Mohamed:
We meet by the tennis courts at Rosenhoff; it’s windy, and Pia has brought two gifts. One is a book titled The Mass Psychology of Fascism by the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. The other is a plate she bought for me at a flea market.
I crave for a guy who doesn't want me, and she shows up with this plate depicting two men flirting under a tree with hunting dogs in the background. I find myself thinking: right now, she is doing exactly what I dream of him doing.
Pia Maria Roll is a theater director. She works within what can be described as a documentary practice, where her most important tool has always been the ability to listen. For months and years, she has moved into people’s streams of speech – chasing them through thickets of text, waiting, courting, and manipulating.
But now, she wants someone to listen to her.
She engages the young performance artist Mohamed Mohamed to see whether the dynamics can be reversed. The experiment takes the orgone box as its point of departure: a therapeutic device developed by the German-Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. The box is approximately 40 by 20 centimeters, made of plywood, and filled with something that looks like steel wool. It belonged to Pia’s father, who underwent therapy16 years with the Norwegian Reichian psychoanalyst Ola Raknes.
According to Reich, orgone was the life force – an evolution of Freud's conceptof libido. He believed that when this force was suppressed, it could lead to illness and destruction, not only in the individual but in society as a whole.
Wilhelm Reich was a student of Freud, and his master’s great hope and planned successor after Jung was caught sleeping with all his patients. However, their thinking eventually diverged, particularly regarding the idea of how psychoanalysis could function as a revolutionary force in the fight against fascism.
● Pia Maria Roll is an award-winning performing artist, playwright, and political activist. Among her most important productions are Baqorban, Ways of Seeing, Over evne III, Ship O’hoi!, and Ses i min nästa pjäs, all of which premiered at Black Box teater. Her productions are always created in close collaboration with dramaturgs, visual artists, musicians, dancers, co-directors, and the performers themselves.
● Mohamed Mohamed holds a BA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and has also studied at the Nordic Black Xpress Theater School in Oslo. In 2025, the work The healing process is triggering was nominated for the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Prize. His performance works include You have started singing again / Don leat álgán lávlut fas with Kátjá Rávdná at the Bodø Biennale 2024, and The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ during Arendalsuka 2023 as part of Fotogalleriet's program Ta Plass: Norge/Sápmi. He also exhibited the installation Amm Mørket at the Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen) in 2025 and in 2016 he is collaborating with Buskerud Teater and Buskerud Kunstsenter on three performance installations in public space.
