Jimmy Young – 2007

About This Project

Jimmy Young is a character who was created during three days by actor Torbjørn Davidsen and video artist Joachim Hamou in 1994.

With Hamou behind the camera and Davidsen dressed to the role of Jimmy, they embarked on a reverse educational trip which lasted for ten years. With fake press card they traveled via the Cannes Film Festival, to the Sufi spiritual head in Egypt, to beggars and rich people in New York, to lost Inuits and drunken soldiers in Greenland. Using film camera and microphone Jimmy attracted both young and old people, eager to expose themself, threw themself into his story.

When De Utvalgte moved Jimmy Young from the screen and onto the stage the audience was presented a story of an adventure seeker who has legitimized his unscrupulous way of life with a boundless artistic quest for a character authenticity. Wearing Jimmy’s shoes actor Torbjørn Davidsen staged spectacular situations in his own life without considering the actions’ consequences; when faced with unpleasantness he has always been able to move. But his luck did eventually end and life on camera began to reclaim.

Jimmy Young by De Utvalgte is a performance that challenges the relationship between fiction and reality.

The concept Jimmy Young had prior to the performance already resulted in two exhibitions (Copenhagen and Helsinki), a documentary on NRK and presentations of Jimmy’s first draft on the UKS Biennale.

De utvalgte would like to thank: Joachim Hamou, Ulla-Bella, Salvatore, Kanaliserer Monica, Smed Sven Syversen, Ingrid Lysgaard, Vilde, Leo og Eirik, Inger and Stein Davidsen, Maya Liu Bøckman, Kine Sørbøe, Ann-Iren Ødeby, Rolleif Østrem, Marianne Bratteli, Barry Kavanagh, Are Larsen, Per Platou, frk glans, Arnt Christian Teigen, NEC, Presentations Data, Videoutstyr Norge, Black Box Teater, and everyone who participated in Jimmy Young’s journey.

PRESS REVIEWS

– In meeting a performance like Jimmy Young, we are confronted with our own reluctance to take responsibility. We want to see something that is true, something real, yet we are not quite prepared to forego the security that comes with fiction. Jimmy Young challenges the spectator’s relationship with fiction and reality just as much as it challenges the actor’s relationship with it. We must choose between our hunger for the authentic, after real-life, and our safe corner on the edge of fiction. I’m still a little unsure of which parts of the show I choose to believe are fictitious, and which I then have to deal with as non-fictional, precisely because this has consequences for my own moral conscience.
Anette Therese Pettersen
Kunstkritikk.no

– The show makes me experience conceptual art as horror – nothing is anything more than what the thought makes possible – but it is in and of itself an example of highly skilled, conceptual or reflective performing arts, directed by Kari Holtan.
Therese Bjørneboe
The Norwegian Shakespeare and Theatre Journal