Runa Carlsen

Perfomance 2018

Den nordiske ambassade gallery in Copenhagen

The performance was a spoken narative mixing elements from Else Dorothea Margarethe Lachmann (1769-1823) biography and the story behind the exclusive nettle cloth, one of her possesions from the rich textile collection at her Christiania homes. This is an ongoing project that will bee continued.

Super-dress by designer Anne Karine Thorbjørnsen from Phisis/techne collection: AW17

Mask by Damselfrau

Live Perfomance

One evening TAI CHI PERFORMANCE in Kjell Varvin's exhibition; FREE GEOMETRY/ Unstable variables

KUNSTNERNES HUS in Oslo

2017

Tai Chi master Pamela Hiley shared here lifelong experience with the participants during the performance. Another special guest for the evening was artist Marthe Ramm Fortun companied by her daughter who started the program with a performance.

Photo credits: Tove Sivertsen and Are Carlsen

Staged photography

Tableau Paper release and one night exhibiotion

ILA GYM in Oslo

2016

An autobiograpical event from 1983 is the starting point for the work. Video footage from Comme des Garcons runaway show in Paris October 1983 an the staged photo from 2016, on print in Tableau paper Magazine.  Designer of Comme des Garcons, Rei Kawakubo revolutionized European fashion world in the early 80-ties when she introduced her new collection in Paris.   

NORWEGIAN SCULPTUR BIENNAL
 Vigelandsmuseeum 2015

The body’s fragility and our own modern age are here woven together in a variety of narratives. This is a continuation of a previous work entitled The Red Warp from 2014, which was based on the archaeological discovery of an early Iron Age warp in a bog at Tegle Farm in Jæren in Southwest Norway. Carlsen used this once again as her starting-point, but this time clearly weaving the Old Norse Njál’s Saga into the piece by referring to a piece of weaving of the Valkyries, the shield-maidens of Odin, described therein. The saga mentions a loom made from entrails stretched across bloody spears, where a blood-red warp is weighed down by skulls, the reed is of iron, and arrows serve as shuttles. When the Valkyries weave, they also choose who is to die on the battlefield and who is to survive. Carlsen’s loom has been made from ordinary water-pipes of copper, and nylon threads are a product of the petroleum industy.

Collages

Based on press photograph from newspapers 

2011 untill 2015

 A selection on print in the newspaper NY TID during spring 2015.

Medias one-dimensional representation off political power structures and social changes is based on an old script. I wanted to be the director and be in power and focus and on other possible  narratives and scenarios.

The film takes as a starting point an autobiographical incident, Carlsen’s encounter with a group of Palestinian children and youngsters visiting Norway in August 1978 by initiative of The Palestinian Committee of Norway in collaboration with youth organization Ashbal and PLO. Being a child herself, she met the visitors as a member of the Red Pioneer, a youth organization linked to the radical Communist movement in Norway of the 7o-ties that co-hosted the young Palestinian guests. The failed attempt to establish a pen-friendship with one of the refugee children upon their departure-based on the non-existence of post address in refugee camps-left a deep impact on the young Carlsen and triggered her search for them in 2012, 34 years after the visit. In the film Carlsen combines publicly available, private end autobiographical material to unravel narratives that not only represent the collective, but most importantly the individual memories of a people living in a conflict-driven area. Her work therefor becomes a general search for the personal stories of the people Carlsen encountered during her journey to Beirut.

VESTLANDSUTSTILLINGEN 2015
Stavanger Kunsthall

The titel translate to The Red Warp and isa reconstruction of an archaeological artifact from the Iron Age. The original warp was found in a bog on Tegle farm on Jæren on the west coast off Norway. The founding was historic, unique and well preserved and revealed weaving techniques and materials used in that period. The material in the reconstruction is Nylon yearn, from the petrol industry that has its epicenter in the region. DET RØDE VARPET is one in a body of work exploring the ancient textile history that carries traces off complex narratives about culture, aesthetic, economy, colonization and globalization.

SOLOSHOW 2010

Petroleum textile project

Gallery SOFT in Oslo

With daily observing the transformation of the city area around my studio I 2010 this work emerged. Norway biggest construction company Betonmast was in the prosess off installing the new Bjørvika bridge and had set up a temporary scaffolding. I asked permission to use it as my loom. The exhibition consists of the textile intervention THE NEW HOT SPOT and a mobile textile installation GRUNDRISSE both exhibited in the gallery space. The materials are made of petroleum originating from the North Sea.   

Temporary live installation

Youngstorget Sqare in Oslo

3. May 2007

Collaboration with Karen Kviltu Lidal

1700 square meter second hand textiles donated & collected was laid out at sun rise and wrapped up at sunset. The public where invited to use the space as they wished. The artist were present.  

Textile intervention and archive video installation

Group exhibition: Gentle Actions 2010

Kunstnernes hus

In this work the Quilt is the framework to examine economic, cultural and social structures and hirearcy in our society. With a closer look at this specific textile technique one discover that it carries history of economy, migration, slavetrade, colonization, community and folk art & esthetics. Often they where made in temporary collaboration and the tittle refers to this : a quilting-bee. For the exhibition period I hired six Polish guest workers to hand stitch the lyrics from the song Internationale to the textile.

Screened on a monitor extracts from the documentary from 1968, La Reprise du Travail aux Usines Wonders by Jacques Willemont. Students from the French National Film School made the documentary after they abandoned the university and entered the streets in solidarity with the general strikers. The footage shows a discussion in the street outside the factory entrance, between the woman protagonist, indignant about the cancelation of the strike. After tree weeks on strike the strikers didn’t accomplishing any of their demands, and she refuses to go back inside to do the dirty work.

Live performance at Kunstnernes hus 2010

The Yoga flow session was announced by spreading the word in the yoga community I was part of . Over fifty people showed up for event that night and was tutored by Heather Love. It was part of the program and group exhibition Gentle Actions at Kunstnernes Hus.

Site-specific sound, photo and text installation

Den Frie Center of Contemporary Art 2012

Oslos Square in Copenhagen

The work deals with Norway and Denmark’s common history as a union. In 1905 Norway became a sovereign state after 400 years under Swedish and Danish colonial governance.

Recorded sound fragments from everyday life in Oslo during 24-hours played realtime in a pedestrian tunnel under Oslos Square, connecting the Train station Østerport, with the art institution.

And posters with texts and photos installed in two lightboxes on the tunnel walls.

Temporary workshop

Lillestrøm Torv shoping center

2008

Drop in workshop on reuse off clothes and textile crafting techniqueswas offered the public and held in the local Shoping center in Lillestrøm. The objects made by the artist during the workshop was exhibited at Akershus Artcenter.

Made in collaboration with Karen Kviltu Lidal. The project was contextualized and distributed in a publication with texts writen by Ingrid Lønningdal, Elisabeth Storhaug, Line Ulekleiv and Runa Carlsen.   

Video, text and photo installation

Oslo Kunstforening 2008

Mappa mi translates to My file and deals with the legacy off the radical leftist movement in Norway and beyond in the 70-ties. My father was active in the movement and I spent my upbringing in the middel off it.

The video is made from found visual material from private and public archives, about the violent 24-hours mayday in 1979 in Oslo. A biographic work takes a starting point my memory of witnessing a bomb attach in the Mayday parade as a youngster. This violent attach that injured a man for life was carried out by a young Neo Nazi. The lawsuit that followed was the first politically motivated violence case in Norway in peacetime after the Second World War. The work investigates how time and trauma influence the great narratives in our collective consciousness.

The reading group 2011-2012
Together with Unni Gjertsen we initiated a reading-group at the artist owned space: Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Bruno Latours text
“An Attempt at a Compositionist Manifesto” was the starting point, and  we cross read with the texts by the philosophers Deleuze and Spinoza, and David Bohm. To Accompany program, we hosted guest lectures inspired by the interdisciplinary and dialogic approaches to contemporary problems, addressing our thinking, bodies, as well as environmental challenges.

Resach based project made in collaboration with Tone Hansen.

2011

Timeline is a visual representation of the history of artists and cultural workers engagement with Bjørvika and its surroundings from 1993 to 2011. Timeline is part of the ongoing work of COMMON LANDS comissioned by RAKETT,  Åse Løwgren and Karoline Tampere curators behinde the project.