Mingling in the festival area. The shop and  MUNCH deli & café are open.

Edvard Munch had his own way of writing. He used text to collect fleeting thoughts and explore ideas. His notebooks are full of drafts and crossed out text. Little of what Munch wrote can be considered “finished” in a traditional sense—instead it can be understood as spontaneous notes and literary drafts. Join us in a communal reading of Munch’s texts with the artist collective Carrie, a group working at the intersection of dramatic art, visual art, and literature.

Limited seats, free registration here with festival pass for Friday.

After Munch: “The Wretched of the Earth”, by Sumaya Jirde Ali
Writer, poet, and editor of the magazine Fett, Sumaya Jirde Ali, reads the poem “The Wretched of the Earth”, which is her response to an unfinished text by Edvard Munch. The poem is written for the anthology published in conjunction with the festival: only an instant.

After Munch: “Paolo”, by Felipe “Fela” Orellana Castro
The dialogue “Paolo” is hip-hop artist and writer Felipe “Fela” Orellana Castro’s response to one of Edvard Munch’s unfinished texts. The dialogue is written for the anthology only an instant and will be performed with the hip-hop dancer and actress Georgia May Anta.  

The Word Is No Longer Yours: A Conversation between Felipe “Fela” Orellana Castro and Camara Lundestad Joof
What happens when the playwright’s words are handed over to directors and actors? And are dramatic texts actually ever finished? Felipe “Fela” Orellana Castro is a hip-hop artist, actor, and writers, and was one the writers of the critically acclaimed show Blokk til Blokk (Block to Block), which won the Oslo City Art Award in 2019. Camara Lundestad Joof is a performer, playwright, and author. Her play De må føde oss eller pule oss for å elske oss (They Must Birth Us or Fuck Us to Love Us) is opening at the National Theatre in October.

Unpublished: Anne Karine Thorbjørnsen, Carina Stoltenberg (Smerz), Josef Yohannes, and Aon Raza present unpublished texts.

Mingling in the festival area. The shop and  MUNCH deli & café are open.

Constance Tenvik’s background is as an artist, while Inti Wang comes from the field of fashion. Both practices—where text appears equally as embroidery on a track suit, photo captions for staged self-portraits on Instagram or narratives in installation form—play out in the intersection between the fields of art and fashion, as well as between genres and modes of expression. Apparently, neither Tenvik nor Wang respect established categories. What is the role of the unfinished in their open and boundary breaking practices?

Mette Henriette is a Norwegian Sami musician, saxophonist, and composer. When her debut album was released by the German record company ECM in 2015, she was one of the youngest artists in the company’s history. At the text festival, she will perform the composition Čieđđa, fas, which is her response to one of Edvard Munch’s unfinished texts. The work was created specifically for the anthology only an instant.

Renée has played on the Oslo club scene for decades and Maja has danced there for just as long. Normally, they work for competing publishing companies, but tonight they will be joining forces at the decks.

Mingling in the festival area. The shop and MUNCH deli & café are open.

Edvard Munch had his own way of writing. He used text to collect fleeting thoughts and explore ideas. His notebooks are full of drafts and crossed out text. Little of what Munch wrote can be considered “finished” in a traditional sense—instead it can be understood as spontaneous notes and literary drafts. Join us in a communal reading of Munch’s texts with the artist collective Carrie, a group working at the intersection of dramatic art, visual art, and literature.

Limited seats, free registration here with festival pass for Saturday.

Extract from Jordopphimlesang (Earthlyascensionsong), by Fredrik Høyer
Jordopphimlesang (Earthlyascensionsong) is a new play by Fredrik Høyer that builds on the underground project Grøndlandsutraen (The Greenland Sutra) (2016). Directed by Mattis Herman Nyquists, it was meant to open in March 2020 at Kanonhallen, as part of the programming at the National Theatre. Due to the Covid pandemic, the play was postponed indefinitely. It has yet to find its way to the stage, so can it then be said to be a “finished” play? During the text festival we’ll get a taster of the performance when Fredrik Høyer performs an extract from the play with the actor Helene Bergsholm.

Taking the Text Further: A Conversation Between Mattis Herman Nyquist and Yngvild Sve Flikke
What happens to the playwright’s story, when a director gets hold of it? And what happens when a novel is turned into a script or – the other way around – when a script becomes the starting point for a novel? Actor, director, and author Mattis Herman Nyquist is behind several performances developed in collaboration with playwright Fredrik Høyer. He has also written the novel Det er jeg som er Torvald (Thorvald, That’s Me) based on A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. The film maker Yngvild Sve Flikke made the film Ninjababy (Ninja Baby) based on Inga Sætre’s graphic novel Fallteknikk (Techniques for Falling) and is also behind the film Kvinner i for store herreskjorter (Women in Oversized Men’s Shirts), based on Gunnhild Øyehaug’s novel Wait, Blink.

After Munch: “But out there, out there –”, by Gunnhild Øyehaug
Gunnhild Øyehaug is one of Norway’s most acclaimed writers and her books have been translated into several languages. She has also written scripts for feature- and short films. At the festival she will perform a text written for the anthology only an instant, in response to an unfinished text by Edvard Munch. The anthology will be published in relation to the festival.

Mini Concert with KAYA WILKINS aka OKAY KAYA aka SOME NERVE
When musician and actress Okay Kaya lived in New York, she had a text by Edvard Munch on her kitchen wall. The text was written with large crayons by Munch when he was in his sixties and is about his inner “bird of prey” that was tearing away at him and darkened his mind. The inner struggle between darkness and light is a continuous motif in all of Edvard Munch’s work, both in his texts and images. Okay Kaya’s concert during the text festival builds on her interpretation of this text.

Mingling in the festival area. The shop and MUNCH deli & café are open.

Remembrance: Triangle, 1974 to 2021, by Manuel Pelmus and Ingunn Rimestad
Is history connected to a place, and does the museum moving to Bjørvika mean that one story ends and another begins? Or does the story seamlessly continue in the new building, always unfinished and open? At the festival, dance artist Ingunn Rimestad is recreating the choreography she performed at the museum in the 1970s. The performance is a collaboration between Rimestad and the Romanian artist and choreographer Manuel Pelmus, and a conversation between the two will follow. Triangle, 1974 to 2021, has been made for the anthology only an instant, which will be published in conjunction with the festival.

Text Traveling: A Conversation between Sandra Kolstad & Kjersti Horn
Sandra Kolstad is a musician, composer, and producer whose work rests in the intersection between music and literature, including her compositions for the stage. She debuted as an author this year with the novel To ord for ødeleggelse (Two Words for Destruction). Kjersti Horn is a theatre director, and has been an in-house director at The Norwegian Theatre since 2020. She has staged several plays based on novels, amongst others Vigdis Hjorth’s Will and Testament and Édouard Louis’ The End of Eddy, History of Violence, and Who Killed My Father. At the festival Kolstad and Horn will talk about text as a part of an open translation process where words and sentences are continuously transformed and given new meaning.

Performative Reading by Maritea Dæhlin
Maritea Dæhlin is a multidisciplinary performer who works with formats such as performance, sound, text, and video. At the festival she will perform a new text, which mirrors an unfinished and partly fragmentary thought process shaped by inner and outer impulses. Dæhlin will experiment with a new way of performing text, where her own voice plays out against a complex soundscape.

Mingling in the festival area. The shop and MUNCH deli & café are open.

Sticking with the Unfinished: Matias Faldbakken in Interview with Maria Horvei
Matias Faldbakken is a visual artist and a writer, and works in many different formats, such as sculpture, drawing, video, and collage. He is interested in exploring the relationship between image and text, both as an author and a visual artist. Words and sentences are also central elements in several of his visual works. In addition, these works are packed with literary references, which gives them an ambiguous and open character—something that also characterises his novels. During the text festival at MUNCH, Faldbakken will be interviewed by art historian and previous editor of the journal Vinduet, Maria Horvei, about the role of the unfinished in his work, as well as in his artistic process.

Mini Concert with Smerz
The electronic duo Smerz consists of Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg. In the spring of 2021, they released their debut album Believer—a combination of classical music, chamber music, hip-hop, R&B, trance, and techno. They describe their own texts as “a bit like diary notes” with a spontaneous and fragmented expression.

Nasim, aka DJ Daeva, is an Oslo based visual artist, DJ, and event maker who grew up in Tehran. Daeva has participated in Oslo’s club and festival scene since 2004, and performed at venues and events such as Livingroom, Sikamikaniko, Barongsai, Cosmopolite, BLÅ, Khartoum, Arab Film Days, Salt, Riksscenen, the Mela Festival, Pride Parade, Oslo International Rumi Festival, and Godthåb. She plays rhythms from all over the world, focusing on the Middle East, North, East, and South Africa.