Real-life Whack-A-Mole

Actually, the two ideas have merged since our original application. Now they will be presented together as one performance, combined with impressions we have gathered here in Stavanger. We will take on the role of moles, the animals in the arcade game Whack-A-Mole, and look at our environment to try to understand the world.

While here in Studio17, we will present an installation based on the structure from the performance along with other materials.

For me it’s a place I return to because it’s where I feel the most free to think and invent. I always try to search for the part of me that is still a child, or that I hope is. When making art, I’m in a similar position to a child because I need to free myself to create new things. You kind of go into a different space. As a performance artist, it’s also about simulating what I myself like to see when I go to the theater, like effects that I don’t completely understand or tricks that leave me with questions. Just like it did when I went to the theatre as a child.

I'm not sure I work with “childhood” exactly, but for sure there are many childhood memories inside my work. When I was a child, I didn't know what was happening around me. And I mean that literally: I couldn't because people really didn't explain things to me. But now, when I look back, I understand, “wow, that's why it was like this at home, or like that in our family history” … they are stories. And I put quite a lot of that in my work. I also like to include some kind of humor in my works, which relates to children, I think. For a child, everything has the potential to be absurd. So, I try to take their point of view when making art.

Yeah, I think there is something to it, that kids don't really understand the world, they don't have any tools for that. And we, the adults, try to pretend that we understand our world, but in reality, we don't. We don’t understand anything, it's just like a big fairytale we're trying to teach kids, but actually we're all just pretending. We’re just putting on brave faces.

Actually, it's the first time we work together!

Lucie does performance, video and theatre, and she's also a director for stage pieces. And I work with video, installation and performance. Since meeting, we always thought it would be nice to work together. We share the same view of the world and work with overlapping mediums, and we have long been looking for the right opportunity to work together. When we saw the open call from Studio17, we decided to apply with a shared project.

Of course we were friends before this residency, so now as artists it’s interesting to learn how to work together. Because we already know how to be friends, you know?

Oh, so important! We actually recently talked about it among ourselves, because so many open calls advertise that they want emerging artists, but somehow they always choose someone who is not really…

Well, we feel we are always too emergent!

They always find someone who is a little bit higher up on the career ladder, a little bit further along, a slightly safer decision. Studio17’s way of working is quite rare. For example, there are many open calls for duos or collectives, but since we didn't work together before it was hard to apply as such elsewhere. We even asked Studio17 why they chose us, and they said this was exactly the kind of thing they seek to support.

Yes, they wanted projects that are not finished yet, and well, that’s us! But it's really good to have places who are engaged concretely in emerging practices, not exclusively, but who are open to hosting and developing something new.

Absolutely.

I would say we relate more to what we have in common than what is different.

I agree, in a way we bonded more over the universal things, and growing up under the same North American pop culture influence like arcade games like Whack-A-Mole for example, although that is a Japanese invention I believe. Because of this – and I don’t know if it’s good or bad – but it means we share a lot of the same references despite having grown up so far apart. So, it feels like we are sharing the same thing, and we have been searching for those shared experiences.

We didn't really aim to learn too much about Norway before we came. Mostly because we wanted to be excited about seeing and knowing for the first time. But! Regarding the idea of playgrounds, we were quite shocked. There are so many playgrounds in Stavanger. We already documented around 20 playgrounds, just from walking in the area. And so many playgrounds were empty. I don't know why!

And we really love that, because we were interested in those places that were built for kids to play, and then there is nobody there

It must mean that there are a lot of kids here, and maybe it has to do with sunlight, but also in the afternoon there are no kids. It creates a strange landscape, a playground flooded with daylight, but no kids. We find it… also kind of matching this city with a certain type of silence.

And it's interesting because at first, we wanted to do something on playgrounds during the night, but here we don't have to wait until night to have the empty atmosphere. It creates itself!

For me, what I do is political in its own way. Everything is so scary, so for me I need something to disconnect or to approach topics with a kind of naivety, to even be able to think about what can be next. Because if I don’t have that, I don't think I could imagine a future.

Yes, yes. Because as I said earlier, I can't understand the world. And I can't pretend to understand the world. So working with that state of mind can help to move forward. And even if it's not changing the world that we are living in, it’s still possible to create a sense of wonder.

For me, before the political moment we are in right now and even before I started making art myself, I always felt like the artists were the ones twisting serious topics into something fun. Fun in the sense that humor or satire can be a strong instrument. I always liked this way of making art, so in my own practice I try to use humor and observation. Also, since moving to France around 10 years ago, I chose to investigate my identity in France as a stranger: learning a new language, applying for a visa, having to do many administrative things… It was impossible not to talk about those topics in my art, because I always put my daily life in my work. It can be so tiring to both handle and observe this kind of situation, always talking about the same things and dealing with some foreigner-related problem. Talking about these things in plain words can be hard, but I wanted to share, so art became a way for me to relay my experiences and the experiences of others in a similar situation. Using absurdity and naivety in such work can create a strong impact. It’s a way of conveying the message without dramatizing my own situation.

Yes, absolutely, it’s about having a dual personality. It’s a work about my niece, whose name is Madison Kyoungwon Lee; so she has an American name and Korean name. My parents moved from Korea to the USA just to take care of her. They call her by both names, and the baby doesn't understand anything, but it’s a way for them to kind of admit that this child will be American, not only Korean. The video itself is fun, because my parents are fun and it's comical how they talk about so much with the baby who doesn't understand… On the surface it’s light-hearted, but when looking at the video you also realize that it's not only funny, because probably this child, when she grows up, will also have to question her own identity.