Gitte skansen 1Gitte Sætre is a multidisciplinary artist, working with dialogue-based art, performance, photography, video and sound. Sætre's oeuvre deals with current and relevant issues, such as climate change, neoliberal ideological patterns, as well as cultural radicalism. Her body of work is characterized by the weight of contemporary society, yet opening room for humor and quiet reflection.Her work investigates roles and positions through generations, related to philosophical questions like forgiveness, guilt and freedom within the close family sphere, and into the sphere of national and international politics.

 

Interview with Gitte Sætre.

gitte woman cleaning tanks video 2 min 2014

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

Since 2009 I have moved more or less away from object-based art due to political and practical reasons. I aim to be in a direct and acute dialogue with my surroundings. Time-based art makes the production period shorter and the budgets lower. This format challenges my daily presence and in many ways matches my temperament and interest/visions for art.

Are you working with any particular themes or issues in your practice at this time?
I explore the potential and possibilities for participatory creativity to help go beyond the crisis of the future within the projects: Green Hijab Movement, Magic of Seven and Soups&Stories.
In the projects Woman Cleaning and Mothers Dust, I explore the potential and possibilities to act on behalf of oneself.

In the other projects, I simply explore arts potential as a way of thinking out loud.

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?

The invitation to participate came only a few days after I started to work on a text very much relating to decolonization and the notion of demystifying knowledge production. So, I said yes in order to use the opportunity to speed up my thinking. I have for the last year been working on a project within this methodology, it is called Green Hijab Movement. My plan is to produce a new performance within the manifest of Green Hijab Movement. It feels safe and a bit unsafe at the same time. Something which I find to be a good starting point.
And I find it interesting to do it in a country like Sweden.