Performance: The Teenage Runner (Oscar)

The installation and the performance departs from a specific work in the collection and trace memories with the sense of touch when creating parallels between hazy memories and erotic sensations with science, poetry and philosophy. All of them lead back to a photograph by the American artist Arthur Tress, Teenage Runners (Band-Aid Fantasy) from 1976. The installation consists of four parts: The Collector, The Glade, The Stairs and Sensitiva. Together they form the scenography of the performance The Teenage Runner, where a young actor runs through the galleries and moves within the installation following memory traces using the sense of touch while performing a monologue. The text’s polyphony of voices from the artist, the performer, the collector, the photographer and others become a way of reconstructing and re-visiting particular memories and experiences. The sense of touch is understood here as our soul, as it develops in the embryo and is the last thing to leave our body when we die. The installation is an examination of how collecting can be an intimate act of desire and an identity-forming process, but how it is primarily a means of creating a room of one’s own. By presenting a selection from Åke’s collection at Bonniers Konsthall, the installation and performance is drawn closer to its departure point. This curatorial gesture allows The Teenage Runner, as well as other works throughout the exhibition, to enter into dialogue with an extended community of queer artists.

Included in the entrance fee, no pre-registration required. Limited admission.

The Teenage Runner (Oscar), 2018/2019/2022–
Performance ca 20 mins, plant: Sensitiva (Mimosa pudica), print on cotton voile, print on cotton paper, birch plywood, steel, glass, costume

Performer: Oscar Bergsten
Director and Script: Conny Karlsson Lundgren
Script Editing: Clara Diesen
Translation: Conny Karlsson Lundgren and Benny Nemer

Image: Tonårslöparen, 2018/2019/2022–. Performance. Photo: Mike Karlsson Lundgren