Bendik Giske explores ideas of queer time and ecstasy in Not Yet
A documentary about Giske’s recent commission performed in Oslo, created in collaboration with Bridget Ferrill and Theresa Baumgartner.
Bendik Giske is an artist and saxophonist whose practice frequently blurs the boundaries between performance, installation and music. Over two solo albums for Smalltown Supersound – 2019’s Surrender and 2021’s Cracks – Giske has pushed his instrument and body to the limit through circular breathing techniques that stretch and shape his tender compositions.
In March 2021, Giske was commissioned by Oslo’s MUNCH Museet to create a new live work, Not Yet. Created in collaboration with sound artist Bridget Ferrill and featuring lighting and bespoke scenography by Theresa Baumgartner, Not Yet is a performance that explores ideas of queer time and ecstasy, drawing inspiration from the first passage of José Esteban Muñoz’s book Cruising Utopia, which references queerness as something glimpsed on the horizon that belongs to everyone.
“Queerness is not yet here,” Muñoz writes. “Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain.”
In this film, directed and produced by Fact’s Pedro S. Küster and featuring exclusive footage from the live performance of Not Yet, Giske discusses the many innovative techniques that go into creating his work, from circular breathing to using microphones mounted on the instrument to create different tonal qualities. Giske also discusses the inspiration behind Not Yet and the idea of ‘stepping out of the binary’ to create a unique tonal and spatial experience, one that communicates with both the audience and the performance environment.
“Queerness will never be here,” Giske says. “It is inherently something that exists in the future, and always will be. I like that thought.”
Credits
Not Yet
Written and performed by Bendik Giske
Film directed and produced by Pedro S. Küster
Sound by Bridget Ferrill
Light and stage by Theresa Baumgartner
Costume by Nicole Walker
Hair and make-up by Akischa Budd
Filmed by
Alice Sephton
Ingrid Styrkestad
Maja Wilhite Hannisdal
Pedro S. Küster
Sound mixed by Bridget Ferrill
Not Yet was commissioned by MUNCH for MUNCH Live
Performance produced by Erica Berthelsen and Anette Engkvist
Additional production by Sofie B. Ringstad
MUNCH Team
Artistic Director: Ingrid Moe
Senior Curator: Tominga O’Donnell
Project Manager: Jonas Vebner
Technical Manager: Lasse Baklien
Production Manager: Kaja Langø Aasmoe
Not Yet is supported by Arts Council Norway, The Norwegian Composers’ Fund, The Fund for Performing Artists, City of Oslo and Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Norwegian Arts Abroad and The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This film was originally published on Fact Magazine factmag.com/bendik-giske.
