Sleep Locks the Bones

by Maritea Dæhlin

Sleep Locks the Bones is a sound installation / performance where text and voice stand at the center in a collective experience around the theme of sleep. Audiences, in small groups, are invited to settle into a comfortable position, relax and then listen to a voice that fails to do just that: to relax. The piece intertwines language, rhythms, narratives, and dreams, creating a vibrant scenic auditory landscape.

Sleep Locks the Bones will be shown in a gallery space at Kunstnernes Hus and in a black box at Black Box teater.

"Sleep" is the theme that ties it all together. Sleep as a metaphor for a place where we can completely let go, feel safe, give space to our subconsciousness and dreams. But also an invocation of its opposite: being completely awake, so much so that you continuously read the world around you. 

There are many of us who struggle with sleep, who wake up at night with thoughts that won't let go and continue weighing on us throughout the day. It may be because we are high on life and work, high on adrenaline – or for darker reasons, events and experiences from the past that have scarred us so deeply that they prevent us from giving in to sleep.

Is it possible to allow yourself to just be, to let go of the alertness that makes you constantly read your surroundings? Does everyone have the opportunity for such a state of being? There are some of us who are always awake, especially when out among people, in a theater, in an airport, at a party or on a quiet road at night – but also when we are alone and trying to sleep.

In connection with their 30th anniversary in 2022, Nordic Black Theatre invited three artists connected to the theater to create their own artistic projects. One of these artists is Maritea Dæhlin, who herself was a student at Nordic Black Express in the period 2007–2010. Maritea wanted to involve institutions with different expressions and art forms, to which she feels a closeness in her own work. She subsequently invited Black Box teater and Kunstnernes Hus, making the project a collaboration between these three institutions.