"Does it ever happen that you overhear fragments of conversation as you move around the city? That you suddenly notice an isolated phrase spoken by a stranger? Someone saying something that wasn’t meant for you but which makes you think? A fragment of conversation can turn your day upside down. At the same time, you may sometimes nod and pretend to listen to a conversation in which you are taking part, without taking in what is being said." - Bjørn Hatterud
Julien Bismuth’s project for osloBIENNALEN is a performance in which five performers are assigned their own texts, which they learn by heart. They meet in Birkelunden park in the morning, before splitting up and moving around the city alone, performing their texts all over the city. They might utter the words to themselves as they walk or sit. Or say them on the telephone while they are ordering a hot dog from the kiosk, or to the person walking beside them, who might also be a perfomer. They will perform their fragments of text over the course of the day. At the end of the day they meet again outside of the National Theatre and perform the text one last time. As the performance ends, the texts, like any other fragment of conversation, will remain in the minds of those who happened to come across it.
For osloBIENNALEN First Edition Bismuth will stage a series of performances which will occur over the biennial’s time-span of five years, inspired by political theatre and a quote from the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch’s diary "Intet er litet intet er stort" (Nothing is small nothing is big).
The first set of performances was performed on May 25th 2019 as part of the osloBIENNALEN FIRST EDITION 2019-2024 official opening weekend.
Julien Bismuth (1973, France) is a French artist and writer who lives and works in New York. His practice is located at the intersection between visual art and literature. Bismuth's work ranges from performance, video and photography, to sculpture and drawing, and has been shown at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Kunsthalle Vienna and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Bismuth is also co-founder of Devonian Press along with designer Jean-Pascal Flavien.
Read the script for the performance here:
oslobiennalen.no/app/uploads/2019/05/Julien-Bismuth-Manuscripts-May-25th-2019.pdf
See an interview with the artist here:
vimeo.com/347260109
Read Ellie Ga's essay in response to the project here:
oslobiennalen.no/app/uploads/2019/05/Ga_on_Bismuth_ENG.pdf
Photo/foto: Marte Vold © osloBIENNALEN 2019