This artistic research project is aimed at exploring narrative accounts of Norwegians who self-identify with a multicultural and/or immigration background(s). It has been collecting stories of their lived experiences, with special interest in an event that happened in a public space and has been experienced as a life changing moment. The stories are being used to produce monuments that will be installed on the sites where the narrated events took place. The monuments will take over the public spaces and infuse them with gripping personal narratives to shift how we read those places and (re)negotiate their past/meaning, generating a ‘capital’ that will demand a ‘new’ way of relating to, and/or understanding, the place, its people and history. This is to create an ‘alternative history’, dedicated to writing and inscribing these voices into public spaces and our broader collective imagination.

This past semester I have been building a physical ‘exhibition’ of the stories and my ideas of what to do with them at the theatre school, which is displaying the research material I have been collecting and creating. The wall is going to be part of both the documentation and reflection of my PhD project. In this session, I will be activating the wall by hosting a performance lecture that will offer an update of my research project in front of it. Working with a group of actors, I will also be bringing some of the stories on the wall to life. Afterwards, the audience will be invited to provide feedback and reflect on the research material on the wall.