Rehearsing Reconciliation: Frictional Dramaturgies and Postcolonial Moments in Ferske Scener’s "Blodklubb”

Abstract

<p>In 2018, the Norwegian Parliament established a Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) to investigate the Norwegianization policy’s forced assimilation of the Sámi, the Kven, and the Norwegian Finn peoples. Besides a historical mapping of the policies and ideologies behind the Norwegianization process and an analysis of the repercussions of these policies today, the Committee was also asked to deliver suggestions for reconciliation with the aim of creating “greater equality between the majority and minority population”. In this article, we examine the potential of art and performance in the ongoing reconciliation process in a Norwegian context. Our analytic focus is the ongoing performance project <i>Blodklubb</i> that was established concurrently with the TRC in 2018 by the experimental performance group Ferske Scener (Kristin Bjørn, Bernt Bjørn, and Kristina Junttila) in collaboration with the author Sigbjørn Skåden. <p><i>Blodklubb</i> takes the form of public assemblies where the audience is invited to participate in a collective “search for the ultimate feeling of togetherness”, as the organizers describe it, “with special focus on the relationship between Sámi and Norwegian culture”. With an explicitly playful approach to troublesome notions of blood, DNA, and genetics, <i>Blodklubb</i> deploys interactive performance strategies to carve out spaces for negotiating the constitution of affective, social, and political communities in a time where questions of truth and reconciliation is ongoing, and where public debates on identity, racism, and decolonization are increasingly marked by political polarization. The first part of the article analyzes <i>Blodklubb</i>’s dramaturgical strategies, with a focus on how the performance establishes frictional dramaturgies that hold space for tensions that are central to ontological politics aimed at telling differences and sameness in new ways. The second part of the article is based on interviews with audience members of <i>Blodklubb</i> and argues that the performance functions as a learning site for forms of “participatory reciprocity” that allows for new and different engagements with ourselves and others.