Hamskifte (FO)
BODILY PERFORMANCE ABOUT IDENTITY AND CHANGE
OF CLAY YOU HAVE COME
The stage floor and wall are covered with plastic. In the middle of the room there’s a chair and two buckets. One bucket is filled with clay and the other is filled with water. Faroese actor Kjartan Hansen enters the stage and begins to smear mud all over his face, and then his whole head. He molds the clay, and in front of the audience a new grotesque creature emerges. HAMSKIFTE is a study of identity and constant change. Covered in clay from head to toe, the body transforms as the clay takes new forms. The body and face transforms itself constantly in new expressions, like a living metamorphosis.
HAMSKIFTE is a mesmerizing performance about the deep chaos of feelings and yearnings that live inside humanbeings and which is a vital necessity. The audience’s sense of identity is reflected in the mud when the face is transformed into living installations that are both abstract and poetic. The skins metamorphosis grows out from the body on the stage with almost convulsing contractions and slapping movements. The sight is blinded behind the clay and the smooth facial features. The mouth is filled and mute behind the thick layers. The only thing you hear is the electronic music pumping out of the speakers and a haunting moan from the deep black holes in the clay. Of clay you have come, of clay you will be shaped, and with clay you will shed your skin.
INSPIRED BY FAROESE RITE
Kjartan Hansen got the inspiration for HAMSKIFTE from the Faroese cultural history, based on the old Faroese rite of "Grylen" which was a person who performed purification rituals for the inhabitants of a small village. The painter and sculptor Oliver de Sagazans
