High Heel Sisters
Screaming Mountain
The High Heel Sisters (2002-2007 Scandinavia) were an artists’ collective comprised of Malin Arnell, Line Karlsröm, Anna Linder and Karianne Stensland, and existed from 2002 to 2007. Its starting point was, in their own words, ‘their shared yet varying experiences of physical attributes of height (minimum 178 cm), shoe size (minimum 41) and age (minimum 30yrs)’. “We work with poetic politics! It is not about right or wrong. For us it is about power; to have or to not have access to the privileges that determine our position in society. Our possibilities [are] to act within and to interact with the system that sets the limits for the change we wish to make possible.”
Screaming Mountain was the High Heel Sisters’ final performance. It started inside the exhibition space Den Frie Udstillingsbygning in Copenhagen and ended outside of it. In the beginning, they climbed into their installation made with tarps, duct tape, ropes and three step ladders; they performed screams, which were transmitted into the street using large loud speakers; at the end, they buried the red high heel shoes that they wore throughout the performance under the paving stones and placed a memorial sign into the ground, that read “Perhaps we wanted to wear high heels just to get closer to the sky“. The video Scream featured in the installation. JE
Courtesy High Heel Sisters