural award.
This fall, the studio turns ten years, which will be celebrated through new collaborations with five artists, where dinner is the central form. Here is the schedule of the autumn dinners: 22-24/9 (Dafna Maimon, Israel / Finland), 12-14 / 10 (Myriam Laplante, Italy), 24-25 / 11 (Odun Orimolade, Nigeria) and 14-16/12 (The Icelandic Love Corporation, Iceland).
Article in Kristianstadsbladet in SWEDISH >> http://www.kristianstadsbladet.se/kultur/performancekonsten-ger-en-okad-frihet/
