A technological multimedia performance with contemporary dance and photography as building blocks, by and with the dance artist Oliver Paulsson.
Three cameras firing at different intervals. Threads running from wall to wall, and ceiling to floor. A printer ejecting paper. A lone performer moves across the room in a sort of chaotic but carefully calculated play to be in front of each camera the moment the shutter is released.
Every small movement is monitored by the cameras and sensors he wears, every movement has a consequence. He voluntarily merges with technologies that color and shape the way he exists in the world. He has become part of a larger machinery, and is now pure input. He is well on his way to becoming the perfect human.
CMOS Retina is a solo performance by the dancer and photographer Oliver Paulsson. The piece is a hybrid between a dance piece and a photographic exhibition. A playful dialogue between human and machine, the biological and the artificial, the living and the dead, a dialogue that stems from questions and contradictions in the artist's own experience of society's technologization - an experience of existence as increasingly quantified and instrumentalized.
The result is a series of choreographed self-portraits, a documentation and archiving of his process as a human and artist. With these, he can finally prove his own existence, and thus he is finally worth something.
Oliver Paulsson is a Swedish dancer and photographer living in Oslo. He graduated from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts with a BA in contemporary dance (2021), and has since worked in both the contemporary dance field and the commercial field. As a performer, he has participated in, among others, the Bodø Biennale, Stamsund International Theater Festival, Baredans, and CODA festival, where he has worked with artists such as Malin Bülow, De Naive & Roza Moshtaghi, Tom Weinberger, and more. The performance CMOS Retina marks his debut as a choreographer and his first own full-scale project, and is developed as part of his young artist scholarship at the Festspillene i Nord-Norge (Festival of North Norway).
The project has its premiere during the Festspillene i Nord-Norge. The project is financially supported by the Festspillene i Nord-Norge, the Arts Council Norway, Dansens Hus (Choreography Lab), and Tvibit. The rehearsal period is supported by Dansens Hus. The project would not have been possible without Davvi and their talent development program Uredd. Thank you.