TWELFTH CONVERSATION

Twelfth Conversation
Kurt Johannessen is Norway’s leading performance artist. He has worked in this discipline for twenty years, in addition to producing installations, land art and pictures. Throughout the years a number of small Artist books with curious and poetic texts have also come from his hand.
His performances cover a wide range, both thematically and in terms of effects and choice of location. And yet a few features characterize almost all of his performance works as well as his other productions. It is the use of simple means, and it is the slightly absurd character that invests his works with ambiguity and gives them a distinct poetic and mysterious dimension. We see this also in Twelfth Conversation.
A wet and cold evening in the autumn of 2002 he stages his performance in a small forest lake on the road from Munkebotten to Storavannet. Dressed in his black suit, his trademark as performance artist, he is rowed out and placed in the middle of the lake.
Knee-deep in chilly autumn water he remains standing. At regular intervals, and with calm movements, he bends forward and lets his hands move cautiously over the water. For almost an hour, while the dark falls and the rain pours down until his body is one with the water, the forest and the dark, he carries on his conversation
A suggestive event and a suggestive image had been created on a rainy evening in early autumn.

© Dag Sveen