Scenographic deconstruction of national mythologies connected to WWI & WWII in Norway
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 18/04/2017

During the last few years at Norwegian Theatre Academy / Østfold University College we have held workshops on the island of Håøya, south of Oslo. The participants are bachelor in scenography students from NTA and international guest students from various art disciplines, lead by professor Serge von Arx and lecturer Kjartan Fønstelien. The students are working with narratives connected to central stories from the Great War and Second World War. The aim of the workshop is to deconstruct national mythologies, making "memorials" responsive to individuals whom have disappeared. These lost stories and forgotten peoples represent the darker sides of Norway’s role in both wars. The paper will mostly focus on the history of several hundred female sex workers forced into slave labor in a dynamite plant on the island 1915-18. The presentation includes students’ artistic research into this history through visual and performative actions within the expanded field of scenography. The reality that police in Oslo basically served the factory with enforced sexual labor has been an total "silence" in the official textual and historical material. In the local communities around the island, the narratives of the girls “working” on the factory and sexual abuse of them remains very strong. The students use performances, artistic and scenographic methods to establish memorials responsive to the enslaved women and their legacy. The students have also excavated items from the production period to use in different
installations.