No Sense of Place

No Sense of Place is an attempt to look closer at some performance practices in contemporary art production that address the issue of place, often through a variety of media, such as video, objects, dance, and text. The project title is inspired by Joshua Meyrowitz' prophetic book from 1986 on how electronic media dissolve the historical relationship between social behaviour and physical place.



No Sense of Place will address the interplay between performance art, physical spaces and media. On the one hand, performances that take place in a here-and-now with both performer and audience present. On the other hand, performances that are presented through recordable media. A key question of the exhibition will be: What is the significance of place in performance art, and how is place as a context influencing our understanding and perception of the performance? An ephemeral art form without a lasting object, performance art relies on documentation (written, recorded, photographed etc.) as one of its core conditions for existence in the aftermath. In the gap between past and present, the significance of place becomes crucial.



The project will be realized through an exhibition, a performance programme and a catalogue. The Paris-based independent curator Christian Alandete has been invited as a co-curator of the performance programme. In the catalogue, essays from contributing researchers and writers such as Ragnhild Tronstad and Susanne Ø. Sæther will be presented in addition to texts from the curators.



An instruction piece by Brendan Fernandes will be performed at the opening.
Performance programme 25 and 26.11 with performances by David Adamo, Einat Amir, Keren Cytter, Carole Douillard, Doria Garcia, among others.



Elisabeth Byre lives and works in Oslo. She is currently working as a curator at Kunsthall Oslo. Recent exhibitions include Everyone got something great, The National Theatre, Oslo; Lessons in the Art of Falling - Photographs of Norwegian Performance and Process Art 1966-2009, curated with Jonas Ekeberg, Preus Museum, Horten; Storyteller – Organizing Time and Space, 0047, Oslo; and Ghost in the Machine, curated with Susanne Ø. Sæther, Kunstnernes hus, Oslo. Byre studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, and at the University of Oslo and Copenhagen. She participated in CuratorLab, a postgraduate curatorial program at Konstfack, Stockholm.

No Sense of Place
Kuratoren: Elisabeth Byre, Christian Alandete



Künstler: David Adamo, Einat Amir, Keren Cytter, Brendan Fernandes, Carole Douillard, Dora Garcia...