J&K / Janne Schäfer and Kristine Agergaard
The Community Cycle ‐ Birth, Life, Death and Afterlife
Performance series / 4 living tableaux
Site-specifically developed for the main walking street Strøget of Copenhagen
2012
J&K, Birth ‐ Transforming Water into Water / The Community Cycle, Copenhagen Art Festival, performance, photo: Mika Kokkonen
The Community Cycle presents an idealized and fictive community existing in a parallel reality beyond historical time and place. Each of the four living tableaux fuses performance and installation manifesting a rite of passage deriving from an imaginary mythological narrative. Each of the four acts marks an essential sequence of a life cycle: birth, life, death and afterlife. Basic human concerns such as family, labour, nourishment, economy and sleep are experimented with and separations between work, survival, leisure, worship and art are collapsing. Forming a striking contrast to the commercial pedestrian street where the performances take place, the work celebrates the public space as a possible location for trying out ideas and actions suggesting an alternative production of culture and an expanded sense of community.
The work was developed for the public space programme of Copenhagen Art Festival in 2012, curated by Christian Skovbjerg Jensen and performed at dedicated sites along the main walking street Strøget of Copenhagen on four consecutive days, in total creating a day cycle from morning to night.
.