ABOUT THE PROJECT

Autopoiesis refers to the concept of self-maintenance and is an art project for collecting and reflecting on memories and stories related to July 22. 2011 - the terrorist attack that affected the Labor Party and everyone in Norway.

Ten years after July 22. we invite people to a participatory artistic process, to explore how the terrorist attack affected people's lives. We ask questions about - what memories are we left with, what memories are excluded and how has the story of the terrorist attack been told in retrospect? By collecting and sharing people's memories, we will look into the memory of people and open up the storytelling and the conversation about a collective national trauma. Important questions we also ask are; what is excluded from the storytelling and which stories are never told?

The project will take place during the year 2021. Memories shared in the project are considered intangible cultural heritage and will be preserved digitally and later handed over to a national oral history archive with eternity as a perspective in collaboration with Memoar (www.memoar.no).

Autopoiesis (from Greek) refers to how a system is able to reproduce and maintain itself. The term originates from biology where it was used to describe the self-sustaining chemistry of living cells. Since then, the term has been used to describe mechanisms and self-maintenance in several disciplines such as psychology, systems theory and sociology. The approach in this project is based on self-maintenance in society, how we process trauma and memories we carry with us.