| Recidency center | |
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| Recidency type | |
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| Time of residency | June 2026 |
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| Contact info | cmgaski@gmail.com |
| Definition of artistic practice? | My artistic practice explores the intersection of performance, ritual and animistic worldviews. Through embodied presence, voice, joik, drumming, myth and site-responsive processes, I create participatory experiences that reconnect people with nature, each other and the unseen. I work with landscape as collaborator, allowing weather, plants, animals and place to shape the artistic process, while remaining deeply inspired by dialogue and artistic exchange with fellow artists. |
| Title of the investigation at the residency | Listening to the Living |
| Description of investigations and findings | During the residency I investigated how performance can become a living ritual that reconnects people with nature, myth and the present moment. Working with the five elements, drumming, joik, meditation and site-responsive practice, I listened deeply to landscapes, weather, plants and animals, allowing them to guide the artistic process. Inspired by Norse mythology, Sámi traditions and animistic worldviews, I developed rituals exploring transformation, gratitude and thresholds between death and new life. One ritual emerged from witnessing a dying cat on my first day, becoming an embodied passage of release and renewal. I also explored greenlandic masked dance, collective drumming and artistic exchange with fellow participants, discovering that ritual is not something we perform alone, but something we enter together with the more-than-human world, with deep presens. The five elements: Earth, fire, air, water and space (rum). |
| What are you most curious about or invested in in your own practice? | I am deeply invested in exploring how performance can become a space of genuine transformation rather than representation. I am curious about how ritual, myth, voice, landscape and embodied presence can help people remember their relationship with the living world and experience art as participation rather than observation. |
| What questions did you bring to investigate and what questions are you leaving with? | I arrived asking how ritual and performance can nourish each other in art and are there limits for how much the two elements can be braided together? And how much can an animistic worldview be embodied in that? I leave with a different question: If I am true to my method, how will the landscape, the present moment and collective presence become co-creators of the artwork I am doing next time, rather than something I attempt to control? How can both control and the uncontrollable be honoured? |
| Transformative, creative moments at the residency | One transformative moment came during my solo night sit with the intention, “Show me love.” As I watched the sky change, listened to the wind and remained present until sunrise, I realised that ritual cannot be fully controlled—it emerges through relationship. With the landscape. With the more-than-human world. With the participants. My role is not to orchestrate every moment, but to create the conditions where something genuine can unfold. |
| Keywords for the work done at the residency | Cats, Connection, Drumming, Embodied Landscapes, Fire, More than human, Ritual, Sami knowledge, Shamanism, udesidning |
| Research locations | BIRCA grounds, Black Space (BIRCA), Chakra energy fields, Forrest, Gudhjem, Hammerknuden, Hasle, Helligdomsklipperne (Holy Cliffs), Krystalsøen (Crystal Lake), Kultippen, Natur Bornholm, Opalsøen (Opal lake), Svartingedal, White Space (BIRCA) |
| Further documentation | Ritualer og myter Kompagniet ILTs hjemmeside |
| Photos documenting the research |
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| Videos of work in progess or reflections | |
| Webside links |
Christine Gaski
