Blood Club #3

About Blood Club #3

Blodklubb #3 was the first meeting after the pandemic. The meeting was the closing event of Vårscenefest in Tromsø in April 2022. Again, the theme was the relationship between genetic and cultural community.

Special guest this evening was Hilde Kristin Liu Skoglund , a native of Tromsø, born in China to Chinese parents.

Reviews

In this project, Ferske Scener appears as a kind of northern Norwegian successor to Baktruppen's performative project:

..cross-genre, challenging and playful with quality concepts and dramaturgy, aesthetically using what is available as an offer with a playful attitude, while the texts are sharp and have a political sting. Blodklubb gives hope that it is possible to meet, and party, across cultural divides and preferences. It could definitely be useful for people from Sørvágur to also be invited to a club night on an appropriate occasion.

Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk for the Norwegian Shakespeare Journal

Aage Gaup and Blood Club

A reflection sketch by Leif Magne Tangen

“(…)If nothing else, the reference to Aage’s work shows the significance of Blodklubb as an identity-seeking long-term performance, one that asks critical questions about having, gaining an identity. But Blodklubb, I think, is more concerned with the critical aspects of “having” an identity, where Aage’s work is perhaps more closed and possibly also a bit bureaucratic. Where Blodklubb has created its own universe, one that expands, that is full of paradoxes, full of pathos, of narratives and (quasi)facts, Aage’s work is more static in its world, it is closed” – quote from the text

“Frictional Encounters:
Staging Reconciliation in the performance Blodklubb
By Britt Kramvig and Mathias Danbolt et al.

Introduction to the article
In 2018 the Norwegian Parliament established a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to "investigate the norwegianisation policy and injustice against the Sámi and Kven/Norwegian Finnish Peoples" (Commission 2018). The Committee was given three main tasks for its four-year period (2018-2022).

Besides a historical mapping of the policies and ideologies behind the forced assimilation measures against the Sámi, Kven and Norwegian Finnish peoples, the Committee was also asked to examine the repercussions of these policies today, and propose "measures that can create greater equality between the majority and minority population" (ibid).

2018 also saw the establishment of a radically different – if not altogether unrelated – committee of sorts, namely Blood Club – The Club for All With Blood. Founded by the Sámi writer Sigbjørn Skåden, the Finnish-Norwegian performance artist Kristina Junttila, the Norwegian dramaturg Kristin Bjørn and the Sámi actor Bernt Bjørn, Blodklubb is a performance project which stages assemblies with the aim to "search for the greater WE, where blood can flood freely between our bodies". Through an ironic play with notions of blood, genetics and racial science, Blodklubb's ongoing “club meetings” use interactive performance strategies to stage discussions and debates of the constitution of social, ethnic, and national communities in times ravaged by xenophobia and immigration debates – as well as the Truth and Reconciliation Process.

This article is a performance written in the form of three acts inspired by our participation in the second and third assembly of Blood Club at the Arctic Arts Festival in Hársttak/Harstad in June 2019, and then again at Vårscenefest in Romsa/Tromsø in May 2022.

In this article we suggest reading Blood Club's complicated political and emotional assembly as an alternative enactment of a truth and reconciliation meeting where the staged encounters between minoritized and majoritized populations are negotiated in ways that call attention to the frictions between different worldings. Blodklubb's collective assembly stands in stark contrast to the working methods of the official Committee who so far has undertaken a rather withdrawn research- and interview-based approach to the truth and reconciliation process leading to the publishing of a report in September 2022. The article thus builds on the proposition by Kramvig and Verran (2020) that not only storytelling practices but also art works and performance practices can do important work in the ongoing reconciliation process.”