Artist Stina Fors operates a brown-haired ventriloquist dummy, also dressed in white, at a microphone stand. The person’s arm gestures forward, guiding the puppet’s hand to point as they perform together against a plain white background.

Stina Fors Residency

Performance artist, drummer and choreographer Stina Fors (b. 1989, Sweden) was in residence at Studio Voltaire in February 2026, awarded as part of the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance, hosted by Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna, Austria.

Fors creates works that move between dance, theatre, and music – infused with tension, humour and raw energy, often treating her works as one evolving piece, reworking material to fit each context. As Stina Force, her one-woman punk band, she merges drumming and singing into spontaneous, nerve-seeking performances. In previous works, the artist explored the boundaries of body and voice through ventriloquism and distorted howls. 

At Studio Voltaire, Fors adapted her durational work, Answer me Pythia, first performed in 2025 at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, into a new, shorter format live performance.

Answer me, Pythia emerged through Fors’ research into the ancient Greek figure of the Pythia, or oracle of Delphi, the fabled reigning priestess at the Temple of Apollo. The artist has explored the figure’s role as a soothsayer, answering questions about fate and destiny with riddles that require those asking to look within themselves to find the truth.

Fors has re-imagined this myth, bringing together classical source material with contemporary references, including call-centre agents and life coaches, to transform the performance space into a temporary site of divination. Using her voice, body, and a purpose-made ventriloquist’s dummy, the artist brings a raw, often absurd style to examine why we continue to be drawn to figures who claim to know our destiny.  

  1. Stina Fors (b. 1989, Sweden) is a performance artist, drummer, and choreographer. In 2024, Fors performed at the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and in the Austrian Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale. Fors’ work has been presented at TQW, Vienna (2025), brut Wien, Vienna (2025, 2022), Wiener Festwochen, Vienna (2020, 2018), La Ménagerie de Verre, Paris (2024), Short Theater, Rome (2024), Centrale Fies, Trento (2020), MDT, Stockholm (2025, 2023), Inkonst, Malmö (2025), La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2022), CA2M, Madrid (2023), STUK, Leuven (2022), and Campo, Ghent (2020), among others. Fors also teaches voice techniques and is trained in choreography at SNDO in Amsterdam.

  2. Since 2007, the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance has been a fixed date on the calendar of Kunstraum Niederoesterreich. It is the only award in the field of contemporary art in Austria that is exclusively dedicated to performance. Winners of the H13 Prize in the past years include Katharina Ernst (2024), Rehema Chachage (2023), Elisabeth Kihlström and Alexander Martinz (2022), Sara Lanner (2021), and Julischka Stengele (2020).

  3. Kunstraum Niederoesterreich and Stina Fors © eSeL.at. Credit Robert Putenau

Stina Fors stares blankly at the camera. Their mouth is open, revealing multiple realistic-looking tongue models stacked inside, creating a surreal and unsettling effect. The background is plain and white.

Stina Fors in conversation with Rosalie Doubal

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Stina Fors sits on the floor against a white wall, legs spread wide. In front of them are two ventriloquist dummies with exaggerated smiles, dressed in white tops and dark trousers, positioned to mimic the person’s seated posture.

Performance: Answer me, Pythia
Stina Fors

Event