Living Documents

Take part in Öberg’s work on your own terms.

“Living Documents – Anna Öberg” will be performed for three hours in the museum foyer. In this performance, Anna Öberg explores a multi-sensory transfer of material and knowledge from person to person and from context to context, traditionally seen as tacit knowledge-sharing, but which Öberg approaches as documentation.

You can participate in Öberg’s choreography in varying degrees – by sitting on a small stool inside the audience circle, watching and listening, dancing in the circle with Öberg, or by observing the circle and the dance from a greater distance. Each loop is approximately 15 minutes. Earphones are available in the installation, with commentaries on the situation from three different perspectives: folk traditions, contemporary dance, and anthropology.

Öberg’s choreography invites you to observe or participate on your own terms. In this way, the material will be experienced and understood in different ways, and passed on by you as a momentary visitor to the work.

Knowledge-sharing from person to person

Knowledge-sharing is a key element of folk culture. Sharing material means that knowledge and material are passed on via convoluted paths and over time, from person to person and from context to context. With each repetition, the interpreted, misinterpreted and renegotiated information passes through a variety of social, political and cultural filters, thereby forming a living archive of perpetually transmuting knowledge, norms and identities.

Programme Living Documents

• Anna Öberg at Moderna Museet
• Charlotta Ruth at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Östasiatiska Museet)
• Peter Mills at Batteriparken
• Dominik Grünbühel in Bergrummet
• Jenni-Elina von Bagh at MDT stage

“Living Documents” consists of five choreographies performed in different locations on Skeppsholmen. Anna Öberg’s work can be experienced in the Moderna Museet foyer. At MDT (Slupskjulsvägen 30–32), the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities auditorium (Tyghusplan 4), Batteriparken and Bergrummet (the underground space entered to the left after the Skeppsholmen bridge), you will meet the choreographers Jenni-Elina von Bagh, Dominik Grünbühl, Peter Mills and Charlotta Ruth. Grühnbühl and Ruth are the artistic directors.

The project focuses on how dance and performance art are documented or allowed to vanish after being performed. Like recordings, live loops can be played over and over again, but every loop is slightly different, since the situation changes. The loop emphasises the transience of the shared live situation.

About Anna Öberg

Anna Öberg’s practice is based on Swedish folk dance, and she has been active in the field of dance, theatre and performance since graduating from the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm. The interaction between dance and music is a recurring theme in her choreographic practice, and she has been frequently acknowledged in recent years for her innovative approach, both within and outside the genre.

Anna Öberg graduated with an MA in choreography from the Stockholm University of the Arts in 2015, as the first folk dancer ever. In 2017, she was awarded the Dance of the Year prize at the Folk and World Music Gala. The jury wrote: “Without music there would be no dance, and without dance – there would be no music. Anna Öberg is a pioneer, who is choreographically rooted in the old throws herself forward, inwards and outwards all at once. Towards the new, forever searching, but with the heritage safely resting in her core.”

Contact: Camilla Carlberg, Head of Learning