Beyond Former Heaven (Part One; Physical)

In the summer of 2010 I joined a two months residency - Beyond Former Heaven (or the Institute of Surrealist Ethnography), directed by Olivia Plender for the Banff Centre Canada - resulting in a collectively authored video work . With references to early 1900s Utopian Communities and the Free-school ideology this collaboration approaches alternative ways of knowledge production as a potential answer to the question of what artistic knowledge can be. The film material is the outcome of collective endeavours and exercises in communal living. Using ways of both body and mind, playing with narrative, we exploried an extended definition of knowledge. As a temporary Community - we created an performative narrative of our own emphasizing the importance of play and the wonders of everyday life.


As The Institute of Surrealist Ethnography we; collected our dreams in a common archive, made field trips, organized a Mass Observation Day inviting locals in the making an anthropology of ourselves, had reading groups in open air, visited museums, made an interview with the town mayor, played games, had morning coffee at the top the nearby Mountain, practised Contact Improv, visited the Masonic Lodge and local museums, delved into the mind - or Psychic Commune - by astral projections and hypnosis, practised games by Augusto Boal, observed coincidences of the day and compiled it all in a weekly Beyond Former Heaven Occasional

* BFH är; Lisa Visser, Richard Ibghy, Marilou Lemmens, Rodrigo Marti, Robin Simpson, Juliane Zelwies, Johan Lundh, Olivia Plender, Aileen Burns, Laurita Siles Ceballos, Roy Caussy, Patrick Staff, Sofia Törnblad, Bronwen Moen, Antoni Wojtyra, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Candice Lin, Denver Lynxleg.