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Oslo-based artist Malin Bülow creates large, site-specific performance installations wherein the human body features as sculpture. Her work champions elasticity as a motif, using exaggerated lycra garments as costumes that create tension, shape and scale. Each work is highly choreographed, with the human body forming patterns, linking to one another, or becoming an extension of the existing architecture.

Bülow’s series Elastic Bonding was shown as part of Norway’s annual festival of contemporary dance, Multiplié, in collaboration with Babel Visningsrom and DansiT. Three participants lie on white mats, wearing white lycra material affixed to windows mounted on the ceiling above. Textile structures, made of neoprene and stretch lame, were attached to the ceiling framework, creating vertical cones that each body is connected to on the ground. Silicone tubing filled with water and titanium are affixed to each body and ceiling structure, moving with the people as they change positions. Gravity, elasticity and deep breathing are used to initiate movement.

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Elastic Bonding was also installed at the main exhibitions space at Babel Visningsrom, with three participants connected to three openings via lycra and the tube system. Stretch lamé moves inward toward the opposing walls of the adjoining rooms, creating three voids that cut off the entrance to the other rooms. The lycra garments have a hooded element, from which transparent stretchy mesh strains toward the exhibition hall, pulled by the bodies connected at the other end.

Elastic Still Lives was set in a former cabinet factory in the centre of Vienna, with two bodies moulded together via an extended tube. The artist poses questions such as ‘What forms do us create’, and ‘who am I in relation to you’ through the work.

“By moulding them, I attempt to come closer to the idea of the body as sculpture. Mutual reliance emerges as the bodies lean on the weight of the other, in constant search for equilibrium,” says Bülow.

A series titled Firkanta elastisitet – Skulptur i spenn (translating to Squared elasticity – Strained sculpture) has been executed at various locations. One iteration was set within Store Salen at Kunstbanken, Hedmark Kunstsenter. Two grey lycra frames cover the only two openings to the exhibition hall. After entering through small holes in the lycra, the audience is locked inside for the duration of the performance. Two dancers then attach themselves to the lycra, becoming one with the square frames. As they move away from the frames, the dancers emulate both movement and elasticity while remaining anchored.

Bülow also executed the performance at a former military building in Ski, outside of Oslo, with five dancers connected to corresponding square openings in the building. The dancers move in a slow, embryonic manner, into positions that extrapolate the tension and elasticity of the lycra. The precise, slow-motion creates an ambivalent sense of rigidity and elasticity, with the bodies locked within their own framework. The resulting effect is that of an elastic sculpture that falls between performance and still life.

[Images courtesy of Malin Bülow.]

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