KALASA (2011) is a drama-based sound installation developed from Jon Fosse’s play Sa ka la. Using my own reading of the text combined with acoustic sound environments, the work translates the play’s parallel spaces—a birthday celebration and a hospital ward—into a spatial installation addressing language, fragmentation, and the tension between festivity and mortality.
Sa ka la unfolds across two parallel spaces: a birthday celebration prepared for “Mother,” the central figure of the drama, and a hospital ward where she arrives after suffering a stroke on the same day. While the celebration gathers family members and interconnected relationships shaped by Mother over time, the hospital space is marked by bodily vulnerability and the fragmentation of language. Mother is only able to utter short syllables, among them the phrase “sa ka la,” which gives the play its title.
The installation translated these dual spatial and narrative structures into a sonic and material configuration, where voice, repetition, and acoustic environments articulated the tension between festivity and loss, presence and absence. By displacing the dramatic text from theatrical representation into a spatialized sound installation, KALASA explores spatial configurations and sonic relations as they fragment, endure, and resonate during moments of change.
Here you can see a short example from how the room was experienced.