Issue 042

October 2008

Kjetil Kausland has always been on the outside of the cage as a photographer of MMA, but the Norwegian artist took the concept of ‘suffering for one’s art’ to a new level as part of an ambitious project that tested not only his personal fortitude, but also the law.

Standing 6’3” and weighing over 95kg, Kjetil Kausland isn’t the average person’s idea of what an artist should be. The well-travelled Norwegian father of one (a former bouncer at a death metal bar who spent much of his young adulthood sailing around the world) is firmly at odds with the traditional notion of the delicate, creative type. 

This hasn’t stopped Kausland from rising through the ranks of the Norwegian contemporary arts scene to become one of their most outstanding young photographers. His studies of MMA fighters have graced the walls of galleries throughout the country, and his work sits everywhere from living rooms to lawyer’s offices.  

His thoughtful portraits and abstract images were born from a desire to capture the essence and emotion of combat, but it was not simply by choice that he had to travel abroad to seek out his subjects. Professional MMA is illegal in the tightly-regulated country of Norway, where even high-caffeine drinks like Red Bull are banned.  

Earlier this year Kausland changed the parameters of his ongoing project. Until now he had been glued to the back of his camera, but he wanted to do something different. “Basically I was fed up with being on the outside of the cage, watching all these guys fight while being a kind of voyeur,” he says. “I got fed up and just wanted to flip everything upside down. I wanted to experience what they experience and feel what they feel.”  

He travelled to Sweden in late 2007 to compete in an amateur fight (that he won by first-round submission: “It was mental preparation for this fight. It was a really nice experience. It was almost like a hard sparring match”). But simply entering the cage wasn’t enough for Kausland. He wanted to do so in his home country although, with the small matter of the law to contend with, he had to take a different tack to pull it off.  

“What I did was to partner up with a theatre in Bergen that do avant-garde theatre and experimental stuff. I designed this fight as an arts performance. I can do it as I can point to the five years where I’ve worked with MMA in my arts practice. I have a Masters in Arts from the National College in Bergen. If I was an ordinary Joe, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, even if I had called it an arts performance. They would have called it bullshit and stopped me. It’s not like I have found a hole in the law, unfortunately. I even got funding from the government for this project, to do something that is technically illegal!”  

Kjetil enlisted the help of some contacts from the European scene, obtaining a full-size cage from Sweden and even finding a legitimate opponent for his fight, professional light heavyweight Martin Wojcik. With top Norwegian grappler and MMA fighter Jon Olav Einemo acting as referee and Jakob Løvstad in his corner, Kjetil would square off against the former Swedish judo team member in a real fight under UFC rules (minus elbow strikes).  

Opening the doors to a sell-out crowd the show started with entrance music and went straight into their fight, which was a back and fore stand-up battle that came to a conclusion in the second round when Wojcik won by TKO. As Kjetil said, he wanted “to experience what they experience and feel what they feel,” and he got that in plenty. A cracked cheekbone and an injured thumb that still requires surgery months later are his souvenirs, but aside from a few temporary aches and pains, the lasting effect of the fight is in the minds of those who witness the event.  

“I’ve spoken with people ranging from politicians to ordinary city officials, to all kinds of people, that highly enjoyed the event. The peculiar thing about this event was the mixture of people. You had a strange mixture of casual MMA fans and curious people off the street – you also had the artists, the theatre crowd, and you had the city officials. It was a really good ambiance. This event made a lot of powerful people go to see an MMA fight, and will hopefully open eyes. I’m not able to do this by just this event, but I sincerely hope this is part of a longer process of getting this sport recognised and legalised in Norway. It’s going to be a long fight.  

“I’m not able to articulate it properly, but I have twice the respect for pro MMA fighters than before. Ordinary people don’t have a clue.”