Performing art for all senses

– Where do I come from and how did I end up here? asks Astrid von Rosen. She is the new director of the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, new professor of art history and visual studies, and for many years deeply involved in research on scenography and independent performing arts. Everything she does today can be traced back to her background.

Dig Where You Stand, Sven Lindqvist's ground-breaking book on how to research one's own work, has finally been published in English after 45 years. The editors are Astrid von Rosen, professor at the University of Gothenburg, and Andrew Flinn, researcher at University College London (UCL).

– Work on the translation began back in 2013 when I was headhunted to what later became the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (CCHS). Some colleagues and I had gone to London for a meeting at UCL and at one point we were going to pair up with English researchers in a kind of “academic speed-dating”. I chose Andrew Flinn who does research on archives and activism and I had two minutes to say something. So I explained that, together with practitioners, I wanted to research independent dance troupes. To my surprise, Andrew then started talking about Sven Lindqvist, who he was very interested in after reading one of his articles. However, he had never read his book because it was not available in English. The idea was then born to translate the book. It has taken ten years and a lot of work, but on March 22 the publication of the book was celebrated in London. The event is important because there is currently a great deal of international interest in Lindqvist's thinking about digging where you stand.

When Astrid von Rosen digs where she stands, she ends up in her mother's garden next to a small red cabin out in the countryside in southern Östergötland. Her mother was a vegan and grew all the family's vegetables herself. Her father supported the family as an artist. Her parents were involved in global justice and environmental issues, but Astrid von Rosen saw herself as deviant and different from everyone else.

– I was good at school but I didn't like it and wanted to leave. My dream was to be like my aunt.

Elsa Marianne von Rosen was a ballet dancer and choreographer, and someone Astrid von Rosen was fascinated by.

– As a 16-year-old, I moved away from home to attend upper-secondary school in Linköping. That's when I started dancing in earnest. A couple of years later I enrolled at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm to begin the rigorous training to become a professional dancer. Dance became my profession, and I worked at the opera houses in Malmö and Gothenburg, among other places. However, in the early 1990s, when I had two small children and had to take on extra work, my body couldn't take any more.

She started studying instead, first at the IHM Business School, then at the University of Gothenburg. In 2007, she became a doctoral student in art history and visual studies.

– It has been said that dancers do well in academia. We are used to working hard, are disciplined and have trained our brains to memorize maybe three hours’ worth of step combinations. I am also a person who loves writing and enjoy working. So I, who previously saw myself as an oddball, noticed that I fit in in the university world.

The subject Astrid von Rosen is engaged in, scenography, is a small research field in Sweden. Internationally, however, scenography is an interdisciplinary field that is really beginning to flourish, she says.

– It’s about an increased interest in understanding and examining the creation of worlds in relation to individuals and society. Today we have developed wonderfully useful theories and methods to access the power of the multi-sensory interplay between sound, light, space, bodies, costume, scent, audience and larger social, cultural and political contexts.

But the concept of “scenography” has also expanded to include events beyond the stage, for example on the street and in the public space.

– People interact with different environments that contain sounds and smells, traffic or nature, and a kind of rapid architecture arises that can create new, often short-lived worlds, for example activists camping outside a government building, Astrid von Rosen explains.

“Dig Where You Stand” is not only about examining one's own work, but also about studying other phenomena in the place where one happens to be. In the Expansion and Diversity project, which in 2019 received SEK 13 million from the Swedish Research Council, Astrid von Rosen and her colleagues studied alternative groups in

Gothenburg during the latter part of the 20th century.

– Some are well-known, such as the National Theatre and Rubicon, others have received less attention. Among other things, I am interested in the black dancer Claude Marchant who, after a long international career, came to Gothenburg in 1967 and started the Marchant Dance Theatre. He is marginalized in Swedish performing arts history, but created a lot of interest in jazz dance among the general public, but also among people who wanted to become professional dancers. At a seminar a few years ago, a number of practitioners demonstrated various movements. An ordinary room on Vera Sandberg allé, where the Department of Cultural Sciences was then located, was literally teaming with bodies that had archived the knowledge they had danced to under the direction of Marchant.

Together with Claude Marchant’s surviving partner, Bo Westerholm, Astrid von Rosen has gone through an extensive private archive of the great dancer's work.

The results are included in the database and open digital platform that is part of the Expansion and Diversity project. Practitioners’ practical knowledge, experiences and memories can be combined with the researcher’s ability to be systematic, use theory and method, and write scientific text.

– The database can be thought of as part of a larger network where different sources and people contribute facts and stories. The work on the database has been characterized by “radical empathy”, i.e. by the ability to respect the thoughts and experiences of others, even if one has a different opinion or background.

– The database, which is a tool for continued research, can by definition never be complete. By understanding the database as one of several parts in a network, it is easier to see how it can live on in new ways. Research initiatives can just as easily come from practitioners of the performing arts as from academics.

This way of thinking about archives, networks and databases, from a dig-where-you-stand perspective, is an important part of CCHS's theoretical and practical approach, Astrid von Rosen emphasizes.

– The CCHS truly represents interdisciplinarity. The centre moves across faculty boundaries, has international collaborations and is interested in an outside perspective from users of various types. But we are also good at research communication. One example is Matarvspodden (the Food Heritage Podcast) with Jenny Högström Berntson as producer, which covers everything from school-canteen food to food in times of crisis.

Together with Elisabeth Punzi, a specialist in neuropsychology, Astrid von Rosen appeared in the episode Mat i nöd och lust (Food for Better or Worse), which was broadcast last December. During the episode, she talked about her Facebook blog Simonssons änka (Simonsson's Widow).

– My beloved husband, the love of my life, passed away last February leaving me in a state of shock and exhaustion. We used to cook together; he was a classically skilful cook who loved fish, while I contributed with dishes inspired by Italian and vegan cuisine. The blog, where I write a couple of posts a week, became a way for me to structure my existence and perhaps also comfort others who could identify with my grief.

In February this year, Astrid von Rosen was appointed Professor of Art History and Visual Studies. The experts, both from Finland, explained that she is a pioneer in scenography research, which she has reinvented through a combination of theory and empirical work.

– Of course, I was both happy and grateful for the appreciative words and that they took the time to familiarize themselves with my work in such a conscientious way.

The idea of digging where you stand is also about digging down into yourself. Astrid von Rosen has just turned 59 and believes it is time to reflect.

– I see my life as an arc that began with my parents’ social activism and artistic interests, continued with my own artistic endeavours and now continues in my work to combine academia and practice. And, even though it wasn’t intended that way, I see that it all ties together.

Astrid von Rosen

Currently: New Professor of Art History and Visual Studies. Editor, together with Andrew Flinn, of an English translation of Sven Lindqvist's book Gräv där du står – hur man utforskar ett jobb: Dig Where You Stand – How to Research a Job (translation: Ann Henning Jocelyn).

Current position: Researcher and lecturer at the Department of Cultural Sciences. Head of the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (CCHS).

Lives in: Central Gothenburg.

Family: My elderly mother, my brother and his family, my two beloved children and a grandchild. Close friends are also a kind of family.

Hobbies: Produces the blog Simonssons änka.