Living books

For Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine a group of people/ performers memorize a book of their choice. Together they form a library collection consisting of living books. The books are passing their time in a library, walking around, talking together, reading in paper-books from the shelves, ready to be consulted by a visitor. The visitors of the library choose a book they would like to read, and the book brings its reader to a place in the library or for a walk outside, while reciting its content (and possibly valid interpretations).

The idea for this library of living books comes from Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, a future vision of a society where books are forbidden because they are considered dangerous, and that happiness must be obtained through an absence of knowledge and individual thought. The number 451 refers to the temperature at which book paper starts to burn. As books are forbidden in this society, an underground community of people learn books by heart in order to preserve them for the future.

Books are read to remember and written to forget. To memorize a book, or more poetically 'to learn a book by heart', is in a way a rewriting of that book. In the process of memorizing, the reader for a moment steps into the place of the writer, or rather he / she is becoming the book. Maybe the ability to learn a whole book by heart is relative to what book you choose, the time you invest, and perhaps your skills. But, however much or well you learn something by heart you have to keep practicing it, otherwise you will forget it again. Perhaps by the time you reach the end you will have forgotten the beginning. Learning a book by heart is an ongoing activity and doing. There is nothing final or material to achieve, the practice of learning a book by heart is a continuous process of remembering and forgetting.

Biography Mette Edvardsen

The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Although some of her works explore other media or other formats, such as video, books and writing, her interest is always in their relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation. She has worked since 1994 as a dancer and performer for a number of companies and projects, and develops her own work since 2002. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and as a performer. A retrospective of her work was presented at Black Box theatre in Oslo in 2015, and the focus program Idiorritmias at MACBA in Barcelona in 2018. Her project Time has fallen alseep in the afternoon sunshine is ongoing since 2010, presented twice at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels in 2013 & 2017, Sydney Biennale in 2016, Index Foundation in Stockholm in 2019, Oslobiennalen First Edition in 2019-2020, Trust & Confusion at Tai Kwun Arts in Hong Kong in 2021, Sao Paulo Biennale 2021. She will bring several pieces to Amant in New York in 2022, and develop a project in residence at Les Laboratoires des Aubervilliers in Paris 2022/ 2023.

Mette Edvardsen is structurally supported by Norsk Kulturråd (2021 - 2025), BUDA Arts Centre Kortrijk (2017 - 2021) and she is associated artist at centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie (France) for the period 2019 - 2021. She is currently finalizing her research as a Phd candidate at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.