Feb 4+5. Tibrosamlingen / Anders Paulin & Johan Forsman

Tibrosamlingen (The Tibro Collection) is the first performance in the framework of The Promise project, which started in 2020 and will end in 2050.


Tibrosamlingen is a text based performance in swedish

Feb 4 at 7pm
Feb 5 at 4pm

Weld
Norrtullsgatan 7

Book: book.weld.se


Why are they wandering around in Tibro? If they were asked this question, they would probably claim that it has no obvious answer. ”We ourselves have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it,” they would say, ”which may have shed light on some other phenomena that deserve our attention, but without bringing us any closer to the truth about why we return to Tibro.” On the other hand, they might think, one always places oneself in a place, and why shouldn’t Tibro be as reasonable a choice as any other?

Anders Paulin and Johan Forsman land in Tibro after a series of random events; a small town in western Sweden that for a hundred years was synonymous with the Swedish furniture industry. Today, most of the manufacturing has long since moved, and the trains have stopped running. The architect of Tibro’s town walks through the overgrown track area with a dream of a cultural centre.

The mission that brought them to Tibro is slowly dissolving into an increasingly self-imposed and existential project. They become less and less clear about what they are doing there, and why they are coming back. They wander back and forth across the track area, past the café and a cup of coffee, across the car park in the main square and so back. They look over towards the former grain silo of the Central Association at the eastern end of the track area.

Tibrosamlingen is a collection of stories, artefacts, sounds and images, brought to us in various ways by looking at the world through Tibro – it is an associative and not very comprehensive journey through the rise and fall of modernity, through Swedish furniture history and the organisation of small-scale industrialism, through the transition from nomadic Stone Age to agriculture in the Skaraborg region, via stints, railway guards, contractors, local photographers – up to the work on the town’s new zoning plan.

Tibrosamlingen is the first performance in the framework of Anders Paulin and Johan Forsman’s project The Promise, which started in 2020 and will end in 2050.

The Promise prescribes and appropriates a number of semi-fictional art collections, art spaces, ritual places and cultural houses. The project’s growing flora of local art historical archives forms a consortium of intangible cultural properties and a cultural-political network of semi-fictional actors, places, cities and buildings. What happens to the various houses and sites included in the project until 2050, becomes part of the ongoing narrative and artistic process.


By and with: Anders Paulin and Johan Forsman
Technician: Peter Widell
Recorded voice: Ulf Rönnerstrand

Produced by Skogen with support from the Swedish Arts Council.

Thanks to Tibro Museum, Martin Toresson, Leif Ahnland, Nya Hotellet, Västergötland Museum and everyone we met in Tibro.


ANDERS PAULIN (SE)
has been directing 40+ productions at theatres as Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, Nationaltheatret in Oslo, Uppsala Stadsteater, Nationale Scene in Bergen, Stockholms Stadsteater, Theater Basel, Dramaten in Stockholm, Malmö Stadsteater and The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. Since a number of years his work has been exploring performative protocols based on the double and the caesura as thematic core, with a focus on narrative and performer as interface and medium.

Together with Johan Forsman Anders Paulin has been working with the accumulative archive/performance THREE WHITE SOLDIERS, produced at Skogen in Gothenburg 2014-18 and presented in various formats at Weld in Stockholm, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Inkonst Malmö, Rawabet in Cairo and Skövde Konsthall. His latest work is HEART OF GLASS, a rewritten adaptation of Werner Herzog’s flm done in collaboration with scriptwriter Emma Palmkvist, produced at Folkteatern i Gävleborg 2021-23.

Paulin has been teaching regularily at Uniarts in Stockholm, The Danish School of Performing Arts, KHiO in Oslo and the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. 2014-16 he did the research project ”NON-MIMETIC PEFORMATIVITY” at the Danish School of Peforming Arts, and as part of the research he also curated the international conference FICTION | REALITY at Dansehallerne in Copenhagen. In 2018 his publication ”TWIN FIGURE OF MIMESIS” was released by Skogen Community Press, Gothenburg.

JOHAN FORSMAN (SE)
is artistic director at Skogen in Gothenburg, and works artistically on issues of organisation and community, often in relation to specific sites. Johan Forsman’s work often revolves around a testing of the various relationships that performing arts reproduce, and an exploration of the performing arts as a platform for producing and sharing knowledge and experience.


Weld is supported by Stockholms stad, the Swedish Arts Council and Region Stockholm