27.02.2024
Stockholm


Dear Anna,

I have been invited by Amalia Kasakove to write about the work that you are presenting at Weld this weekend. I am thinking back to the previous works of yours that I have experienced before, it’s not a few, you have produced performances on a regular basis since I moved to Stockholm 2014. In all of the works that I have seen you have been performing in them yourself, and many of these are solos.

Even though we do not know each other too well I feel I have learned that your commitment to work as a performer is important. A dance practice entails a particular devotion to ongoing engagement and I think that can really be seen in your work.

When thinking back I realize that the first work I ever saw at Weld was one of your pieces, a duette performed by you and Agnieszka Sjökvist Dlugoszewska. I don't remember the title of the piece but I remember the costumes, how we were sitting, as well as a movement that the two of you were repeating. Thin white and transparent fabric revealing someone's breasts, numerous white ribbons giving the effect of a flapper dress expanding your figures as you turned around yourselves. Chairs in a tribune along the wall where one enters into Weld's concrete basement. This seating gave us a panorama-like wide perspective instead of the boxing depth of how the space is more commonly set up. Turning and spinning around on knees, or at least attempting to with great effort.

Your body of work centers the body at work. There is always an ongoing activity towards something that is not clear or ever arrived at. When visiting you in the studio tomorrow I am curious to think more about so-called “practice based works”, or the relationship between committing to a dance practice and making performances.

Looking forward!

Oda




29.02.2024
Stockholm


Dear Excavation Series l and ll,

Your movement towards me makes it difficult to distance myself and project my gaze on you. I wanted to be analytical, but you are not in front of me and your persistent and ongoing movement onto my sensory organs inhibit most of my intentions. I have to let go of the questions I wanted to ask you. Perhaps they can return at a later point.

You are not in darkness, you are not a choreography that is going on in dim light, you choreograph darkness so that I can experience it as tangible, as a material in itself. This is only partly true because there are times when the contours you erased, the room you made disappear, returns and I arrive again to a sober sense, aware of my role as a witness of a rehearsal at Weld watching Anna Pehrsson dance and dance and dance. In these recurring moments, when I get the chance to orient myself again, as the absorbing frame of darkness retreats, the theater apparatus is reinstated. Square led lights, dusty curtains and taped marleys that reflect the light Thomas Zamolo have designed, currently managed by Mali Dönmez on a computer on the balcony above my head.

You remind me about the work of my friend and colleague Gry Tingskog, an artist who has presented several works that deal explicitly with darkness at Weld (I Object! 2018, Cheating discipline and other artistic affairs 2019, echoes of you(s) 2021 and warp 2022). In their master thesis As disappearance appears Gry describes this choreographic practice as setting up conditions for disorientation to unfold as well as speculating on how art experiences in the dark could be a means of shaking up the western colonial orientation grounded in enlightenment philosophy where light is considered superior to darkness.

If excavation is to “expose something to view by digging away a covering” what is it you wish to expose? And what is Anna digging into? It is as if she takes on a distinct part of the room at the time, starting next to me in lit up audience seats and after a while ending up behind the theater curtains that are covering Welds familiar walls. Here the repetitive rhythm of her movement work reveals another layer of the room whilst the non transparent curtain covers up the loudest marks of her identity.

Anna behind the curtain reminds me of Margit Galanters work, an artist based in Oakland who I met in Zagreb 2022. Margit has a practice called Caving and in addition to working outdoors in actual caves they also practice Caving by covering themselves with a blanket or putting their head into containers like paper bags. They refer to this practice as a “nourishing practice” where the need to spend time in darkness resulted in building “basic fort-like structures in their home and studio” to experience the spatial, acoustic and darkening effect of a cave.

You are divided into several parts, perhaps this is why you are called a series, and each of these parts have their own spatially restricted area. But is the ongoing uncovering of layers in the room actually about the room or should they be read symbolically– referring to something beyond their matter of fact actuality?

In one part your increasing bass resonates more in my flesh than in my ears causing a mild nervousness. Together with the wispy light it has the effect of distorting my bodys’ sense of placement and direction. The experience of being cut off from the actual space as if I was asleep or affected leaves me with nothing but myself to observe. I am thinking about my own thoughts, stuck in some loops and at this point I cannot help but wonder if this excavation is a psychological one.

Later on I consider whether what you are digging into might be Anna's dance archive. A series of cutouts from her pieces? Each revealing paths and tracks, memories of directions and forms in her tissues? Layers of imprints from former particular restrictions to a body's organization of forces?

There is a moment when Anna shifts from an unstable vertical sculling in the air to a grounded position on all fours. Horizontally aligned with the floor she holds all of her weight with only toes and fingers. This moment reminds me of an orange spandex suit and purple light filling this room (Cut in/Fold out 2016) and the orange suit reminds me of a scenography made up of loads of threads in a knot hanging from the ceiling, accompanied by a vertical body that falls and catches its weight (In [brackets] 2017). As you trigger these memories of Anna's earlier works I think of how the environment she is producing in her choreographies are always so distinct, it is as if each work is a specific color or texture. In these environments the dance unfolding is always as particular as that color or texture. This engages me as a spectator because it asks me to reorient my perception of not just what, but also how I am witnessing and interpreting the work.

Thank you,
Oda

BY ODA BREKKE

ODA BREKKE (SE/NO) is a dance artist based in Stockholm, working internationally as a choreographer, writer and performer. Her work is characterized by a material approach to perception, favoring detail to total overview. She is curious of dwelling with rooms and the things inhabiting them– tricking the sense of linear time and utilitarian relationships to objects. Her work When there’s only surface left premiered at Weld 2021 and has been presented at the festival IMPROSPEKCIJE at Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, Bergen Kjøtt, Dance Cooperative in Copenhagen and höjden studios. She was part of the editorial team behind the publication Art as Practice|Art as Object published by Skogen in Gothenburg 2020. Oda is a co-founder of the collective studio space höjden in Stockholm, a collegial platform and common resource for autonomous production and artistic exchange since 2019.