Rose Hammer, are, in no particular order: Kim Svensson, Emilie Birkeland, Élise Guerrier, Alma Braun, Mattias Hellberg, Niels Munk Plum, Arely Amaut Gomez Sanchez, Emil Andersson, Alessandro Marchi, Stacey de Voe, Nora Joung, Victoria Durnak, Sara Hermansson, Sahar Seyedian, Qi Tan, Ole-Petter Arneberg, Per-Oskar Leu, Helle Lindskog, and Dora García, and also includes the generous and gifted collaboration of graphic designer Alex Gifreu, scenographer Shiva Sherveh and theatre experts Samir Kandil, Jakob Tamm, and composer Jan Mech.
Rose Hammer is a trans-gendered multi-coloured internazionale femme fatale.
We share an interest in: dialectical materialism, agit-prop theatre, classical theatre, Golden-era Hollywood productions, French film noir, turn-of-the-century literature, “Entartete Kunst”, histories of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, and Bertolt Brecht.
Rose Hammer is the author of the work: a collective persona made of a variable group of individuals. The name “Rose Hammer” may, though not exclusively, refer to a) the hammer inscribed on Henrik Ibsen’s grave monument in Oslo b) the former emblem of the Norwegian labour movement c) the famous quote attributed to Brecht “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” d) the rose symbol which became popular among socialist and social democratic political parties in post-World War II Western Europe.
So we are socialists, we are agit prop, we are Brechtians, we go for the dialectical, didactic, and collective turn. We go for formal experimentation meeting radicalism in thought.
Rose Hammer 