Where are you?

Where are you? considers, and reflect around, questions on human geography; identity, locality, cultural diversity, similarities and dissimilarities, migration and nationality. With the audience a smith and Amund Sjølie Sveen wish to consider and reflect ideas on where we are, where we come from and what we do.

The school version of Where are you? is a two-part interactive project – and exchange of information, thoughts and perspectives between two artists and a school grade.

Where are you? starts with the arrival of a box to a school and the pupils in one particular grade. The box contains a letter from two artists plus a disposable camera, a tape measure, some questionnaires and other assignments/missions. The artists need information and pictures from the pupils – about the school, the pupils, where they come from, what they eat, where they would most like to be if they hadn't been at school and so on. One school lesson is required to perform the activities assigned by the box. After the box is returned to the artists. Amund Sjølie Sveen and a smith process the material and implements it in a performance arriving the school approximately two weeks later. In the performance text, sound and images are included. We talk about who we are, who we are not, where we are, where we are not, presenting pictures and sound from different places. This, too, lasts the duration of approximately one school lesson. Through the artists' and the pupils' work a project is developed, telling what it can mean to come from Oslo, Mogadishu, Kirkenes, Jerusalem or Hemsedal, and what it can mean to be from Norway, Scandinavia or Europe – or Israel, the Middle East and Asia.

The adult version of Where are you? also is founded in the actual physical room in which the encounter between artists and audience takes place, and the play changes from location to location. The performance seeks to reflect around the big issues with humour, enthusiasm and naivety as effects.

Where are you? by Andy Smith and Amund Sjølie Sveen was supported by the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs/MFA (travel grant/performing arts).

Source:

http://www.scenekunstbruket.no/sck/?lang=nor&sam=&tar=&gen=&cri=hvor%20er%20du?&act=skbprod&prid=1&aid=1973, 09.10.2010