In the Mirror of Care Work by Inga Gerner Nielsen

In the Mirror of Care Work researches skills within Nordic interactive performance practices. Using the mirror as a metaphor for visualisation and connection, artist Inga Gerner Nielsen brings into conversation the work of nurses and interactive performers. By inviting in the perspectives of care workers and looking into the history of their profession, Inga engages in discussions about the politics, mythologies and poetics of her own field. What do we see when we look in the mirror, and when that mirror is a nurse? Do we, as performers – like the nurses were once said to – abide by the feeling of a calling? Does this involve a kind of spiritual care for our audience? And what of the nurses’ working conditions should we perhaps try to adopt as (care giving) performers? The project visited Stockholm (MDT) in September 2023 and Helsinki in January 2024 in a two-day symposium to meet and exchange with local artists about the aspect of care work in their artistic practice . The project is based in a long-term collaboration with the nursing school at UCN Hjørring & Thisted in the north of Denmark. Together with teacher of the History of Nursing, Helle Kronborg Krogsgaard, Inga gerner Nielsen is developing ways of integrating interative performance excersices and visual art into the teaching of 1.st, 4th and 7th semester nursing students.

In the Mirror of Care Work (in eds) Inga Gerner Nielsen & Ar Utke Acs, Tabloid Press, Berlin 2023

read full essay about Tyras experience as a performer in the installation

in preview of In the Mirror of Care Work in PW MAGAZINE:

https://archive.pw-magazine.com/2023/more-than-bare-life?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR4LXTPansUwJRxQsZcczdeJQm68bAr024zAySJoljSvJqo_3QhhEPI4qbycMA_aem_1NhdZVTK1MVj0iXVVBXApw

In the Mirror of Care Work, edited by Inga Gerner Nielsen & Ar Utke Acs, published by Tabloid Press, Berlin 2023 https://tabloidpublications.bigcartel.com/product/in-the-mirror-of-care-work

See video-stills from Syner Vakt i Støv:

https://ingagernernielsen.tumblr.com/post/798727894425878528/syner-vakt-i-st%C3%B8v-a-monastery-in-the-dunes-falls

related immersive work:

A monastery in the dunes falls into the ocean and its nuns moves into deserted welfare institutions around the region. People who want to stay living in the outskirts, far away from the remaining centralised hospital, now begin to inscribe them selves with the nuns.

Audience become part of this performance-scenario, by coming to receive a poetic consultation with us. Last shown, it took place at in a “nursing lab”, a small rehearsal ward in the Nursing School in Thy.

Concept: Inga Gerner Nielsen. Performance and visual art: Ann Mai Røge, Tyra Wigg, Rikke Steen Mapstone, Olivia Kamradt, Stisa Søgaard, Inga Gerner Nielsen. Choreography: Tyra Wigg. Textile Pieces: Stephanie Becquet. Sound: Nils Bourdon. Consultant in Interactive Dramaturgy: Louisa Yaa Aisin. Consultant from the Nursing School: Helle Kronborg Krogsgaard.

Photo and video stills by Claire Chavalley

‘Syner Vakt i Støv’ is supported by Region Nord and Statens Kunstfond.

The performance is part of 'In the Mirror of Care Work’, a long-term project in collaboration with the Nursing School of UCN in Hjørring and Thisted. Since 2020 we have been exploring different formates for giving insight into our different yet, in many ways, similar field of relational work.

With 'Syner Vakt i Støv’ we return to the figure of the nun as a melting point between our two professions. For the nursing students, abbess Hildegard von Bingen is introduced to them, when Helle Kronborg Krogsgaard teaches her first lesson of the History of Nursing. For us in the performance and contemporary art field, Hildegard’s monastery archive gives access to a pre-industrial knowledge of herbs, body, spirit and rituals many of us wish to reintroduce into Western societies.

For both nurses and performers the nun may present itself as an ambivalent figure. It opens questions of how we feel about the notion of a calling to care work?

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