Still Life was an exhibition based on the work, with the same title, written by Lars Norén and staged at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, in 2017. The work consists of some 90 images, some 90 scenes without a line of dialogue from beginning to end. In a fictional time somewhere between 1890 and 2015, something fragmentary and dreamlike plays out, without sound or words. In a black universe with a white door standing ajar, actors interact with the essence of things.
It is like discovering an old album containing a collection of photographs. The images depict people we don’t know and yet know a lot about, although we don’t know anything. It is not a story with a beginning and an end, but rather a circle – in which certain behaviours and tendencies recur, and our inheritance finds expression in our behaviour.
Lars Norén worked on Still Life for more than a decade before the work was staged at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 2017. The work gained additional dimensions in an exhibition comprising stills, videos, texts and objects.
The exhibition was created by Lars Norén and Bobo Ericzén, a film director and photographer. Working together over 14 years, they created a unique documentation of theatrical work in Sweden, France and Belgium. Hundreds of hours of video and thousands of stills describe the creative process and the finished works. Using this collaboration as a starting point, Lars Norén and Bobo Ericzén created the exhibition Still Life.
The exhibition consisted of images, videos, objects and audio recordings that turn the 90 images into a beautiful, living, gripping portrait of Sweden as it navigates 125 years of change.
