CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING HUMAN
CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING HUMAN
Brynja Björnsdóttir graduated from the Fine Arts department of the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2008 with a BA degree in fine arts and from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2013, with an MA degree in scenography. She is a scenographer, costume designer and a performance artist, her work spanning everything from site specific performances and documentary theatre, intimate children’s plays and cutting-edge works by emerging Icelandic play-writes to large scale classic plays. She approaches her work as a visual dramaturg, her goal to create artificial worlds where the audience can leave behind the mundane. A defining feature of her work is abstract minimalism and a humorous approach to design that she hopes will make the spectators chuckle at the absurdity of life and perhaps even find a spark of gratitude for it as well. Brynja is a member of the multidisciplinary performance collective 16 lovers. The group was founded in 2008 and has devised 6 immersive and audience participatory site specific performance pieces, unique to the Icelandic theatre scene.
In Congratulations on Being Human, created for PQ23, Brynja draws a parallel between the human body during cancer treatment and nature as it has become after almost 200 years of industrialisation. When the inner landscape of the body has been poisoned and its systems destroyed in the attempt to free it of its cancerous cells, it nonetheless remains human. Human existence on this planet is like a cancerous growth and the cure for the disease at once, poisoning and disrupting the natural systems of its host and by doing so eliminating itself and leaving the planet free to heal itself. But like a body full of toxins is still human, nature that has been altered and destroyed is still nature. While distancing ourselves from our natural habitat we continuously try to replicate it, surrounding ourselves with artificial elements that make us feel closer again to the natural world. We cannot exist outside of our bodies and we cannot exist without nature. However destroyed or artificial, they remain the only place we can seek shelter.
This installation was developed alongside the creation of a stage performance by the same name. Both works are based on a book of poems written by dancer and choreographer Sigríður Soffía Níelsdóttir during cancer treatment.
In their process the artists addressed the realisation that life can be over in an instant. Disease, disaster, trauma, accidents. They ask themselves and their audience the following questions; Are we really in control of our futures as much as we'd like to believe? What happens to the human soul when it is faced with its own mortality? What happens when you realise that life is but a string of random coincidences that can unravel at a moment's notice. How do you construct meaning from nothing and how do you hold on, knowing that it all might be for nothing, in the end? Can you give yourself over to the chaotic nature of the universe without losing your grip on reality? Is their strength in giving up, in letting go? Where lies the source we can draw from to recharge ourselves? To let yourself blow away on the constant and unpredictable winds of change and, perhaps, find release from the absurdist notion that everything has to make sense?
Congratulations on Being Human is about the transient nature of the self. It is about the strength of surrender and the beauty of the great paradox that is the human spirit and nature; they are both fragile and unbreakable at the same time.
My wounds are healing too slowly
as a dancer I know how fast they should heal
there is something wrong
I can’t sweat
the circulation has halted
“the body can not endure more”
I didn’t put any meaning to this sentence when I started on this voyage
My body has begun to silence
Rapid cell growth has been poisoned and
the grass
weeds
flowers
lupine
decelerated cell growth
trees and bushes have been poisoned
thyme blueberry shrubs
and the moss
the rivers are damned
muddy water running through my veins
my lungs have been fish farmed
full of copper oxide
the heart keeps pumping
and my 3rd eye is luminous
I am nature and I will not give up
-Sigríður Soffía Níelsdóttir