A collaboration with Adam James.

Like a interplanar entity slowly emerging from the dismal bogs of Västra Götaland, Procrustean Bed is an upcoming 3 channel video and sculpture installation. The event was a four day role-playing zone and workshop series, where players were invited to dissolve their self-narratives and merge into two enigmatic streams of collective consciousness.

Experience One: Secluded within the dim light of 18th century agricultural worker’s dwelling, dig into the claustrophobic embrace and domestic anxieties of an intimate cross-generational family preparing for the looming spectre of change. Tightly woven with an embodied study of period craft production, their existence punctuated by ritualistic, technological intrusions introduced by shadows from another plane.

Experience Two: Awaken in the boglands, submerged in a narrative that demands physicality and ritualistic repetition. Here, via improvisational movement, you’re invited to activate a thousand layered years of decaying moss in preparation for a transition to a early 1900’s sawmill. Amidst its ghostly but functional machinery, participants engage in creating large sculptural entities, weaving their new corporeal forms

Procrustean Bed is a primarily non-verbal experience that focuses on material and somatic interactions to co-create a sphinx-like allegory that takes inspiration from intertwined regional narratives: the class struggle of Statare agricultural laborers, the mechanization of textile production, historical artifacts and biomes, folk magic, and interplanar travel

Interaction and run-time assist: Nina Essendrop
Movement consult: Alice MacKenzie, Stine Pettersson, Ina Dokmo
Camera: Frans De Huhta and Tamara Seilman
Sound: Lukas Grundmann
Dye and fermentation consultant: Jeanette Schäring
Psychodrama consult: Urban Nordlander
Production assist and catering: Karolina Staë

Made in partnership with the Borås Textile Museum and Skogen. Supported by the Lindholmen Experimental Media Grant and Kulturbryggan

Players:
Susan Sentler
Carina Erdmann
Jaako Stenros
Bea Xu
Don E Morris
Markus Bergstrom
Marlena von Wedel-Goeden
Elenor Månsson
Hamish MacPherson
Martin Jordö
Stella Dimitri
Corinne Mazzoli
Lauren Barri Holstein
Roman Schramm
Dan Scott
Martin Ericsson
Nick Koppenhagen
Kaisa Kangas