Like so many others, I have been crushing hard on the sixties and seventies cultural scene since puberty. My crush started of course through listening to music by Janis Joplin, The Doors, Love, Kraftwerk, Velvet Underground, David Bowie and many many others. My love grew stronger through the era´s literature. But it was first when I started reading art history, I completely sort of grasped it and understood my passion: The idea of community within the culture scene. They abandoned the formal borders between art, music, dance, literature and theatre, and chose instead to play together, inspiring each other.
Growing up in Haugesund with many of the hard crushing youngsters, we decided to create an atmospshere where people could come together and play. It was called Safe as Milk, and became a really wonderful music and art festival hosting legendary performances by Lee Ranaldo, Kim Hiortøy, Årabrot, JR Ewing and many others. The festival lived for ten years, nine of them in a restored boathouse.
The last few years Im very glad to have discovered that the art institutions have more often included the other performative art forms into their program. Last year, ICA Boston curated the great show Dance Draw, Centre Pompidou are currently showing Dance through Life, and now even the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo are curating a show on how music influences art with I wish this was a song. Music in Contemporary Art opening in september.
I do believe in the tension between medium specificity and interdisciplinary in art. I think it create a state of constant dialogue between radicals and traditionalist. But secretly, I want more than anything the community from the 60s and 70s, where everybody play together and nobody acts professional.
Tonight Nils Bech is performing with his band on Kunsthall Oslo. Yay! I shot the image above during his performance at the Venice Biennial last year.
