Helle Siljeholm

Concept, choreography, installation, video

Helle Siljeholm is an artist and choreographer based in Oslo and is currently doing a PhD at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She received her bachelor's degree from London Contemporary Dance School in 2003. She completed her master's degree in visual arts at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) in 2016. Her artistic practice consists of film, installation, sculpture, choreography and performance. Helle's artistic research consists of investigating different and possible entanglements between human and more-than-human bodies and places, in light of geological (deep) time, present and possible future. 

Helle has shown work at: PCAI (GR), Biennale Gherdëina 9: Parliament of Marmots (IT), Bolzano Danza/Haydn Foundation (IT), Landart Gjerdrum, The Machine Is Us (MUNCH Trienniale), MUNCH (Opening), Center for Electronic Art, VEGA I ARTS (DK), Black Box Teater, Høstscena, Jugendstilsenteret- and KUBE, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo Kunstforening, Akershus Kunstsenter, National Gallery Iceland (Is), Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (Palestinian Occupied Territories), Malmø Kunsthall, Athens Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof-museum für Gegenwart (T). Helle was co-curator of Høstscena: East of the Sun, West of the Moon (2023), Curator for the Academy of Fine Arts graduation exhibition for BA students: St. Olavsgate 21: Til Salgs (2021) and artistic director for Barents Spektakel: The World's Northernmost Chinatown (2019).

Collaborators & Contributors

Curator

Lisa Gilardino is a curator based in Bologna (IT). Among other things she co-directed Santarcangelo Festival, the major and oldest Italian festival for contemporary theater, co-founded Samara Editions-Performances by post, a publishing house for performative arts commissioning new works  to be sent to spectators by post and co-curated Høstscena festival in Norway. She loves hiking and being surprised.

Producer

Guro Vrålstad is a producer and project manager based in Oslo with a special focus on cross-disciplinary contemporary art projects. She currently works for Susie Wang and Helle Siljeholm. From 2011 she has worked on various art projects, often with geographical emphasis on the Far North, such as Dark Ecology and the annual arts festival Barents Spektakel.

Performer and climber

Marianne Kjærsund is a freelance contemporary dancer. She has worked as a performer and teacher all across Scandinavia, and collaborated with a wide variety of performing artists. Kjærsund has also been an assistant to theatre director Kjersti Horn at The National Theatre and Riksteatretet, and director Birgitte Strid at Nordland Theatre.

Performer and climber

Pernille Holden works as an artist within the field of dance and choreography. Collectivity, sensuousness and musicality are driving forces in her artistic practice. Holden has collaborated with a wide range of choreographers and performing artists. Holden is educated at The School of Contemporary Dance in Oslo.

Climber and performer

Anders Rummelhoff is a trained actor from GITIS in Århus. He has worked as an actor since 2005, for and with Kim Atle Hansen, Karen Røise Kielland, Jarl Flaaten Bjørk, Simone Thiis and for Dramatikkens Hus,  Østfold Teater, Rogaland Teater, Det Norske Teater, NRK, Nordisk Film, Fabulous. Anders has worked as a climbing instructor and been active in sports climbing for a long time.

Performer and climber

Benno Steinegger director, actor and artist was born in Bolzano in 1980. He trained at the University of Florence, Universidade Nova in Lisbon and the CSSD in London (Master of fine Arts). 

Performer and climber

Sjur Hansteen is a freelance project creator and climber. He is currently working on a concept for a digital detox project in Oslo called Offline. He believes that mind and body are essential to well-being, which can be supported by art, meditation, and exercise. He has a background in psychology and currently studies to become a trainer in interpersonal skills and communication. Hansteen’s primary interest is in self-improvement and climbing, which he combines with traveling and working to climb across the world.

Performer and climber

Henrik Burvang is based in Ålesund and has a mechanical engineering, science system and product design background. He works for the Coastal Administration on climate and environmental aspects within sea transport. Outdoor enthusiast with broad experience from both steep and flat outdoor life, steep skiing and freeriding on snowboards and climbing in particular. He has competed nationally and internationally as a snowboarder, and has established a dozen new climbing routes in the high mountains at home and abroad, as well as arranged expeditions to inaccessible and demanding areas. Henrik is a member of the Norwegian Peak Club.

Performer and climber

Mads Gausdal is a System Integration Manager, and an Alpine climber based in Ålesund. While his professional life focuses on putting chaos into systems, his private life focuses on exploring our world through mountains, the never-ending chase for the perfect crack-line. His favourite place to be is Molladalen.

Producer

Annette Wolfsberger is a producer based in Amsterdam facilitating collaborative interdisciplinary arts projects that relate to technology, society and the environment. She was producer of The Kelp Congress for LIAF – Lofoten International Arts Festival, Sonic Acts and Dark Ecology and has managed and co-curated various international artistic exchange and residency programmes, a.o. for Trans Europe Halles and the Netherlands Media Arts Institute. More on: aaaan.net

Editor

Hilde Methi is a curator based in Kirkenes, Norway. She builds up long-term collaborative projects infusing artistic ideas in local contexts. Recently she co-curated Hábmet hámi, Lofoten International Art Festival-LIAF 2019 including the Kelp Congress, and Dark Ecology (2014-2016) – a series of temporary site-responsive works in the Norwegian-Russian border area.

Theatre scholar and dramaturg

Kai Johnsen is a director and a dramaturg, and currently professor in directing at The Academy of Theatre at Oslo National College for the Arts. He was educated at The National Academy of Theatre and The University of Oslo. He is considered to be one of Norway’s leading figures in the development of essayistic and innovative scenic arts, and has directed more than 60 performances on leading Norwegian and foreign stages, in a variety of genres and often in collaboration with leading contemporary writers.

Researcher

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is Associate Professor in Global Culture Studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. He is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council project CoFutures: Pathways to Possible Presents and the Norwegian Research Council project Science Fictionality.

Photo and Video 

Istvan Virag´s artistic practice concerns the social and economic aspects of globalisation, development and mobility – and the impact of these on the personal, private sphere of human life. His latest works explore post-growth theories and interferences between themes such as urban development, architecture, biopolitics and the “myth” of limitless economic growth. Virag received his BFA from the Academy of Fine Art at the Oslo Academy of the Arts in 2016.

Videographer

Since his childhood, Tormod Granheim’s dream was to work with adventure photography. A move to Chamonix in France fed his interest in downhill skiing, and led him to complete the first ski descent of Mount Everest’s North Face solo. Since then, he has combined adventure with consulting for the Army, Air Force and Navy. A decade after Everest, he became the first Nordic climber to summit all 82 4000-meter summits of the Alps, an achievement that was rewarded with the title ‘Adventurer of the Year’. As an athlete and adventurer he’s worked on both sides of the camera for National Geographic, and his writings have been published in more than 25 countries. After retiring from sport, he started a photographic project focused on big mountains.

Website design and development

Michael works as a freelance photographer and designer. Since 2015, Michael has worked in arts communications for Pikene på Broen and Office for Contemporary Art Norway. 

Pigment Expert and Visual Artist 

Through his work as a visual artist, for the last 15 years he has been passionate about nature’s color tones. Through the colors that he researches, he builds his own artistic language, just like a composer does with tones. Beyond the aesthetics, it’s also the research in Norwegian soil and minerals that also constitutes a big part of his interest. In his PhD, he is researching stucco lustro and fresco works consisting exclusively of Norwegian minerals and color pigments.

Access, security, historical consultant and local facilitation at Kolsås

Costume designer

Artistic advisor

Benedikte Holen is a curator at Jugendstilsenteret and KUBE in Ålesund since 2013, where she has worked with several artists in developing solo and group exhibitions, public programs and discursive platforms as well as in presenting projects in public space. She is the author and editor of several essays and exhibition publications. Holen often engages in collaborations with artists in which the production of new works is essential. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Bergen and a degree in Creative Curating from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

Artistic advisor

Siri Forberg is the artistic director of Høstscena, a live arts festival in Ålesund, Norway. She has a background in performing in different kinds of theatre, tv, film and performance. Her dramaturgical work includes En Folkefiende in Oslo directed by Rimini Protokoll (Haug/Wetzel) for the Ibsen festival at the Nationaltheatre in 2012. Forberg considers the playful quality of theatre as a key factor in enabling reflection and interaction on the question of human existence.

Artistic advisor

Ørnulf Opdahl is an internationally renown Norwegian painter and educator based in Ålesund. He is represented in several art collections, including the National Gallery of Norway, the British Museum, the National Museum of Contemporary art in Oslo, Bergen Art Museum and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. He was appointed professor at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts from 1985 to 1992.

Researcher

Silje Opdahl Mathisen is a collection manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. She has a master´s degree in archaeology from the University of Oslo and holds a Ph. D on contemporary exhibitions of Sámi culture and history (2014). Her research interests revolve around archaeology, museology in general the history of archaeological and ethnographical collections and exhibitions.

Co-producers

The Parliament of Marmots

The Legend of the Fanes – one of the most fascinating Ladin myths of the Dolomites, reconstructed at the beginning of the last century by the Austrian writer Karl Felix Wolff – tells the story of a meek and peaceful populace whose kingdom extended beyond the seven mountains and seven marshes to the edge of the world. The secret behind the prosperity of this population lay in their alliance with the marmots, of whom the Fanes were indeed descendants, for it was among those animals – entrusted to them by Anguana, the water nymph – that their foremother Moltina had been brought up.

Curated by Lorenzo Giusti with Associate Curator Marta Papini

Bolzano Danza is a leading festival of contemporary dance, both nationally and internationally. Organised by the Haydn Foundation, it brings its contagious energy to the city every July, attracting a diverse and enthusiastic audience. Inclusion, participation and sustainability are key to the festival. It is open to societal diversity and ready to capture our world in a state of flux – through the universal language of dance.

The performances, which showcase the best contemporary choreographers and dancers and encompass a wide range of genres and languages, are centred around the Teatro Comunale, from which they radiate out to a number of prominent venues throughout the city, reshaping its perception thanks to projects involving artivism and social interaction. Alongside the performances, the festival also offers dance workshops of all styles organised by the Südtiroler Kulturinstitut.

Reykjavík Dance Festival is an international center for choreographic practices in Iceland - seeking to curate an all year round conversation with its audiences – through the artists we present, support and produce. Founded in 2002, RDF's central activity has always been its international festival which now takes place in November. Since 2014 however, RDF has extended its activities – to include national and international initiatives throughout the year in the form of mini-festival formats, workshops, and residencies.

Sismògraf is the festival that detects the movements of the body and of the planet. Of the body because it covers dance, circus acts, performances, walks and hybrid situations; and of the planet because there is no doubt that we live on a living planet with volcanic eruptions and rising sea levels that we must listen to. It is a situated festival that reaches out from La Garrotxa to the rest of the world. For this very reason, the landscape is an integral part of the festival, landscape is understood as a physical, mental, and emotional setting, and as a place where things happen.

Walk&Talk Biennial is an experimental and participatory project that takes place on the island of São Miguel, Azores. It exists in dialogue with the territory and the involvement of local and migrant communities around the knowledge generated in the expanded field of the arts, intersecting visual arts, performance, music, architecture, and design. Geologically straddling the North American, Eurasian, and African plates, this volcanic archipelago, through centuries of ecological imperialism, has transformed and multiplied well beyond its endemic vegetation to become a cornucopia of species that trace a history of global trade and corresponding forms of capitalism as they intersected with these isles.

Perform Europe, supported by the European Union, is a funding scheme for the European performing arts sector. It facilitates international networking and supports inclusive, diverse, and eco-friendly touring projects across the 40 Creative Europe countries. Perform Europe emphasises practices rooted in sustainability and inclusivity, aiming to transform the performing arts sector and ensure a balanced distribution across the continent.

Perform Europe is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and implemented by a consortium of six organisations: IETM – International network for contemporary performing artsEuropean Festivals Association (EFA)CircostradaEuropean Dance Development NetworkPearle * - Live Performance Europe and IDEA Consult.

Co-commissioners

The Viti Foundation is the largest cultural institution between Bergen and Trondheim, with 63 employees. Viti operates and manages the Art Nouveau Center and KUBE in Ålesund, the Fisheries Museum in Ålesund, the Sunnmøre Museum in Ålesund, the Medieval Museum in Ålesund, the Nature Museum in Sykkylven, the Furniture Museum in Sykkylven, the Sivert Aarflot Museum in Volda Museum, Brudavolltunet in Ørsta, the Folk Music Archive and a number of floating cultural monumentssuch as the bankline vessel Storeggen of Aalesund and the Shetland bus Heland.

From a 1950s building in Tøyen to a modern museum by Oslo’s waterfront: MUNCH opened 22 October 2021, tailor-made for great art experiences. The unique legacy of Edvard Munch finally has the place it deserves.

Supported by