Gøril Wallin lives and works in Bergen, Norway. She is graduated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She works in fields of performance, video, photo, installation and costume/scenography. Themes in her works is often existential perspectives and emotions related to fear and security, often with a humorous element. Power, powerlessness, individual and collective, are other themes she find interested to investigate.

Interview with Gøril Wallin

You often work with time-based art. Do have any thoughts about that, in comparison with, for example, art that is more object-based?

Time based art is different from object based art, because it’s more connected with being alive. It is in movement, and in change over time. You experience with your physical body. Body in space, body in time. Your sensory apparatus is activated, simultaneously with your thoughts. What happens, happens here and now. The context is the «real» world, the public room, with all it includes. The meeting with the people is unpredictable, everything can happen. You are not in control. Risk is included, and you are vulnerable. You explore borders both in relation to yourself and in relation to the outside world. You also have the possibility to make things happen; influence, sympathise, protest, discuss, ask questions (directly or indirectly).

Are you working with any particular themes or issues in your practice at this time?

One of the issues I´m concerned with is the way we are separate and alienated from the nature as human beings.We are living more and more closer to the virtual world.

Can you share thoughts about your participation in History Will Be Kind to Me, for I Intend to Perform It -project? Did this project open up a new mode of investigation for you, or was it already part of your methodology? To be more specific, the project has a very concrete problematic, is this a new way of working for you?

Through my participation in the projectI have got an opportunity to explore a theme that I otherwise would not do. By having a common theme, that several people work with at the same time, there will be different approaches to the theme. What I also like, is that the project is crossing borders, and involve different countries during a long period of time. The project is unpredictable and in progress, and will take shape during the journey. The meeting the other participants will be very important, and can be a common inspiration for how the project will develop together.