What really happens there, on the «wrong side»?
In weaving, every surface has a right side and a reverse—a so-called “wrong”side. The right side is what we present to the world. It is finished, smooth, composed. The wrong side reveals the traces of labour itself: loose threads, crossings, knots, and structures that hold everything together. Hi sida, meaning “the other side” in a Norwegian dialect, begins there.
The experimental music trio Pinquins and object artist–scenographer Kjersti Alm Eriksen have built a wall. Made of wood, rope and simple mechanisms, it opens, closes, moves and sounds. The wall is both an instrument and part of a larger machinery. What the audience hears and sees is a consequence of what happens on the other side, and of the labour required to set those actions in motion.
Pinquins and Alm Eriksen came together through a shared love of objects. Pinquins collect the sounds of objects, Alm Eriksen collects their movements. In their previous collaboration, INTERVALL (2023), objects were given distance from the performer in search of their own agency. Hi sida moves the objects and performers closer. Here, the focus is on contact and repetition – on what happens when bodies and objects work together in a shared becoming.
In Hi sida, all four artists work as both makers and performers. They build models and test walls, improvise with materials, then stop to listen, discuss and rebuild, until the wall is no longer just a structure, but a partner in the work. About their love of objects, the artists say: "When we meet, the objects gain new lives, new meanings, and new forms of meaninglessness. They awaken empathy in their attempts to perform impossible or useless tasks."
More Pinquins at Ultima: In Autumn Caravan, they perform with SISU, the Opera Academy and others in works by Adriana Hölszky and Gisle Kverndokk.
● Pinquins is an Oslo-based trio consisting of Jennifer Torrence, Sigrun Rogstad Gomnæs, and Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen. For 17 years, the group has challenged boundaries within new music, free improvisation, and noise. Focusing on objects, body, and voice, they emphasize collective composition. The trio performs widely at festivals like Ultima, Donaueschingen, and Borealis. Kjersti Alm Eriksen works at the intersection of product design and art. Driven by natural sciences, she creates interactive worlds of small machines and objects that rely on audience interaction to realize their full potential. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and is pursuing a Master’s in Theatre at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
In collaboration with Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival .
