A hapless Scandinavian art student hung helplessly by her ankle in a Norwegian forest for 3.5 hours after a video artwork went terribly wrong.

The 26-year-old London-based artist Hilde Krohn Huse was unable to untie the rope from which she suspended herself, leaving her naked, stranded, and hanging upside-down. This comes at the heels of another naked performance by Milo Moiré gone wrong. The artist has been turned away at Art Basel and arrested in Paris for her performance.

“The video ends when the camera shuts off, but I was there calling for help for another 30 minutes,” she recalled. She told Norwegian daily VG, “I felt sick when I saw the video for the first time, I experienced everything anew. But I slept on it and realized that the video is quite decent.”

The artist was invited to participate in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition for the video.
Photo: Courtesy of Hilde Krohn Huse.

On the artist’s video page, she describes the project as a “breakdown between performance and reality,” adding that the video was “intended” by the performer as “being unable to free herself or [use] any visible means of help or escape.”

Suffering for her art ultimately paid off when Huse’s video was selected to be part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition, which showcases the work of 37 of the brightest art prospects graduating in the UK.

The Observer reported that Huse was eventually rescued by a friend who helped after she heard the artist’s call for help. She suffered only minor cuts on her ankle.