Spor og Rester - Traces and Remains

Visningsrom USF.  6 - 14 December 2014

12.00 - 17.00 daily. Closed Monday.

Bull.Miletic:  

Révolution Périphérique

Lossius & Welsh: 

The Atmospherics part Two (flags, flames, smoke and bridges)

Jeremy Welsh: 

Tracings

More documentation at jewelsh.

Spor og rester / Traces and Remains

EXHIBITION, VISNINGSROM USF, BERGEN
opening Friday 5 December 18.00
Exhibition dates 6 - 14 December, 12.00 - 17.00 daily except Monday

3 video and audio installations

Bull.Miletic - Revolution Peripherique. 2 channel video installation & 12" vinyl record)
Lossius & Welsh - The Atmospherics part 2 (flags, flames, smoke and bridges): 3 screen video and 16 channel sound installation
Jeremy Welsh - Tracings: HD video on LED monitor

This exhibition continues the close collaboration between all four artists, developed during the research project Re:place at Bergen Academy of Art & Design & Oslo National Academy of The Arts in 2012-2013.

Supported by: Norsk Kulturråd, Bergen Kommune, Billedkunstnernes vederlagsfond, BEK (Bergen senter for elektronisk kunst)

https://www.facebook.com/events/1404969026450928/?fref=ts

You are here....

Just rediscovered this review by Adrian Searle in The Guardian, of Jane and Louise Wilson's installation A Free and Anonymous Monument from 2003. It seems to say a lot about the issues we have worked with in the Re:place project.


   "You are here, the work says, but also elsewhere. The world may seem alienating, but it is the only one we have. Focusing on the local, the near, the unregarded, A Free and Anonymous Monument achieves a kind of universality. Hence, I guess, the title. One might link it with other recent works - such as Gabriel Orozco's reconstruction of Carlo Scarpa's crumbling, 1952 modernist architecture at the current Venice Biennale; or the recent film work of Steve McQueen and Tacita Dean. All, more or less, have been concerned with our sense of place, with the conditions we live in, and how places inhabit us and haunt us. These artists all use - but go beyond - documentary, and invest what they do with a sense of subjective history, and, just as importantly, a sense of what it means to be in the present, which is also the place where we meet the past. That's where we are."

The Place Sound Builds In Passing

Exhibition at Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen. Sound installation by Trond Lossius with video projections by Jeremy Welsh. On show from 4 - 9 November.

Colour in the City

Publicity photo from the exhibition

Colour in the City is an exhibition currently showing at Trondheim Kunstforening, featuring work by artists, designers and architects connected to the Light and Colour Group at NTNU, Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art. One aspect of the exhibition concerns the way that colour can determine our sense of place and can establish or underline the identity of a particular place and our responses to it. In the catalogue introduction, co-curator Alex Booker writes:

"Colour and materiality play an essential role in shaping our perception of place and identity, colour and material is information, it tells us stories about history, about identity, about territories and functions, about differentiation or belonging. Colour also informs us of the fluctuations of private and public economy and ideas iof social status over time. We absorb colour consciously and unconsciously into our narratives of place and its changing qualities in relation to weather and the seasons make it integral to our personal mythologies of locations and their atmosphere."

The exhibition includes photographic documentation of urban environments, plans and illustrations of architectural projects and public art commissions, and a number of individual artworks relevant to the theme. A large part of the exhibition is devoted to the city of Trondheim itself, and its changing colour characteristics. In addition to the informative catalogue, it would have been good to have a map or walking guide to enable visitors to go to the various sites that are documented in the exhibition. For my own part, I recognise many places, and will take an independent city tour. First I will make an iTunes playlist to accompany my tour. There are plenty of songs about colour and buildings, and first on the list is "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix!

Second floor gallery at Trondheim Kunstforening

Paintings by Jostein Kirkerud (left) and relief by Edith Lundbrekke (right)

Two reliefs by Edith Lundbrekke

Floor installation by Mette L'Orange

Autumn leaves provide a live element to the exhibition !

sonozones article in JAR

An article on the sonozones project has just been published in The Journal for Artistic Research.

sonozones was an artistic research project carried out in Mülheim an der Ruhr in the summer of 2013 in collaboration between Jan Schacher, Cathy van Eck, Kirsten Reese and Trond Lossius. This project also led to the film installation Muelheim an der Ruhr, August 2013 in collaboration between Trond Lossius and Jan Schacher, presented as part of the This must be the place exhibitions at KINOKINO Centre for Art and Film and Sandnes kunstforening in the fall 2013. A binaural (headphone) version of this work can be found here.

sonozones. sound art investigations in public places
by Jan Schacher, Cathy van Eck, Kirsten Reese, Trond Lossius

The ‘sonozones’ project investigates sound art practices in public places through personal and public acts of listening and sounding. The topic is explored using artistic processes developed on site in Mülheim in the Ruhr region of central Germany. Four sound art practitioners collaboratively explore ideas and concepts that question the significance and impact of listening and sounding in public places and suburban and urban spaces. The project collects traces and artefacts of the artistic processes as a basis for investigations into key elements of the individual and social dimensions of sound art. The exploration of forms sets the stage for experiments, interventions, and performative presences carried out on site by the artists. A continuous dialogue and the collection of verbal reflections frames these activities. In addition to texts, this exposition lays out a collection of audio recordings, photographs, and videos in order to document and convey sensory experiences as well as thoughts.

View article

Reykjavik, August 2014

Some wall paintings and shoes, Reykjavik, August 2014.

London Underground

Nice set of vintage photos from the London Underground on Time Out's website.

http://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/52-old-timey-photos-of-underground-life-by-bob-mazzer#.U5G2F-4opOw.twitter

Abandoned shopping malls

Reposted from Failed Architecture website and BUU.

"This blog post by BuzzFeed features some incredible imagery from redundant shopping centers in the United States. The series of photos reminds us of how quickly capital moves through space, temporarily settling in places where it offers the highest returns. Obviously resulting in the constant construction of, among others, new shopping malls, and leaving many of them to rot away. The post by BuzzFeed has been incredibly popular on social media over the last week, reaching an audience far beyond the small group of architecture geeks. Once again, this emphasises the widespread fascination with urban and architectural decay, which we have been discussing in another article recently. Most photos are sourced from the blogs Architectural Afterlife and Detroiturbex, which are both worth following as well."

As I'm preparing a piece in collaboration with Langham Research Centre for the Only Connect festival (Oslo 22 - 24 May) devoted to the influence and heritage of JG Ballard, this series of images comes at a very appropriate moment. I will also be visiting Tate Britain's "Ruin Lust" exhibition next week, and attending an artist talk there by Jane and Louise Wilson, whose projects have a distinctly Ballardian character.

Image from the Buzzfeed series

Image from the Buzzfeed series

And here is a sneak preview of some of the images I will use in the "Muffled Ciphers" performance in Oslo with Langham Research Centre. They will be projected as 35mm slides.

the face of the dead actress appeared in windows across the city....

we were entering a zone of permanent monitoring

a sign indicating the cancellation of the future

a lone pilot approached the lagoon in his seaplane

from a lookout point above the storage tanks, he could observe the final departure of the residents

for days he had wandered through empty pedestrian subways and abandoned car parks

Altered Route

Beautiful short film shot in an abandoned water park in the Mojave desert

http://www.wimp.com/alteredroute/

Without Waiting for Her Reply

by Apichaya Wanthiang

USF Visningsrommet, Bergen 4.-13. April 

In the dark of night we enter a sparsely lit space. A red hue emanates from the dark structure

that we are guided through. Looking in from the outside, it seems recognizable as a kind of
shed, its rough outlines contrasting against the slightly infernal light escaping from under the
roof. Once inside, the structure reveals its particular materiality: the corrugated iron plates
with their rusty patches that make up the roof, the worn timber, the lighting itself which
envelops the structure in a surreal half-light. This space is neither here nor there. It creates an
atmosphere that is at once intimate and stifling, recognizable and unfamiliar. Like the liminal
space in a ritual, it opens the way to transformation. During the three hours of Apichaya
Wanthiang’s nightly exhibition Without Waiting for Her Reply, work and beholder meet each
half way in order to establish a new, temporary community.

The structure, built together with Christian Stefanescu, is reminiscent of so-called rest houses 

that are frequently found in the landscape of a Thai rice field. It is an architectural form 

indigenous to the artist’s native country, yet its execution in the exhibition space also 

transcends this particular cultural reference. It provides the orientation for the visitors as they 

move through the installation, imposing certain movements and attitudes that might not be 

natural to them, but that belong to the life originally lived in these buildings. Images of this 

life can be seen upon first entering the installation. A video consisting of a sequence of still 

and contemplative images evokes the rhythm of daily life in the artist’s native community. 

We can see its inhabitants carry out their labors and perform their rituals, as well as its 

surrounding landscape. More than painting a mere picturesque image, the video works 

together with the rest of the installation to install a specific temporal experience. On the one 

hand, its slowness requires a level of engagement on the part of the viewer. On the other hand, 

it is part of a collection of elements, including the installation structure itself and the subtitles 

to the video that are consciously presented as fragments, discouraging a linear reading.

Text: Esther Tuypens (extract) 

Full text: Without Waiting for Her Reply

And documentation here: http://apichayawanthiang.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/without-waiting-for-her-reply-documentation/ 

BEK, Bergen Kommune and the Arts Council Norway generously supported this exhibition. Thanks to USF-visningsrommet, and the installation has been developed and realised in collaboration with Cristian Stefanescu, Sindre Sørensen, Roar Sletteland and BEK.

Art of the Edgelands

Symposium: Art of the Edgelands
Saturday 26 April

10.00am to 4.00pm, free, booking is essential via Eventbrite, book online here 

Venue: Exploration Lab 1, The Forum, University of Exeter, Stocker Rd, Exeter, Devon EX4 4SZ

This interdisciplinary symposium will consider the significance of ‘edgelands’ and other marginal spaces, neither urban nor rural, as sites for artistic inquiry, and as cultural spaces. Spacex’s current exhibition ‘Soft Estate’ (open until Saturday 3 May 2014) features artworks exploring the marginal spaces of contemporary motorway landscapes.

Defined as a type of terrain ‘apparently unplanned, certainly uncelebrated and largely incomprehensible’ by environmentalist Marion Shoard, ‘edgelands’ have frequently been a source of inspiration for artists and writers.

Symposium speakers include Edward Chell, academic and lead artist of Spacex’s current exhibition ‘Soft Estate’; Dr. Caitlan DeSilvey, geographer and senior lecturer in Environmental Social Science, University of Exeter; Laura Oldfield Ford, artist and psycho-geographer; Joanne Lee, artist, writer, publisher and senior lecturer in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University; Dr Jos Smith, associate research fellow, University of Exeter.

More information

The Roaring Twenties

Emily Thompson and Scott Mahoy has created a fascinating interactive mapping of the sounds of New York in the 1920s for the multimedia journal Vectors.

The sonic content at the heart of the journey consists of fifty-four unique excerpts of sound newsreel footage, Fox Movietone newsreels from 1926 through 1930. Fog horns, shouting peddlers, rumbling elevated trains, pounding riveters, and laughing children were all captured by the microphones and cameras of the Movietone men as they traversed the city searching for news.  Much of the footage deployed here was never edited into the published newsreels shown in motion picture theaters at that time, thus it is seen and heard on this website for the first time since those images and sounds were captured onto film.

Video documentation of Heaven Can Wait

Video from Bull.Miletic posted on Vimeo

In our life-long project Heaven Can Wait the revolving restaurant is treated as an optical device, where the attributes of elevation, enclosure and mechanical motion evoke a unique cinematic experience –– a cinéma trouvé. In the on-going process of documenting the 360-degree “moving” views from each revolving restaurant in the world, we have studied this unique architectural phenomenon through video, photo, collage and text since 2001. Specifically designed for KinoKino, 24 slowly revolving projections displayed a selection of 24 views in their original speed and direction, periodically overlapping and dissolving into each other to create new versions of natural and urban landscapes from above.

http://vimeo.com/75258238