VI BESKYTTER LANDET - WE PROTECT THE COUNTRY (Lecture Performance, Oslo & Fredrikstad 2009, Trondheim 2010, Stavanger & Haugesund 2012)





Concept: Veronika Bökelmann, Séverine Urwyler, Marco D. Vitanza
Performers: Séverine Urwyler, Marco Demian Vitanza, Veronika Bökelmann
Video/outside eye: Veronika Bökelmann
Space design: Séverine Urwyler
Dramaturgy: Veronika Bökelmann, Marco Demian Vitanza
Technician, Light design: Yasin Gültepe (Ondskapend teater)

BOOKING CONTACT. Marco Demian Vitanza. m.d.vitanza@gmail.com. tlf: +47 95268027

ABOUT THE PIECE:

"Yes, we love this country," (“Ja vi elsker dette landet) sings the 90 year- old Rudolf with tears in his eyes about Norway. He was one of the German soldiers who had occupied Norway under the 2nd World War. At the same time he fell in love with the country, as he tells today. The documentary lecture performance VI BESKYTTER LANDET takes a look at mutual war memories. Created for touring in high schools it creates an intricate retrospect on the relationships between German soldiers and Norwegian women during the occupation. Formally it fluctuates between sober lecturing and poetical abstractions of intimacy: Historical objet trouvés, original soundclips, live-pro- jected images, archive texts and interviews meet with the performers’ body, reminding of the physical aspect in the German-Norwegian relationships. The different medias are sometimes unison, and sometimes disharmonious, but always with the purpose of transmitting history as something tactile. Something touchable. A lost object. A retrieved person. Somehow, this is also the history of history. Or perhaps a journey through the desolate landscape between humans and the very own history it has shaped.
  Sunset drawn by soldier Rudolf during the occupation of Norway 1943