Ane Hjort Guttu

Ane Hjort Guttu (b. 1971) is an artist and filmmaker based in Oslo. She works in a variety of media but has in recent years mainly concentrated on film and video works, ranging from investigative documentary to poetic fiction. Among recurrent themes in her work are the relationship between freedom and power, economy and the public space, social change, and limits of action. Guttu is also a writer and curator, and she is a professor at the National Academy of the Arts, Oslo. An anthology of her written works was published in 2018. Her most recent project is the full feature film VOICE, to be released in 2022.

What I am working on now / current interests

I am currently interested in various acting techniques for amateur actors, fiction built around documentary and vice versa, photo novels, the Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal, Edvard Munch´s sun painting and how it can be interpreted, the Norwegian state´s sale of Victoria Terrasse, how housing has become synonym to investment within urban theories, Polish architect Oskar Hansen´s Open Form, Free University of Rojava and bell hooks´ pedagogical writings.

Pedagogical approach and expectations of students

In my teaching, I try to listen to and see the students and not to judge their artistic practice too quickly. I don´t have specific requirements as to how students should work, or with what. Rather, I try to explore what each student needs and wants and often spend some time with it.

My courses are different every year, depending on what I am working on. Recent courses are "Happy together" (collaboration with the cinematography students from Norwegian Film School), "Ghost in the Machine" (on alternative art educations and self-organized practices", "iPhones and Windows” (on recruitment and diversity politics).

I try to emphasize the fact that students' diverse backgrounds are a huge benefit for the school and have worked in recent years to explore ideas for a broader recruitment policy at KHIO.

Reg. group critique

Partaking in group crits is a skill that we all have to learn. It is a balance between being sharp and concentrated enough to suggest improvements and being sensitive and sensible enough to recognize good work.

The most important side to a group critique is to make people feel safe within the group. This takes time, courage, and effort from each student. If you don´t dare to expose your questions, insecurities, and anxieties around your own work to the group (anxieties, which every student and every artist have), you will not learn enough from the sessions. I do not mean that participants need to expose their personal secrets or fears, rather that they dare to expose the parts of the work which are most shaky, or where they feel that they are least in control. In many ways, a group crit functions like a group therapy session, it is, so to say, a therapy for the artistic practice.
I am strict about attendance and the need for students to participate, be on time, and contribute to the groups they are in. To commit to this risky situation, people need to feel that the listeners are interested, prepared, committed. You should prepare for group crits as if they were your projects; read texts that your fellow students send and try to become aware of what you need from them.