Landline (2023)
Durational performance
“Landline is an interactive conversational performance piece, bridging the distance between audience and artist. Inspired by tin-can phones in tree houses: leaking sound and turning private conversations public. The audience itself is transformed into voyeurs, spies listening in on unscripted interactions between the artist and themselves: friends, family members, coworkers, and total strangers.”
Landline (2023) was first performed for the Nobel Week Lights 2023 presented by the Nobel prize museum. It was exhibited as part of Two Europeans on A Platform; a performative installation responding to the work of Abdulrazak Gurnah who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.
On 10/12/2023 Gurnah visited the installation for a private viewing, where he saw the works of which Two Europeans on A Platform was comprised: Hemsökande - Home-seeker - A Haunting (2023) by Aron Fogelström, Truth (2023) by Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski, dear you (2023) by Roda Abdalle, Five Gates of Paradise (2023) by Isolde Bergqvist, and Landline (2023), which he was gracious enough to activate by picking up the phone and saying a few words for all to hear.
Artists who participated in Two europeans on a platform:
Roda Abdalle, Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski, Isolde Bergqvist, Neil Bhat and Aron Fogelström
Two Europeans on a platform was created by students at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, under the supervision of Ming Wong, Silvia Thomackenstein and Robert Brečević, in dialogue with Helena Hansson, the Swedish translator of Gurnah's works.
Special thanks to Hans Davis, Anette Felleson, Andreas Hammar, Lars Hammarström, Vladyslav Kamensky, Daniel Norrman, Göran Svenborn, Matilda Carter, Sol, & Signify Sverige AB