#20 HOW TO PRACTICE?
KIRSTY KROSS

Considering collegial exchange, informal peer-to-peer/practice-to-practice learning, and attempts at friendship as a fundamental part of our remit, UKS presents the weekly walk-in-workshop: HOW TO PRACTICE?

Starting off the workweek every Monday morning at 10am, rotating local and international practitioners in the cultural field teach their conspicuous version of this essential question, serving up their tricks and toolboxes, fears and desires, excel sheets, or yoga positions as UKS serves free coffee.

For the twentieth walk-in-workshop, on Monday, 16 September at 10am, Australian, Oslo-based artist KIRSTY KROSS will play with notions of how to be an artist during the climate crisis. Working mainly in performance, Kross often uses her biography and body as a starting point to talk about wider themes. At UKS she will discuss how to “stay with the trouble” through keeping it light, so that it can then get deep, by asking questions such as: Did she choose to perform as a fish, or did the fish choose her? What is an Anthropocene Nun and could this be a cool ’n’ sexy lifestyle choice? How does one surf the waves of chaos and imperfection and disrupt the attention economy all whilst falling down the stairs at Kunstnernes Hus?

Kross’ practice entails performance, music, drawing, installation, and research. Her work deals with the human condition, currently focusing on our relationship to the attention economy and the climate crisis. Kross holds an MA from the Berlin University of the Arts and has also studied Art History at the University of Queensland. She has had exhibitions and performances at Meta.Morf, Trondheim (2018); Tenthaus Oslo (2017); Bergen Assembly (2016); Østlandsutstillingen, Lillestrøm (2016); PINK CUBE, Oslo (2015); and Galerie Crystal Ball, Berlin (2013). From 2000 to 2010 she co-created and performed in the electropunk band Team Plastique, playing at the 2008 Glastonbury Festival, the closing party of the 2006 Berlin Biennale, and The Big Day Out in Australia in 2004. Kross was awarded the From Dusk till Dawn Art Prize by PNEK and Vandaler Forening in 2016.

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Need a way to start your week? Join the ongoing program raising questions of trauma, truisms, privilege, priorities, refusal, risk, collaboration, honesty, embarrassment, pretension, working rhythms, blockages, blind spots, sleep, craft, dignity, conspiracy, accounting, body, theory, bureaucracy, ex-and-inclusion, collectivity, how to take time off and how not to, professionalization, performance, and pace.

 

* Image material: Various performances by Kirsty Kross. Photos by Istan Virag, Thine Sanne Dalseg, Julia Spicina and Iselin Linstad Hauge.

Please contact info@uks.no if you wish to receive an audio recording of the presentation.