We write with scenography

Writings by Astrid and Viveka

Here we have listed first Viveka's then Astrid's scenography writings. We have chosen to collect them here as a way of countering academic fragementation and facilitating for scholars, students and others to explore our work. 

Viveka's list

Selected publications about perfume, olfactory art, costume and scented scenography:

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Scented bodies: Perfuming as resistance and as a subversive identity statement" in Olfactory Art And The Political In An Age Of Resistance. Eds. Debra Riley Parr & Gwenn-Aël Lynn, Routledge, 2021.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Scented Scenographics and Olfactory Art: Making Sense of Scent in the Museum" in Journal of Art History, (Vol 90:2) 2021. Open access

Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture. Eds. Astrid von Rosen & Viveka Kjellmer, Bloomsbury, 2021.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Costume, body and 'visual couture' as scenography in the advertising campaign Opera Papier" in Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture. Eds. Astrid von Rosen & Viveka Kjellmer, Bloomsbury, 2021.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Costume and the Modernist Body: Fashioning August Strindberg" in Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods, Eds. Sofia Pantouvaki & Peter McNeill, Bloomsbury 2021, p. 255-259.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Indra's Daughter and the Modernist Body. Costume and the fashioned body as scenography in A Dream Play 1915-18.", Studies in Costume and Performance, Vol. 4:2, Intellect, 2019, p. 179-191.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Fragile fashion. The Paper Dress as Art and Visual Consumption" in Transglobal Fashion Narratives: written clothing, mediated style statements and brand storytelling. Eds. Anne Peirson-Smith & Joseph H. Hancock II, Intellect, 2018, p. 237-252.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Materializing virtual reality. The performativity of skin, body and costume in Tobias Bernstrup's artwork", Studies in Costume and Performance, Vol.1:2, Intellect, 2016, p. 151-161.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Fashioning A Dream-Play. On Knut Ström's Costume Sketches 1915-18 from a Fashion Perspective ", Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond. Ed. Astrid von Rosen, Göteborg, Makadam 2016, p. 92-121.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Visuella texturer. Modeutställningar som kroppslig upplevelse och visuell konsumtion / Visual Textures. Fashion Exhibitions as Bodily Experience and Visual Consumption ", À la mode: Mode mellan konst, kultur och kommers / Á la Mode: Fashion Between Art, Culture and Trade. Eds: Ida de Wit Sandström & Cecilia Fredriksson, Göteborg, Makadam 2016, p. 302-320.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "From Roslin to Bernstrup. Identity, Body and Dress from a Multisensory Perspective", Unbounded. The Eighteenth Century Mirrored by the Present. Ed. Kristoffer Arvidsson, Göteborg, Gothenburg Museum of Art 2016, p. 151-188.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Virtuella identiteter och antibiografi i Tobias Bernstrups konstnärsskap / Virtual Identities and Anti-Biography in the Oeuvre of Tobias Bernstrup", LIR.journal, 5:2015, Ed. Kristina Hermansson, Göteborgs universitet, p. 164-174.

Kjellmer, Viveka, "Visuell Couture. Om pappersklänningar och betraktandets konsumtion / Visual Couture. On Paper Dresses and Visual Consumption ", Modets bildvärldar. Studier i Röhsska museets modesamling / The Image of Fashion. Studying the Fashion Collection at the Röhsska Museum, Eds. Bia Mankell & Per Dahlström, Röhsska museet, Göteborg 2012, p. 14-41, 197-200.

Kjellmer, Viveka, Doft i bild. Om bilden som kommunikatör i parfymannonsens värld / The Image of Scent. On Image Communication in the World of Perfume Advertising. Diss, University of Gothenburg 2009.


Astrid's list

2022

von Rosen, Astrid. (2022). "Scenography: From marginalized study object to vital theoretical concept". Swedish Art Historiography: Institutionalization, identity and practice. Eds Britt-Inger Johansson and Ludwig Qvarnström. Nordic Academic Press. This single-authored original chapter investigates scenography studies as a sub-section of art history in Sweden. Important findings for the present proposal are the theoretical clarifications needed to navigate between scenic design and scenographic events, and the insights on the need to explore scenography outside the capital, and beyond major institutions and venues. Peer reviewed.

von Rosen, A. with Eszter Szalszer (2022). "Scenographic Dialogues: Staging Carl Grabow's 1907 Designs for A Dream Play [Part 2]". Dokumenterat 52, pp. 4-41 . Open access: https://musikverket.se/musikochteaterbiblioteket/arkiv/dokumenterat

von Rosen. A. (2022). "Eric Axel Söderberg", häfte 172 av Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (SBL), s. 238-241. Tryckt och digital publikation. Fackgranskad.  

2021

von Rosen, Astrid (ed. 2021). "Editorial: "Why scenography and Art History?", Journal of Art History / Konsthistorisk tidskrift, special issue "Scenography and Art History". Volume 90, issue 2, 65-71. I was visiting editor for this special issue. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2021.1923566.

von Rosen, Astrid & Viveka Kjellmer (eds. and contributors 2021). Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture. London: Bloomsbury. 

von Rosen, Astrid and Viveka Kjellmer (2021). "Re-imagining Scenography in Relation to Art History", Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture, edited by Astrid von Rosen & Viveka Kjellmer, London: Bloomsbury, 1-12. I wrote the main part of this editorial. Of importance for the present proposal, this editorial explores resent international developments of scenography theory and performance design in relation to art history and visual studies. The editorial highlights the shift from a primarily visual understanding of scenography towards a multisensory approach relevant for the proposed project.

von Rosen, Astrid. (2021). "Scenographing the Dance Archive - Keep Crawling!", in Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer (eds.), Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture, London: Bloomsbury, 29-46. In this single-authored original chapter I test to the limit recent multisensory scenography theory to explore a key out-door performance from my VR-project Expansion and Diversity. The findings provide a vital point of departure for the present project, by demonstrating how a multisensory framework helps exposing and understanding how the crafted atmosphere and affective force of the performance challenge normativities and ideologies.

von Rosen, Astrid. (2021). Review Beyond Scenography by Rachel Hann, Theatre and Performance Design, Routledge, Volume 7, issue 3-5, 2021, p. 240-241. Published online: 17 Dec 2021. Digital publikation. Redaktörsgranskad. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23322551.2021.2003155 

2020

von Rosen, A. (2020). 'On the Wire: Scenographing Affect at Sillgateteatern in Gothenburg around 1800', in Randi M. Selvik, Svein Gladsø, Anne M. Fiskvik (eds.), Genres in Context: Dance, Theatre and Opera around 1800, London and New York: Routledge. In this single-authored original chapter I mobilize my method of scenographing affect to critically re-imagine the early theatre history of Gothenburg, by focussing on archival remains testifying to audience feelings regarding performers in devalued genres in relation to global colonial structures. Important findings for the present proposal reveal how encounters between performance, place and audience open up for deeper understandings of connections between scenographic events and societal issues.

von Rosen, A. with Eszter Szalszer (2020). "Scenographic Dialogues: Staging Carl Grabow's 1907 Designs for A Dream Play [Part 1]". Dokumenterat 51, pp. 4-42. Open access: https://musikverket.se/musikochteaterbiblioteket/arkiv/dokumenterat

von Rosen, A. (2020). "Costume in the Dance Archive: Towards a records-centred ethics of care", Studies in Costume and Performance, issue 5.1, May 2020, pp. 27-46. The work with this single-authored original article was conducted within my VR-project Expansion and Diversity and focused on costume as a vital part of a holistic scenographic process and event. Of major importance to the present proposal are the insights gained by interviewing the costume designer and engaging with the designs in archival materials, such as photographs and video, in relation to multisensory activations of performance place.

2019

von Rosen, A. (2019). "Scenographing Resistance: Remembering Ride This Night", Nordic Theatre Studies, special issue Memory Wars. Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 73-88. https://tidsskrift.dk/nts/issue/view/8724

von Rosen, Astrid (2019). "Kroppsligt kunskapande i dansarkivet: sinnliga, scenografiska och transformativa forskningspraktiker", Special issue Bodily learning. På Spissen forskning / Dance Articulated (1), 1-18. https://ps.noda.no/index.php/ps/index samt här (under vol 5 i Arkiv): https://ps.noda.no/index.php/ps/issue/view/19. The article explores embodied learning and knowledge-making in a research process focusing on dance archives, with the aim of arguing for the value of the body as a historiographical research tool. Drawing on feminist theories on knowledge as a process, and an expanded notion of the archive, I analyze three workshops activating materials after the Swedish independent dance group Rubicon in embodied ways. The exploration has resulted in a proposition for sensuous, scenographic and transformative research practices, contributing to embodied dance history production.

2018

von Rosen, Astrid, "Costume as Trickster Trace: Troubling the dance archive", paper presentation at Critical Costume conference 12-14 September 2018 at the University of Surrey, UK. Published as live stream 14 September 2018: youtu.be/-reEyRGYQBg. In the presentation I explore how dance history can be scenographed by engaging archival traces including the body and the city as archives. The dancing body in costume is positioned centre stage in a critical montage, a meeting place, that will stay in motion, while striving to make a substantial dance history for our digital age. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2018). "Dream-Playing the Archive: Exploring the 1915-18 Düsseldorf production of A Dream Play", August Strindberg and Visual Culture: The Emergence of Optical Modernity in Image, Text, and Theater, edited by Jonathan Schroeder, Anna Westerståhl Stenport, and Eszter Szalczer, Bloomsbury Press, London. In the text I demonstrate my ability to conduct original archival research to explore the complex and often cross-border history of forgotten scenographic events. Of particular relevance  is the historiographical juxtaposition of the democratizing promises of digitization with the challenges of exploring non-digitized materials in scattered performance archives.

von Rosen, Astrid, Marsha Meskimmon, Monica Sand (2018). "Transversal Dances across Time and Space: Feminist Strategies for a Critical Heritage Studies", Gender and Heritage: Performance, Place and Politics: Key Issues in Cultural Heritage, edited by Wera Grahn and Ross Wilson, Routledge, London, 169-184. To the chapter I have contributed original archival explorations and scenographic analysis of collaborative activations of digital dance community archives. The chapter's formulation of a feminist approach to performance in the city highlighting the crucial relationship between bodies, places and historiography is of major relevance for critical scenography reserach. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2018). "Kriget, breven, tystnaden: Scenografhustrun Anna Ström och det infraordinära allvaret", Allvarligt talat, edited by Maria Sjöberg, Makadam, Göteborg och Stockholm. This expanded scenography work is about ways of uncovering the life and realities of a scenographer's wife living in Düsseldorf during the First World War. I combine oral history with the scenographic archive to expose how infraordinary features powerfully traverse time and can help accessing hidden scenography his(or better "her-")stories. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2018). "Introduction", Time Here Becomes Space: Scenography, by Lars Åke Thessman, Art and Theory Publishing. English edition. I wrote on recent theoretical development within scenography studies, and highlighted the relevance of practitioners publishing on their work. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2018). "Introduction", Till rum blir tiden här: Scenografi, av Lars Åke Thessman, Art and Theory Publishing. Swedish edition.

2017

von Rosen, Astrid, and Mats Nilsson, "Waltzing with Strindberg: Exploring Practices of Memory in A Dream Play", Nordic Journal of Dance, Volume 8(1), 2017, 5-14. My contribution to the article consists of a scenography oriented analysis accounting for practices of memory in theatrical archival materials. The attention to co-creative encounters between body and scenography  traversing time and space is a key critical and historiographical approach, relevant to developing explorations of the scenographic archive in our digital age.

2016

von Rosen, Astrid (2016). "Scenografisk sensualism: I fält med stadens dansare"/"Scenographic sensualism: In the field with the city dancers", University of Gothenburg, edited by Åsa Arping, Christer Ekholm, Katarina Leppänen, Lir Skrifter, Humanister i fält, 2016, 121-129. This chapter highlights the critically productive relation between performance, geographic location and archival explorations and is thus highly relevant to the proposed project. The article is also theoretically relevant as it systematizes the multifaceted dimensions where performance, location and archive intersect and influence each other in history production.

von Rosen, Astrid (2016). "The Billposter as Alchemist: A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-1918", Strindberg across Borders, edited by Massimo Ciaravolo, Instituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, Rome, 305-326. In this historiography oriented chapter I conduct a very critical exploration of the relationship between the performance archive and its potential to contribute knowledge to history production. This demonstration of the need to explore epistemological conditions and procedures for producing scenography history in our digital age provides a very useful impetus for further histogrographic approaches to scenography.

von Rosen, Astrid (2016 editor and contributor), Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond, Makadam, Gothenburg and Stockholm. I led the interdisciplinary "Dream-Playing" project, and edited and contributed several scenography oriented chapters to the book. The book's critical explorations of performance archives contribute useful historiographical insights. In particular insights from engaging a wide range of often devalued archival materials are well worth pondering. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/55175

von Rosen, Astrid (2016). "Introduction: Dream-Playing with Non-texts Across Borders", Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond, edited by Astrid von Rosen, Makadam, Gothenburg. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/55175

von Rosen, Astrid (2016). "Scenographing Strindberg: Knut Ström's Alchemical interpretation of A Dream Play 1915-18 in Düsseldorf", Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond, edited by Astrid von Rosen, Makadam, Gothenburg 2016. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/55175

von Rosen, Astrid and Mats Nilsson (2016). "Dancing with Strindberg: A Social Perspective, Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond, edited by Astrid von Rosen, Makadam, Gothenburg 2016. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/55175

von Rosen, Astrid and Ylva Sommerland (2016). "A Dream-Play at War: A Concluding Discussion about the 1918 performance in Düsseldorf", Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond, ed. Astrid von Rosen, Makadam, Gothenburg https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/55175

von Rosen, Astrid (2016), with Alf Björnberg, Per Magnus Johansson, Viveka Kjellmer, Mats Nilsson, Ylva Sommerland), "Reimagining the Research Archive: A Dialogue", Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg's A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915-18 and Beyond, edited by Astrid von Rosen, Makadam, Gothenburg. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/55175

2015

von Rosen, Astrid, "Skärvor, skimmer, stjärntäcke: Scenkonstverket Spegeln-Kairos som scenografisk händelse", Filosofi på liv och död: Texter om psykoanalys, edited by Emil Asbjörnsen, Andreas Nordh, Göteborgs förening för filosofi och psykoanalys, Göteborg 2015, 138-153. This chapter provides an exemplary case study on the ways in which the rich, but often ignored independent scenography heritage can be explored and understood. The ethically conscious, collaborative approach and the involvement of an emerging digital archival web of relations serve as inspiration to further developing this work. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2015). "Sweating with Peer Gynt: Performative exchange as a way of accessing scenographic action", Nordlit 34: Ibsen and World Drama(s), Lisbeth Wærp (ed). This a critical historiographical piece using the body as research tool when engaging with the scenographic archive. I defend an extensive use of records such as drawings, sketches, photographs (or what there is!) against approaches deeming such traces boring and irrelevant. I also highlight the importance of the practitioner's work, the scenographer (or what the creator is called), for the scenic production. https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3379

von Rosen, Astrid (2015). "Scenografera Sillgateteatern: Ett spel mellan kropp, bild och språk". In Svein Gladsø, et al (eds), Lidenskab och levebröd: Utøvende kunst i endring rundt 1800, Bergen: Fagboksforlaget, 315-334. This text produces a theoretically worked through model for exploring embodied scenography the years around 1800. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2015). "Inferno i trötthetssamhället: En scenografisk analys av Ett drömspel i Oslo 2014", Arche 52-53, 2015, 302-315. I went to Olso to experience a new production of A Dream Play, and produced a theoretically worked through scenographic score. Testing a prototype for my scenography analysis model. https://www.freudianska.org/tidskrift/52_53/AvR-Arche-52-53-2015.pdf

von Rosen, Astrid (2015). "Kuratera Jungfrur", Koreografisk Journal 3. This article activates bodies represented in scenographic designs from a German production of A Dream Play 1915-18 to produce a critical analysis merging movement and scenography. 

2014

von Rosen, Astrid (2014). "Introduction", Dance as Critical Heritage: Archives, Access, Action, Symposium Report I, edited by Marsha Meskimmon, Astrid von Rosen and Monica Sand, Critical Heritage Studies, University of Gothenburg. I served as project leader of "Dance as Critical Heritage" and contributed original archival research and knowledge on the local dance community. My "Introduction" summarizes work leading up to the development of the proposed project, in that it accounts for the diverse voices of a local dance community vital to performance and scenography history production in our digital age. This early work has proven to be vital for the current (2018) development of a dance-scenographic montage as a model for making dance history stay in motion while at the same time constructing it.

von Rosen, Astrid (2014). "Ambulare: To Walk, to Keep Walking", Architecture, Photography and the Contemporary Past, edited by Claes Caldenby, Julia Tedroff, Andrej Slávik, and Martin Farran Lee, Art and Theory Publishing, Stockholm 2014, 68-77. This is an early attempt to scenograph dance history. I looked at independent dance interventions in public space during the 1980's. A reflective piece, including processes of translating archival traces to spatial, scenographically coded encounters in the present. Walking in ice cold rain and muddy snow (typical Gothenburg winter), making alternative scenographic dreamscapes.

von Rosen, Astrid (2014). "Peer Gynt drar med handen över sin uppblåsbara dröm. Några tankar om teatern, scenografin och det kyrkliga kulturarvet", Konstvetenskapen och det kyrkliga kulturarvet, edited by Emilie Karlsmo, Jakob Lindblad, and Henrik Widmark, Uppsala University, Uppsala. This is one of my very first attempts at addessing scenography within a Swedish art history conference context. 

von Rosen, Astrid (2014). "Koreografi, komplexitet och kritisk rörlighet. En undersökning av barndomens närvaro i dansteaterverket Kung Oidipus", Arche: 46-47, Göteborg 2014, 101-114. A dance scenograpic score, uniting performance experience, archival reserach and theoretical discussion. https://www.freudianska.org/tidskrift/46_47/Rosen-Arche-2014-4647.pdf

von Rosen, Astrid (2014). "Historiemåleriets affektiva intensiteter", En målad historia: Svenskt historiemåleri under 1800-talet, edited by Kristoffer Arvidsson, Göteborgs konstmuseum, 2014, 137-145. In this text I draw on scenographic analysis to combine a recent performance experience from Tate Modern in London with history painting at the Art Museum of Gothenburg, to produce an expanded, moving understanding of "history painting". 

2013

von Rosen, Astrid (2013). "Den svettiga forskaren", Till vad nytta? En bok om humanioras möjligheter, edited by Tomas Forser and Thomas Karlsohn, Daidalos, Göteborg, 111-115. This a popular text on using the body, including sweating, as a research tool in dance and scenography explorations.  

von Rosen, Astrid (2013). "Accessing experiential knowledge through dancewriting", EKSIG 2013: Knowing Inside Out - experiential knowledge, expertise and connoisseurship, Loughborough University, UK. I experimented with a method for scenography oriented performance analysis, and choose to call it dancewriting, thus focussing on the body as co-creator of the scenographic event. 

2010

von Rosen, Astrid (2010), Knut Ströms scenografi och bildvärld. Visualisering i tid och rum, (doctoral thesis), Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis 32, Göteborg: Gothenburg University. Drawing on archival explorations in Sweden and Germany, I wrote my doctral thesis on Knut Ström (1887-1971), sometimes described as Sweden's first professional scenographer (even if the term was not used here until the late 1960's). This books covers a huge historiographical voide and provides a substantial basis for further scenographic work in a Swedish, Nordic and European context.

2008

von Rosen, Astrid (2008). Poul Kanneworff och modernismen på Stora teatern, Göteborgs stadsmuseum, Göteborg. Tryckt publikation, 167 s. Denna monografi skrev jag som doktorand i konst- och bildvetenskap. Monografin belyser en i svensk historieskrivning bortglömd scenograf. ISBN: 978-85488-96-4.