"Fried egg" - crazy cabaret
A collaboration between the Icelandic singer Nina Björk Eliasson
and visual artist, composer & singer Tine Louise Kortermand.

"Fried egg" is an art performance inspired by the cabaret. The ‘cabaret’ consists
both of new and past works, based on both Kortermands and Eliassons explicit
work that takes a starting point in the feminine space. The cabaret also takes
output in earlier collaborative works they've had with other artists – among others
the poet and sports journalist Jørn Mader, the artist Camilla Gaugler and Charlotte
Clausen from the artist group Pussy Power.

Text: Boe Katharina Przemyslak
Photo Series: Birgitta Lothsson

Fried egg - Crazy Cabaret
Saturday 31 May 2008, Odense Harbour.

What do you expect with such a title?
Your imagination can really explore.
The artists Tine Louise Kortermand (Denmark) and Nina Björk Eliasson (Iceland)
pulled eggs on a string of different short artistic performed gems.



The audience was invited to sit on chairs facing a deferred canvas for visuals and
a makeshift kitchen equipped with hotplates, microphones and sound systems.

The show starts simply by Eliasson preparing an omelette where sounds from
the everyday chores, kitchen noise is recorded by Kortermand, later to be used in
a sound collage. As you settle hole in an egg to get fried eggs, so was settled a
hole in the "woman" as a modern concept and lived life.

The show consists of 18 short performance pieces that ranges much in expression
and content. One moment Eliasson unfolds her formidable and versatile voice in the
song and improvisation of "A scarf around the neck" – a Japanese haiku poem by
Sampou – with Kortermand on high heels dancing across a carpet of eggs, so they
are all crushed. The second after the video installation "The Kitchen Cabinet" is
screening a woman, who empties her kitchen cabinet for food, so that she her self
can crawl into her new home, until a boiler on the stove whistles and forces the
woman to get out of her hiding place.





At other times, the two artists are in close partnership, for example in "vanity"
where they are both sitting on chairs putting over their heads a H & M plastic bag
printed with a face of a young beautiful model. When they inhale the bags extracts
and when exhaling extended again. The faces on the bags seems almost live and
distorted, as if we’re being told that vanity has its price in the way we adopts
masks and identities and therefore can not breathe freely.

The way Eliasson uses her voice as an instrument and sound tool is exciting and
surprises me. More than once she gave me goosebumps. And especially Kortermand’s
performance pieces impressed me.
Her "Modern Woman" in which she constantly jumps on a bouncer while talking about
her stressful and constructed life as a modern woman, which she still can not abdicate.
Along the way she puts on her makeup and when she finally descends from the bouncer,
you see how grotesque and helplees she looks with make up smeared all over her face.
Perhaps the modern woman needs a mirror to reflect and realize what kind of life she
actually leads?
Later she sings acapella – a song about her son so tenderly and filled with
love that you can not avoid being touched.

The whole show ends with the omelet – which was prepared early – now being served
to the audience on a piece of bread. And then we suddenly become one with the
performance. This is not just entertainment, but a mirror in artistic form, which gives
us the opportunity to ask questions to our own lives lived … whether we like omelette
or not.

Time and place:

• 9 July 2008. ”Friktion Performance Festival”, Uppsala Art Museum. Sweden.
• 31 May 2008. Habour Culture Festival, Odense Harbour.
  Skibssmeden – stage for new art, music and lyrics.
  
  READ MORE >>
  about the performance at "Friktioner - Uppsala Performance Festival".
  by Kurt Wolmar Nyberg (Ph.D. in aesthetics 2001, Föreningen Verkstan
  och Musikforum 1900-talet)
  
  The project is supported by:
  Artistrun projectspace, GRANAT; Odense Kommune, Kultur 2008,
  Syddansk Regionale Kulturpulje, Gæsteatelier Hollufgård's rejselegat and
  Nodic Culture Point mobil fund.