Horse Inside out

Horse Inside Out is a sensory, immersive installation and performance experience consisting of a sculpture / installation large enough for one audience member to move through a crevice and travel through several rooms.

The work is a hybrid of sound, spoken poetry, installation art, performance / dance and kinesthetic interaction. The horse is chosen for its raw energy. It shifts from gentle grazing to kicking, galloping fury. It is sudden and powerful.

The performance installation lasts 15 minutes. Moving the audience into a radically different world and consciousness, Horse Inside Out was designed as an independent work to be experienced at an art museum. Shifting the visitors’ perception and awaking the senses, Horse Inside Out is also an exploration into how museums can be experienced in new ways.

The Performance installation has been at ARoS Atelier (DK) in January- february 2020, and at the AHJO Gallery (FI) in September 2021.

In 2022 you can experience it at Reykjavík Art Museum (IS).

The Audience said:

“Amazing to able to create a whole new world inside out mundane reality. A small space but a big world. Meeting yourself and your boundaries, and the opportunity to let go of them and listen to your inner animal – and the whole time feeling safe and secure to explore.”

“Thanks for showing me that my heart is wild and untamed in a world where my longing fingertips often must remain in my pockets.”

“… I have never tried a so intense “artificial” experience that felt so real. Wish that you could experience such a wild, all-engulfing performance installation more often. Would really like to experience more of Wunderland – a very apt name.”

“… if I think of the inside of a horse, my thoughts are automatically led to the Trojan horse, and a way of hiding while infiltrating an impregnable city wall. The perfect method to gain enter the heart (!) of any city, any human centre … If you allow yourself to surrender to sensuousness and physical unraveling, this installation has the potential to transform your approach to the physical world that surrounds you.” Kulturleben

Photos: Jesper Lyng Michelsen

Research:

Horse Inside Out was designed as a collaboration with Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University.

Here, you can hear Andreas Roepstorff (Prof. IMC, Aarhus University) and Charlotte Nørholm (research assistant, IMC) talk about how participatory performance art can be integral in rethinking how we do social research today (31 minutes interview in Danish by Nemo Hensing).

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THE ARTISTIC TEAM
The work is created by Wunderland in a collaboration between:

  • Artistic director of Wunderland, viual and sensorial concept maker and performer: Mette Aakjær (DK)
  • Set designer/Visual artist: Mona Møller Schmidt (DK)
  • Composer: Thoranna Bjørnsdottir (IS)
  • Author: Sonja Winckelmann Thomsen (DK)
  • Mask and costume designer and assistant set designer: Amanda Axelsen Sigaard (DK)
  • Assistant set designer: Amanda Vesthardt (DK),
  • Temporary performer (7. – 16. February 2020): Molly Nyeland (DK)
  • Fragrance design: Mette Aakjær with assistance from Sigrid Moses-Jacobsen
  • Technical interactivity: DimsOs (DK).

PRODUCTION TEAM

  • Production leader: Katrine Kihm,
  • Production leader assistants: Ida Ravn Homelius and Jeppe Sommer
  • PR: Winnie Handberg
  • Video: Christoffer Brekne
  • Sewing the exterior of the sculpture: Michael Nøhr
  • Assistant for hand-sewing: Marina Therese Axelsen
  • Construction of steel skeleton: Jakob Hjuler
  • Photos: Jesper Lyng Michelsen
  • Booking system development: Jesper Lyng Michelsen

ACADEMIC RESEARCH
A research program in Sensory Perception and Perception of Reality is conducted as part of the project by universities in the three countries:

Read more about Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting (EER)
A collaboration between science and art led by artist Olafur Eliasson and scientist Andreas Roepstorff (Aarhus University), funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (2019-2023). Horse Inside Out by Wunderland is part of this project.

SUPPORTED BY:

Knud Højgaards Fond

  • and by all involved art- and academic institutions.