Baktruppen

Baktruppen was an artist collective (1986–2011), founded in Bergen, Norway. The group has had a substantial impact on European live art.

The performative work of Baktruppen consisted of theatre and dance performances, performance art, invisible theatre, video art, radio programs, sound art, site specific art, and politically motivated actions.

Theatre historian Knut Ove Arntzen in the book Performance Art by Baktruppen, first part (kontur 2009) explains: "Baktruppen is known for their irony and playing with avantgardistic approaches to theatre and performance art. They may even be perceived as having transgressed the avant-garde!" The name of the company indicates the opposite of avant-garde, something more like “rear troop,” or somebody walking behind a military advancement. It was of course ironically meant. Baktruppen’s point was to recycle aspects of the classical avant-garde in a postmodern perspective, which indeed was their point of departure.

Baktruppen was marked by artistic research going beyond the aesthetics and towards a social space. Baktruppen questioned the idea of ritual in theatre, and introduced the ambient space with a playful and ironic approach to the postmodern. Play became a frame for communication with the audience, and a point of departure for a deconstructivist view of the world expressed through their art. Notions of “professionalism” and “dilettantism” were questioned. One of the main intentions was that people joining productions should mix their talents and skills into a non-hierarchical working process of a collective kind.

Exaggeration and confusion are aspects that characterize Baktruppen’s work. The troupe constantly positioned itself in the uncertain gap between the known and the unknown and operated with a dual awareness where they toy with the distinctions between play/seriousness, fiction/reality, center/periphery, and different identities. One may say that Baktruppen's work reflects the carnivalesque in a postmodern form.

On Friday Baktruppen buried the dog. Sunday before mass the church dug it up again. God knows where it is now. Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam / Netherlands.

Baktruppen as Viking daoists of europunk talking about the global financial crisis. Stamsund International Theatre Festival / Norway, Hanoi Sound Stuff-Greener Music Festival /Vietnam, Van Ho Exhibition Center / Vietnam. Asia Tour (2008): Happy Monday, Bangkok / Thailand, Night and Day / Singapore, Velvet Underground, Taipei / Taiwan, Dreamer House, Xiamen/ China, Ninliho Gallery, Foshan/ China, MoCa Space, Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art / China, Oxwarehouse, Macao / China. Storåsfestival / Norway.

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