No Más
The performance No Más by Kjetil Kausland springs out from the visual artist Kjetil Kausland’s previous project No Holds Barred.
No Más is a Spanish expression, meaning both No more and No longer.
Information
(Objekt ID 3314)| Object type | Production |
| Coproducers | BIT Teatergarasjen |
| Audience | Adults |
| Keywords | Other, Performance, Live art |
Requirements to venue
| Blackout | No |
No Más by Kjetil Kausland built on the photo project No Holds Barred, a project springing out from Kausland’s wonderment over his own ambiguous relationship to physical violence and the boyish admiration he felt for MMA fighters. (MMA is short for Mixed Martial Arts, a branch of martial arts consisting of a mixture of martial arts techniques.) Over a period of four years the artist had access to a closed circle in which he found image material from approximately MMA fights. The result was a series of 20 photographies of MMA-fighters seconds before, during and after Mixed Martial Arts fights, in the mental vacuum a fight can leave.
The images of the series have in common that they include a kind of ambivalence Kausland thinks is generated from the tension between (among other things) violence, eroticism, emptiness, fear and tenderness. He points out that the intention is not to discuss MMA as a phenomenon, but to emphasis aspects of a human condition. Inspired by the texts by Georges Bataille he looked at the MMA cage as a ritual room for excess.
Kjetil Kausland has said the following about the project No Más: "It is now clear to me that I have to step into the image room the series No Holds Barred represents. I wish, through the performance, to become a referent in new images created under extreme conditions in a MMA cage. I now become the vulnerable, the one who is to be examined by others’ voyeuristic glances. In this setting I will have little or no opportunity to control my own visual appearance. I will be in the violence of the fight, controlled by fear, anger and potentially panic."
In May 2008, under the title of No Más, Kjetil Kausland fought a real fight against a professional MMA fighter who was hired through a neutral British matchmaker. The fight was held in an octagonal cage BIT Teatergarasjen, and the rules were kept to a juridical and health-related minimum. The rules of fighting which were used have been made by Nevada State Athletic Commission and make the norm within MMA.
In August 2007 Kjetil Kausland submitted to a strict workout regime. It consisted of 8-10 exercise sessions per week or, alternatively, as much as his body could at any time take. The similarities between the life he then leaded and the lives of the photo subjects in No Holds Barred are many.
Source: BIT Teatergarasjen, spring program 2008. 10.08.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no -arkiv
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Kjetil Kausland | – Concept/Idea |
| Kjetil Kausland | – Performer |
| Kari-Anne Østrem | – Producer |
| May 10, 2008 – BIT Teatergarasjen | Show |