Landkeeper— A Myth Between Sky and Sea

Landkeeper
Project: Temporal Horizons: Between the Sky and Sea
Performance Duration 3.5 hours
Location: Ullahomen, Skuløya, Norway
Material: Fisherman suit, push broom made from gathered grass, driftwood, and a pine branch
Video: 5m 30s
Videography & photography: Mateo Christensen
2022

Landkeeper is an exercise in myth making and stems from questions like — How can we create new myths that serve as guides and lessons for generations to come? How are myths and the environment entangled? And how can new mythologies provide value systems and moral guidelines and develop cultural responsibilities that address the challenges we face today?

As a response to these questions, Landkeeper is a story of protection, maintenance, and explores sentiments of futility. It investigates the idea of the mythic landscape— asking how our interactions with land can connect us to and permeate a place and its material.

Landkeeper was supported by Longva AIR, Performance Art Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Nordic Culture Fund, Ålesund Municipality, Møre go Romsdal County

Landkeeper—

On the rocky Island of Ullahomen, The Landkeeper saw the the water was rising and the balance between land and sea was changing. As one of the island’s custodians, the Landkeeper was responsible for its protection and maintenance. Tasked with keeping the rising sea at bay, but having nothing, he looked to the surrounding islands. The land provided gifts of grass and wood. For seven days he gathered strong grasses, driftwood washed ashore, and collected a dead branch given by a large Spruce tree. For two days he made from the collection a large broom. On the tenth day, he set out to work against the rising tide— attempting to push the sea back into the sea. Some say an imprint of this event can be seen as a depression in the rock’s side that faces the open ocean.