Mohamed:
We meet by the tennis courts at Rosenhoff; it’s windy, and Pia has brought two gifts. One is a book titled The Mass Psychology of Fascism by the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, and the other is a plate she bought for me at a flea market. I am obsessed with a guy who doesn't want me, and she shows up with this plate depicting two men flirting under a tree with hunting dogs in the background. I find myself thinking: right now, she is doing exactly what I dream of him doing.
Pia Maria Roll is a theater director. She works within what can be called a documentary practice, where her most important tool has always been the ability to listen. For months and years, she has moved into people’s streams of speech—chasing them through thickets of text, waiting, courting, and manipulating. But now, she wants someone to listen to her. She engages the young Norwegian-Somali performance artist Mohamed Mohamed to see if the dynamics can be reversed. The experiment takes the "orgone box" as its starting point: a therapeutic aid developed by the German-Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. It is approximately 40 by 20 centimeters, made of plywood, and filled with something that looks like steel wool. It belonged to Pia’s father, who for 16 years was in therapy with the Norwegian Reichian psychoanalyst Ola Raknes. According to Reich, "orgone" was the life force—an evolution of Freud's idea of the libido. It was a force that, if suppressed, created illness and destruction, not only on an individual level but for society as a whole. Wilhelm Reich was a student of Freud, his great hope and planned successor after Jung was caught sleeping with all his patients. However, their thinking eventually diverged, particularly regarding the idea of how psychoanalysis could be used as a revolutionary force in the fight against fascism.
● Pia Maria Roll is an award-winning performing artist, playwright, and political activist. Among her most important productions are Baqorban, Ways of Seeing, Over evne III, Ship O’hoi!, and Ses i min nästa pjäs, all of which premiered at Black Box teater. Her productions are always created in close collaboration with dramaturgs, visual artists, musicians, dancers, co-directors, and, of course, the performers themselves.
● Mohamed Mohamed holds a BA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and has also studied at the Nordic Black Xpress Theater School in Oslo. In 2025, the work The healing process is triggering was nominated for the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Prize. Mohamed’s performance works include You have started singing again / Don leat álgán lávlut fas with Kátjá Rávdná at the Bodø Biennale 2024, and The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ during Arendalsuka 2023 as part of Fotogalleriet's program Ta Plass: Norge/Sápmi. He also exhibited the installation Amm Mørket at the Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen) 2025. Mohamed is an artist-in-residence at the AiR Union Papirbredden studio in 2026.
