Stein Henningsen

For the Live Art Strømstad festival I wanted to work with roses. I wanted to use lighter fuel and a lighter to put fire to them in my performance, but due to heavy wind I decided I needed gasolin and a storm lighter to make them burn. It worked...!
My performance started by entering the river upstream, walking downstream until I could not touch the bottom with my feet anymore. All the time holding the roses high above the water and my head. Halfway down the river I lit the roses. They burned all the way through the second part of my performance. I left the roses floating in the river...
Duration: 20 minutes
Photos: Joakim Stampe

For my performance the second day I had a ladder to work with. Going into the river I did not know how to end my performance. Then I saw the bridges as for the first time and I knew what to do...
I decided to climb the two bridges and cross them without no purpose and treat them as obstacles.
The ladder was long enough to climb even the highest. After the bridges I wanted to continue to walk on the bottom of the river using the ladder to come out of the water to get air.
Duration: 30 minutes
Photos: Joakim Stampe

The wind is strong and the sea is rough. I am standing by the sea and the waves throw ice cold water on me. I am wearing no waterproof clothing. When the waves are crushed against the ice edge spraying water over me I can feel the burning of the ice cold sea down my neck and on my feet.
Duration: 15 minutes
Photos: Sarah Gerats

I was working with a pile of red bricks.
Laying down beside the pile of bricks with some bricks on my back. The audience was free to add on or take away bricks from my body.
Duration: 60 minutes
Videoclip: Roland von der Emden

Title: The ending II
I was working with red roses, a gallows, turpentine, matches, alcohol, one cigarette, a chair and a mirror.
Duration 30 minutes.
Videoclips from Roland von der Emden

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Performance with red roses.
I walk bare feet through Sète in South of France carrying red roses.
I walk very slowly for two hours before ending up at the canal leading through the town. There I let myself gently into the water and floats on my back holding the roses. I float for 5 minutes before I sink and have to end my performance.
Duration + 2 hours
Photos: Evelyn Goupy & Roland von der Emden

Title: The Ending
For this performance I use red roses in a vase with water, porcelain, plate and cups of porcelain, a dead bird from the street, a huge glass vase, a wineglass and 4,5 liters of wine.
I start the performance by throwing porcelain, the vase with flowers and water and the dead bird from a mezzanine. The audience is under the mezzanine but far away from where everything lands. A guard is making sure no one is to close. I walk slowly downstairs and walk bare feet into my self made mess of broken porcelain, glass and water. I pick up the roses having thorns and hammer the thorns into the left side of my chest with my fist. Then I sit down and drink several glasses of wine. I throw my glass away. It smashes against the floor. I walk over to the big vase and fills it with wine before putting my head into the vase, trying to drown myself in the wine. I do this several times before giving up. Then I lift the vase and the wine using my head. The wine pours down on my body and I get to my feet. The vase vase has burst and given me a cut on my nose. I turn it 30 degrees and walk out of the space. When walking by the concrete wall on my way out I smash the glass vase on my head against the wall. It brakes and fall to the ground and I leave the space.
Duration: 30 minutes
Photos: Evelyn Goupy

Title: Moving a bridge
Using the best dingy I could find and a thick rope.
I am attaching the rope to the bridge and to the dingy. Then I move the bridge two centimeters.
Duration: 25 minutes

Performance for video:
I am going out in the water and disappearing. Then I appear again and holding a big piece of ice in my hands. I bring the ice all the way out of the sea and onto the beach before disappearing out of the frame.
Duration: 3 minutes.
Video: Stein Henningsen

Performance for video.
I am pulling a big block of ice all the way over the sea ice up to the front of the Tuna glacier and leaving it there.
Duration: 70 minutes
Video: Sarah getas

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Performance with a block of ice , a rope a chair and and two screws.
I sit in the chair suspended in the air. The ice block slowly melting holding my weight.
Duration 3 hours
Photo: Roland von der Emden

This is my second performance of the festival. I attached the remaining block of ice from yesterdays performance, weighing about 90 Kg now, to a solid rope and hung it above my head.
I stood under the melting ice feeling every drop hitting my head until the screws holding it started to bend upwards and slide out of the block.
Duration: 90 minutes
Photo and video: Roland von der Emden

Performance for video:
Standing in a snow blizzard for as long as I can.
Duration: 4 minutes
Video: Sarah Gerats

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Performance with chain in Lepramuseum, St Jørgen Hospital, in Bergen, Norway.
Performing with a heavy duty chain.
Duration: 90 minutes

A reorientation for Boden: from a closed military town to an open multicultural city. A peace project aiming to create understanding among cultures. An overwhelming experience of contemporary art of absolute world-class from Syria, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and the Nordic countries.

Boden, not long ago a closed military town and now going in for tourism and receiving refugees from trouble spots around the world, is like a compressed picture of the globalization taking place internationally. The name of the large international exhibition, Reoriented, exhibiting works of artists from the Nordic countries and the Middle East, carries more than one meaning. It aims at the reorientation taking place in Boden right now, where the local development mirrors global shifts. But it also aims at the radical changes in the Middle East, with its often tumultuous courses.

The exhibition is a natural continuation of the exhibition of 2010: The Russians are coming!, where artists from Russia and the Nordic countries showed works dealing with borders, war and fear. Boden was built to defend Sweden against Russia, the then enemy in the east, but now soldiers in Boden are being trained to take a more active part in conflicts abroad. Preferably in the Middle East. Here is yet another reorientation: the line of defence against Russia is now moved further south.

Co-Curator: Jack Persekian

From an original white marble cross they use for the cemeteries in Normandy I made 25 lighter replicas
I put up a cemetery in the basement of Havremagasinet together with a photo from my project Crosses of Liberty (2005).
The installation was opened with me doing a 30 minutes performance in front of a live audience. The performance was recorded and shown on a screen during the whole exhibition.

Performing outside Kiasma Museum, Helsinki
Performing with a block of ice (125 Kg), a bottle filled with water and two straps.
The ice is strapped to my body with two straps. I am lying on the ground with the bottle in my hand. I am lying still for an hour. I have pain in my ribs because of the cobble stone.
After and hour a start trying to free myself from the ice. It is almost impossible, but the ice melts a bit and the straps become looser.
I end the performance beside the standing block of ice. My right hand is on top of the block and the left is holding the bottle out to the side, gently pouring the water out of the bottle on to the ground.
Duration 3 hours.
Photos: Maurice Fitzpatrick

Working with fourteen blocks of ice in Guangzhau Live 2011.
Marking my space at the public square and putting together a bed with all fourteen blocks.
While lying on the blocks for approximately ten minutes the daylight slowly disappears.
Then I make a line out of eleven standing ice blocks, a pile of ice out of three blocks before putting fire to the pile of ice and pushing the closest standing block of ice so it hits the second which again hits the third...
The performance is ending with eleven broken blocks of ice on the ground and a pile of ice burning.
Duration: 40 minutes
Photos: Kaisa Pagel

Video for performance.
Walking in the white landscape at the east coast of Svalbard.
Walking for approximate 50 minutes in between the small icebergs from a nearby glacier frozen into the sea ice.
Duration 50 minutes.
Video: Kjersti Strømmen

Title: The Wall
Working with 3000 red bricks.
I start at 10 in the morning building the wall. It falls down two times before it finally stands. I have to build it solid with columns for support.
At six in the evening it stands and my action starts. I sit down on a chair inside the building and look at the wall for 20 minutes. Then I get to my feet and run towards the wall. The compact is painful. I go through the wall and land on red bricks.
Duration: 8,5 hours
Photos: Ming Luo & Hongtao Zhang

Title: 160 bricks
I am pulling myself loose of 160 bricks.
The sound of the bricks sliding on the concrete is so beautiful...
Duration: 10 minutes
Photo: Ming Luo

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Performing with five red bricks.
From my starting point I will try to walk on five bricks all the way to the red gate at the end of the square without falling onto the ground.
I lay out my bricks in front of me and pick them up behind me. Slowly I get closer to the red gate. Halfway the bricks starts to break apart making the challenge harder.
Duration: 30 minutes