I guess you have a lot of questions. A bedtime story
by Maritea Dæhlin
A sound installation performed overnight for audience members located in separate hotel rooms.
I guess you have a lot of questions. I do – I have so many questions. Questions that become one and get tangled into their voices.
Their answers are not answering my questions – my questions don’t want them to answer. Still, I want to listen to them,
a conversation where you don’t have to say anything, you just have to be there, you can listen or you can sleep.
You can let the words become part of your unconscious, your dreams, or you can try to stay awake.
The fragments of languages, Spanish, Ayuujk, English and Norwegian, will be unpredictable, but full.
This is our reality, and you are welcome into it, not to try to understand but to get an ungraspable insight.
You are invited to spend a night alone in a hotel room, accompanied by the voices and texts of
the linguist and activist Yasnaya Elena A. Gil and the journalist and writer Sigrun Slapgard.
The soundscape and texts are triggered by conversations Maritea had with these two women
whom she admires and wanted to listen deeply to. Their conversations centred around the word ‘solidarity’
– a word to be questioned, squeezed, loved and rejected.
Credits
A work by: Maritea Dæhlin
Texts and voice in sound work: Yasnaya Elena A. Gil and Sigrun Slapgard
Other text: Maritea Dæhlin.
Sound technician: Truls Hannemyr
Producer (distribution): Ingeborg Husbyn Aarsand
Artistic advisor: Tormod Carlsen
Artistic advice on sound work: Thora Dolven Balke
Translation: Adam King and Elyzabeth Wild
Photo: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard
Commissioned by OCA
Co-produced by Black Box teater
Supported by Arts Council Norway, NOTAM and Oslo kommune
«Maritea Dæhlin’s sound installation in an Oslo hotel room gives the listener a subliminal lesson in how solidarity appears in a world of asymmetrical relationships. (…)
Dæhlin reworks this material into fragments that she manipulates and repeats in such a manner so that it is as alike as a thought that occurs and takes shape within the listener.»
– Kunstkritikk
“Experiencing art while sleeping changes perception, but expands one’s vision even with closed eyes.
(...) this is not a pandemic piece. This is a piece that can be read from the core of the observer; it will be the origin of many different interpretations where the world will always play its own role. In another time at a different place, I would have read it differently, but it would be just as valid, just as true and just as lovely.”
«Dæhlin is ready: “I guess you have a lot of questions.” She is onto something, and as a participant in her sound installation I feel cared for, seen, enriched and challenged. What more can you ask of “a bedtime story”?» Norsk Shakespeare tidsskrift
— Norsk Shakespeare tidsskrift
« One of Norway’s best dramatic artists
Of Norwegian performance artists, Maritea Dæhlin must be the best at rhythmic language. (…) The sound image is electric, contributing to making this a work of art.»