about P I I A
PIIA or Pia Bjørgan (b.1990) is an interdisciplinary dance artist and photographer.
Her background combines various technique dance training (ballet, jazz, contemporary) and independent improvisation and exploration. She is influenced both by acting and photography which play active roles in her artistic process.
Identity, gender, sexual expression and romantic intimacy are themes that work as threads throughout Pia's artistic life.
Today Pia works alone, developing her practice (PIIA) in her hometown Hamar, Norway.
Learn more about:
Story
(Childhood/young adult years)
Dance and drama:
Pia's way of working is developed from a young age (ca.1998) greatly influenced by using dance as a vessel to help clarify her feelings and identity. This alongside dance classes and education throughout her childhood and teenage years. In her early 20's she also started exploring theatre and acting who later on became an active part of her artistic approach and process. In her more adult years learning how to think like an actor, combined with that of a dancer, has influenced her focus on movement as an isolated art form. Compared to the choice of following a more traditional direction as a dancer and/or actor, this in turn made her decide to explore both forms of performance on a more individual basis - and to become the independent dance artist she is today.
(2014 - present)
Influence: Photography and video:
Because of her interest in aesthetics, in 2014 Pia started studying photography at Bilder Nordic School of Photography in Oslo, Norway. There she learned the basics of photography and a new form of self-expression. She found early art photography as her preferred direction and finished the program the same year with her portfolio containing only artworks with mostly self-portraits and an exploration of female sexuality.
Present: Process
In later years and throughout her 20's she mostly used a phone camera to film herself dancing in her home - varying from bathrooms to kitchens and living rooms. Through exploring and observing herself in this way she developed her own language of movement and with it a process for improvisation. Now not only through her own inner experience but also simultaneously through the eye of the camera. This challenged her in a way of working mentally with movement as she learned to observe herself from the outside in a more direct and naked way than before. Film has therefore become a parallell element of exploration within her artistic process and development as a dance artist.
Her aim as a professional artist is to use acting, movement and video as active parts to an intellectual process equally important as to the performance itself.
example improvisation 2020
(for lyric video by artist Alex Soprano - "Captcha" )
