TORI WRÅNES

By Magnus Edensvard

Tori Wrånes (b. 1978, Kristiansand, Norway) is a transdisciplinary artist who blends sound, performance, sculpture, and installation to create immersive, dreamlike experiences. Her work dissolves boundaries between fantasy and reality, inviting audiences into surreal worlds where characters and choreographed performances take on a life of their own.

We reconnected from her native Oslo, where Tori is preparing for the 2025 Festival Show at Bergen Kunsthall. This prestigious museum will host a major exhibition next spring, for which Tori intends to transform the space into a giant seafaring vessel, or so she whispered, as if confiding just a small part of a much longer story.

We began our conversation by looking back at Tori’s early experience as a lead vocalist in a rock band, and how that influenced her unique approach to becoming the performance artist she is today. She discussed how sound becomes a physical presence as it interacts acoustically with space and architecture, as well as how her performances have been staged in remarkably diverse environments—from hanging from the top of a crane over the harbor of Oslo to underwater worlds off the coast of Thailand—often incorporating elements beyond her control, resulting in spontaneous and transformative moments.

By pushing against constraints and challenging the normative values under which many of us live, our conversation was continually fueled by Tori’s palpable optimism and gratitude for being able to practice and perform her ideas as an artist in today’s deeply fraught and challenging times.

MAGNUS EDENSVARD: How did your experience as a musician in a touring rock band evolve into what you’re doing now as a performance artist?

TORI WRÅNES: It was a huge part of my development. The voice was always my main instrument, and that shaped how I think about sound and performance today. When I started at the Art Academy, I found freedom in improvising performances. It all began by accident one evening when I threw a gigantic scarf around my head and started singing wildly on stage. I had somehow found a way to express something raw and unfiltered. Later, when I started to add more masks and blindfolds, I realized I could go even deeper. These elements allowed me to distance myself from my own image, which was strangely freeing. I could connect with the audience on a different level, beyond the limitations of my own physical presence.

ME: That’s fascinating—this idea of creating a different self and sense of self at the same time, through performance. Your work seems to take place in surreal, dreamlike, and often absurd settings. Has this freedom, to create new identities through performance art, helped you inhabit these worlds?

TW: Definitely. It’s like entering another realm, a dreamlike space that feels more honest than the everyday world. In these performances, I can create characters that aren’t bound by the usual rules—whether they’re trolls, sea creatures, or some other fantastical being. It’s an adventure into a different space that exists outside societal norms. What I find most interesting is how this transformation affects the audience. There’s something magical that happens as people engage in a way that allows the experience to take on a life of its own, sometimes way beyond my control.

ME: Speaking of unusual spaces, you’ve performed in some incredible environments, like underwater and in forests. What’s it like using your voice in these different elements, and how do they affect your performances?

TW: I see sound as something physical, something you can almost touch. Each environment has its own texture that interacts with sound in unique ways. For example, when I put down the cornerstone for the new National Museum in Oslo, I was lifted into the air by a crane while singing. My voice sketched the architecture of the museum to come, as the clock tower chimed. When I landed on the ground, all the boats in the harbor began sounding their horns. I wanted the museum to shake hands with its new neighbor in a humble way. In Bolzano, Italy, I had musicians and the audience in a chairlift, and suddenly cowbells worn by a herd of grass-grazing cows below started to clang. It felt like the environment itself was responding to my performance. Another example is performing underwater in the winter. The sound changes completely when you’re submerged—it disappears or becomes something entirely different. The audience was watching from a platform on the surface of the sea, looking down into the water with binoculars. We weren’t connected by the same sounds, which created this strange brain trick. I even installed a light chamber underwater to illuminate the seabed. At one point, the Northern Lights appeared in the sky over the sea, and it synced with the lights I had set up beneath the water. It was magical and again, strange coincidences that no one predicted started to play out.

ME: You call on fantasy to support many of your works. Do your performances offer an escape for both you and your audience?

TW: In society, everything has to fit into boxes, like age, gender, profession. But in the world of performances, those categorizations don’t hold up. My characters aren’t bound by those labels. They exist in a space where they can just be as well as grow, without explanation or justification. But it’s also about personal expression. Creating these creatures allows me to explore parts of myself that might not come out in everyday life. It’s freeing to create a world where those restrictions don’t apply, and I think we all need that, especially now.