Theater/ video artist Iver Findlay and choreographer/ dancer Marit Sandsmark are the artistic core
of Findlay//Sandsmark, and composer/ musician Pål Asle Pettersen has been a constant collaborator. They have been working together since 2010, but often expand the constellation to include artists from different disciplines and practices, creating a synthesis between the contributions. The company has performed at Black Box teater on several occasions with productions that moves at the border between performance and installation.
In this brief interview, Findlay and Sandsmark share some thoughts from inside the artistic process of returner (early version), which we are presenting this season as a process viewing. A later version will be presented at our festival in March 2017 and at BIT Teatergarasjen in Bergen.
“In some ways, returner picks up where fractured bones/ let’s get lost (2011) left off. We intended fractured bones to move cyclically between oppositional concepts: natural vs. synthetic, inside vs. outside, presence vs. absence. For returner we are looking to continue the arc. We have been delving into notions and modes of simulation and how they function in contrast to physical existence, as well as how mechanical interpretations and mediations shape our experience of space and distance in terms of inner/outer and presence/absence. Artistically, we are attempting to build on the circulatory system that we have been fostering between practices and artistic collaborators, to shape a process and form as much as material and outcome.
As a collective we continue to go deeper into themes of presence and absence and how live compositions can circulate between artistic processes within a choreographic frame. We are looking for moments of alchemy, when one can see the sound, hear the movement, and so on. Sensations we did not know existed until they emerged through the work.”
