What is a body? Where does the body end? Can it stretch, expand beyond its own limits, like rings in water activated by one center? Inhale, exhale. The body carries its life, its history. It makes impressions on the surroundings and the relationships it touches, and is itself marked by touch. Inhale, exhale. The body leaves something behind, and takes something else with it. How to exist in a body that is in constant transformation and development? What exactly is a body in this time where we haven’t been able to physically meet or touch each other, when our shared experiences arise through screens? How do we relate to ourselves, others and our surroundings through our bodies? 

In her exploration of these questions Kari Ann Lending Kleiveland (b. 1993)  experiments with materials and mediums as for example textile, bean bags, wood, video, painting and performance. She is particularly interested in malleable mediums and materials that change with time or by touch. Scenography and costumes are valuable inspiration sources. Her background in dance and choreography provides a framework for her practice and a curiosity to approach the body and movement from different angles. Her processes are dynamic, her projects overlap, never end. She looks for questions rather than answers.

Improvisation, in the form of movement and in experimenting with encounters between different materials and bodies, is crucial to her process. Impulses that initiate change. Therefore, she had her base in Paris in 2014, in Helsinki in 2018 and in Reykjavik in 2019. She has also studied art in Stavanger (Kunstskolen i Rogaland, 2014-2016), completed her BFA in Trondheim Academy of Fine arts (2020), and is now completing my MA in KMD, Bergen. Another way of improvisation is contact with other people, both in short meetings, collaborations and lasting relationships. In 2018 she founded Studio K, a project space and gallery located in Time Municipality, with an ambition to create an environment where different people and practices can meet and connect. In 2017 and 2018 she worked as a choreographer, and collaborated with director Viktorija R. Davies, conductor Liv Hugstmyr Særheim and the youth choir VIVA in the productions Disneyforestilling (2017) and the 50th anniversary show Reverse & Reunion (2018). The latter was shown in Sandnes Kulturhus and was a production that included around 200 performers.

Kari Ann is a member of BKFR and NBK.