FREMDGEHEN- The performance

2003-

This is an ongoing project, activated everytime one enters country or leaves one. The owners of the passport are executing the performative work FREMDGEHEN as a protest against the treatment of the Norwegian women from WWII.

A number of passports are stamped with the german word FREMDGEHEN meaning unfaithful. Literarely it means to go to the foreign, (go= GEHEN / Foreign=FREMD) which is exactely what you do when you leave your country.

The first passport was my own, to show a sympathy for the women who were deported from Norway after having affairs with the enemy during the war. I have been living in Germany since 1998 and have got a lot of support from the government for doing so.

The women who have lived in germany since 1946 have applied the same norwegian government to get their passports back every year the last 60 years, but with negative response. Now they want to be burried in Norway, also negative…

The artist own passport was displayed in the exhibition Southbound in Berlin 2003.