Love as an artistic practice 

The central question of my practice is: “Can we do love?” I began asking myself this question after reading Bell Hooks’ All About Love and starting my research on love. Bell Hooks writes: love is an active force that leads us into communion with the world.

How do I, as an artist, go into communion with the world? In communion with space, with the audience, and with my collaborators? How can we truly encounter one another? With open eyes, with attentiveness? How do we create spaces not only of agreement, but of connection beyond agreement?
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I do not understand love as a feeling, but as a verb, as something we choose, something we consciously do. Not love in the sense of an idealized notion—through “rose-colored glasses” or “we should all just love each other,” and not limited to romantic love—but as an attitude: a way of being, a way of seeing, and perhaps even a way of acting politically.

Inspired by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s thoughts on resonance and our relationship to the world, I am particularly interested in the idea that genuine encounters require time. I ask myself: how do real encounters emerge between audience and performer? Between body and mind? Between performers and the themes we are processing?
Rosa describes that relationship and resonance can only arise if we are responsive to the world: open, attentive, and ready to be moved. As an artist, I want this—I want to make my art responsive. I want to evoke empathy and connection. Therefore I ask my self: how can I, as an artist, support the creation of spaces of resonance and time?
Rosa describes love as an experience and a force that can bring us into connection and resonance with the world. In my practice, I explore how artistic processes can be shaped by an attitude of love: what can love as an attitude be within artistic processes? How do I, as an artist, engage with love in my processes? With open listening and bodily awareness? How do I consciously work with patience? With time? And what does that mean for the results of my work? What kinds of attitudes emerge in the process that are still unknown to me?
The sociologist Andreas Reckwitz also inspires this research. He describes our present as a “society of singularities”—a culture that celebrates individuality and uniqueness. Against this backdrop, the question arises: does a “we” still matter? Can we still collaborate?
Love is understood here as a force that can transform fear, a quiet, perhaps even radical form of change. A silent revolution? How can these ideas be expressed physically? Movement becomes a form of questioning: how can a body embody love without romanticizing it? How can it hold vulnerability, closeness, distance, and connection at once?
The body becomes a medium that mediates between inner experience and social reality. In a time often marked by division, fear, and isolation, I want to explore and make visible love as a powerful counter-movement, one that enables connection, collaboration, and understanding. 

WRITTINGS on  love 

​I am laying in a sort of process to consolidate, to long arms around me, to long legs around me. A chin on the top of my head. The hole night we sleep wrapped in each other like monkeys. Where one ends and the other starts is no longer visible. We turn from one Brezel to the other. Completely intertwined as if we were born this way. His skin is warm. And feels known. we should always sleep like this, I think. When I open my eyes I see this little hole between his collarbone and neck. It’s so beautiful. Like a sort of little see could fit in there. His smell. His lips. His chest. Like ice cream. Feels so eatable, so safe, so good, so known that it scares me. Is it real? Maybe it’s just the illusion of ice cream in the shape of a body, that makes me want to fall. I would really like to fall. But when will it end and what will happen then? If we really consolidate, I will loose a leg when it ends, for a while I will feel amputated and lost. inanimateness. I have tried this type of amputation of limbs before.
Does he taste ice cream too? He looks me in the eyes as if he knows everything and sees everything that is mine. Like he could be my leg, that I will loose when it ends. When he kisses me , when he touches me, when he puts his dick inside me, he sometimes says my name. and I melt, and fall and fall and fall. into this place where I dont know who I am and what to think. I dont even know how to think. I just taste ice cream.




Here i am again, in between my self and us and it, without any sense of ground under me, in the clouds, still with my body under your skin, my eyes in your eyes. It sounds romantic, but do not be fooled, it is absolutely not! I am completely dependant on the clouds, who are pink by the way, like in that movie with Tom Cruise, vanilla sky. The clouds carry me, absolutely no control, just floating like some sort of blue eyed, young teenage girl, but I am not young and I am no girl, how could that be romantic. And yet, I find my self dreaming of potential futures, and pink skies and floating. Man! How did this happen?
First I must sit down, drink coffee, drink tee, eat something, not sure what I want or need as I have no sense of my self without you. I have entered a state of dependency , this thing, this “us”, I have glorified, and wished for now feels like a burden, an amputation of my self.
A Hang out, became dating, dating became sex, sex became mind blowing, mind blowing , became “seems like love”, “seems like love” became love, and love became “are we in relationship?”, and then it became “us” - I went into plastic surgery when that happened, and out came this morphed existence, a body that can only exist with your body near it.. How dumb. Once again I sit here, with coffee and tee, trying to “feel” my self, be my self, when all I think or feel is you. And your not even here ?? I wish I could see you, then let go of you, without the need to know when I will see you again, without the need to know who you are, what we are and where we will go. I wish I could see you, and leave you. when I wanted. But now what I want is not even visible to me, what I want is blurry, is coloured by desire, by obsession, by some sort of need to be with someone, with you, by love, Is it love yet? This is what some people call relating, everything I do stands in relation to you.. Some people call this love, I would say thats a stretch ...maybe? How could it be love, if my self is not even here .. WHERE IS SHE? Man! I have written before about the amputation I must go under after this will end, this time it feels as if I must go into amputation every time we separate. Even the moment you step into the shower, I am confronted with my self without you, this self that I can not feel, and doesn’t know how to get back. Terrible, dependency! And terrible this madness, being in love. I long for the moment it will calm down, at the same time I fear it, I fear it will all disappear
and not turn from “being in love” into love, into something real, solid, not solely obsession and madness. I was always so independent, terrible I thought. Now I wish it back, I wish back to not care, to be selfish, I wish back to love in moments, and then not care.. I don’t wish back the boredom. It was boring. No challenges, no fights, just sweet moments. There is no risk in loving moments, there is risk is loving longer. Deciding to love, the ugly, or maybe I should say deciding to see. Now I made this choice, I saw, then I saw more and more, now I let my self go, as we say, actually feels like a accurate wording for this, letting my self go, to only exists for it, for “us”.
Slowly as I am writing, she is coming back, she is feeling seen, but still she feels like an observer , she is separate from what I am right now, I became an us, not an I. Maybe its not possible to be both, I and us .. I always though we must be both, but now, my “I” is observing my “Us”, and us seems stronger than her, she has no say, cos I cant really hear her, I cant really feel her.
She grew up in independency, with individuals, with egos, with family that felt like friends. You are born alone and die alone, is what she always thought. But yet there was always a desire, a need, a hope, a wish, a believe, that this was not really true. She or should I say I, always secretly felt that maybe belonging was possible, maybe there could be strength In love, in not being alone. These thoughts was ofcourse secret, it is much better and stronger and also way cooler to be independant , “an independent strong woman” Thats cool, not a dependant family mom.. maybe I could be both? Maybe I could belong to something? To someone?
I am so tired of this independence, this “being strong”, in fact I would like to literally hang my self onto someone, that could then carry me, always. My arms around the neck, legs around the waist, like a monkey. How nice would this be, to the grocery shop, to yoga.. Maybe this person could make some choices for me. Choices, “making choices, is so important as an adult. Saying no to things.” I say this quite often, to my friends, as if I was so good at it my self. In fact I am terrible at it. And i am tired of choices. Of complexity. If i was rich I might hire a person to make choices for me. I will never be rich though, because I am so independent, I choose a job that is so out there, an artist, to express my self, of course I am also self-employed.. my goodness, writing it down makes me role my eyes. Anyhow I am so independent that I even disconnected my job from the society. An artist. Well not entirely disconnected, but its surely not a job with simplicity. And you surely must be “strong”, individual and push as if you where the only and best as if no other artists existed. This individuality... I cant stand it anymore. I wish we could all just love each other, I really mean that! I dont want to sound all hippie, and I dont mean it in this superficial romantic, vanilla sky, sort of love, way. But really love each other, as a choice, I wish we could look at each other with empathy, with compassion, even f we dont like or understand what we see. So sick of competition, of comparison, so sick of instagram, of the evaluation systems, of right and wrong, better and good.
So sick of fear. So sick of this trust less, love less world!
Imagine for a second, if we would all walk through the world, on the street, with love, if we would at the start think the best of people, imagine for a second, if we would be interested in our differences, in our disagreements, imagine for a second if we would collaborate and celebrate what we don’t know. Imagine if we would see everything that we dont understand about each other as a gift and motor for growth, not a problem. Imagine how we would grow, how light and open and easy it would be. I think if this was how we would go through the world, we would smile more at each other, we would trust more, we would share more and we would compete less. Maybe it would not be easy, but we would work hard for it, for us, with love and meaning. It would make sense to work hard, cos it would be for something more than just “I”.
I dont know how to evoke this, change this, with lack for better ideas, I decided to love, to “let my self go”, wich has now resulted in me feeling my self dependant, not only on you, but on everything around me. Better this, than not to love, to be alone, to not share.. better to love and loose my self, and float. Although it is quit uncomfortable and I certainly do not know if I can be “I” and “us” at the same time.
As i write, I feel she is coming back. Maybe this “us” is bigger than you and I , maybe its bigger than, sex that seems like love, maybe it can become bigger. Must i share you then ? .. I am not that
far yet, to share love, you.. terrible, this sense of ownership. Maybe it is because now you feel like my left arm. This arm that get amputated then, when you shower and I am confronted with “my self”. But maybe it is truly a process, that becomes bigger than us. I hope so, cos I would not know where else to start, other than to let my self feel this, dependency. If you think about it, we are really never independent, and we are never alone. Maybe this is the problem. We try to be.
But we naturally are not, we live close to each other in the big city, we are effected. Maybe the woman in Netto is dependent on my smile to her. We do live together, not alone. So why do we think we must compete, be better, be independent? Why did I strive for that for so long? Now that I have forced my self into this sort of dependency, into this sort of love, into this sort of “Us”. Now I must accept, dependency.
This time it should be bigger, than us, this time it should be worth it. To let my self go. Right?
I know you can not promise. I know I can not promise. But I hope so. I hope it will be more than just moments. More than just a year, or two or three.. I suddenly feel the desire to see you become old. When I write this I must laugh, skeptically, I must judge, my self, how ordinary of me. To want something so by the book, that simplicity. So unrealistic! But Let me tell you what else I want, Kids!! Shit, i said it out loud! How also very ordinary of me. If we get kids, we will surely loose independency, I know this. Independency will be a town in the arctics to us. But i want it, I feel it. Its hormonal maybe, I tell my self that its hormonal, cos I , my self, knows better than to have have kids in a world that is going under. I, my self, knows better than to put more people in this world. But if I am honest, I want them, I want to love them, like, if I am honest, love you. Conflicting, I know. But i am just a normal person I guess, who wants normal things, like kids, security, family and love. If i don’t get somewhere to put all my love soon, I might start making out with the women I smile at in Netto.
Now that we opened the kids topic, and the topic of honesty, I gotta say “Shit” , because before I came to the conclusion that I am sick of being an independent strong women who needs no-one, I turned 35 .. So now I stand here, 35, no kids, you and the fact that I maybe cannot become a mom, because lets face it , I am old! And i never really understood those women who fight so hard to become moms, when nature didnt allow it. Paying so much money for treatments, going through so much pain and disappointment, I judged them, “why not adopt, there are so many kids in the world?” I used to say. Though I did understand the pain, the desire and the wish to becoming a parent, I used to think of it as desperate, as not accepting, as privileged, But now, I stand here with this desire, this wish, to become a mom, of my own kids. Is it selfish of me? Maybe it is. I might end of spending a lot of money on this. Becoming a parent. Or maybe it will just happen if it has to, like ive always thought it would. Trust in the universe. Or soemthing like that. But what if it doesn’t , I might really become desperate and frustrated. Maybe I should freeze my eggs ? Its prividqlegded of me to even have that thought. But, As I’ve said before, I am an artist , finances are so freakishly independently unstable that this will not be an option.
I am wondering, where this this idea of being independent come from, this individuality, this idea that all those fundamental things, like family, belonging, togetherness, community comes second to the individual.. When did they start ? When did I start to think that being alone was a strength ? And why do I get this strong feeling that the more we think like this, the worse the world will get?
A society of singulars, of ones, of “I”s, A society with no sense of us. How can that be good?