Maritea Dæhlin: 'I guess you have a lot of questions. A bedtime story'

I guess you have a lot of questions? I do – I have so many questions. Questions that become one and get tangled in their voices. Their answers do not answer my questions – my questions don’t want to be answered. Still, I want to listen to them, a conversation where you don’t have to say anything; you just have to be there, then you can listen or sleep. You can let the words become part of your unconscious thoughts, your dreams, or you can try to stay awake. The fragments of languages, Spanish, Ayuujk, English, and Norwegian, will be unpredictable but full. This is our reality, and you are welcome into it, not to try to understand it but to gain an ungraspable insight into it.

You are invited to spend a night alone in a hotel room, accompanied by the voices and texts of the linguist and activist Yásnaya Elena A. Gil and the journalist and writer Sigrun Slapgard. The soundscape and texts are triggered by conversations I had with these two women that I admire and wanted to listen to deeply. Our conversations had the word ‘solidarity’ at the centre: a word to be questioned, squeezed, loved and rejected, hand in hand with the sculpture Hun som bærer minnet om denne jorda, hvor bærer denne jorda henne?, by my mother Gitte Dæhlin. The sculpture begs us not to describe her, to not make her answer any questions, but we will ask, ask and ask, but without expecting her to answer – we respect her silence. Still, we want her to be there for us, to save us, to fill that silence.

A work by: Maritea Dæhlin. Texts and voice in sound work: Yásnaya Elena A. Gil, Sigrun Slapgard and Maritea Dæhlin. Artistic advisor: Tormod Carlsen. Artistic advice on sound work: Thora Dolven Balke. Technical support: Truls Hannemyr Producer: Elisabeth C. Gmeiner. Translation: Adam King and Elyzabeth Wild. Commissioned by Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Co-produced by Black Box teater (Oslo). Supported by Kulturrådet and NOTAM