The film was in its time recorded at the old Art Academy in Bergen and constituted one of the main element in the exhibition which she held in Bergen Kunsthall on the occasion of the Festspill exhibition in 2015. We are also happy to invite you to discuss the film and the questions it forwards about art and education with Ane Hjort Guttu and Anne Szefer Karlsen on the following Friday!
About the film:
Art student Damla (23) goes each day to beg on the streets alongside the Romá woman Bianca, with whom she gradually develops a friendship. ”If she has to sit like that, then we must actually all do it. And in art, you can change on the small scale what you really want to change on the large scale,” says Damla when explaining the project to her class at the Bergen Art Academy. Her work starts as a performative art project, which is heavily discussed among her classmates and teacher. Gradually, the situation develops into a ethical and political crisis for Damla, who struggles to justify how she can continue her project facing the social inequality outside art school.
Ane Hjort Guttu (b. 1971) is a Norwegian artist and filmmaker based in Oslo. She works in a variety of media, but has in recent years mainly concentrated on film and video works, ranging from investigative documentary to poetic fiction. Among recurrent themes in her work are the relationship between freedom and power, economy and the public space, social change and limits of action. Guttu is also a writer and curator, and she is a professor at the National Academy of the Arts, Oslo. An anthology of her written works was published in 2018.
The conversation and lecture will be in Knut Knaus at 11am on Friday.