12/31/14

2015 calendar by Dan Mihaltianu

2015 calendar by Dan Mihaltianu, with photographs of the former STASI archives in East Berlin. In 2015 it is 25 years since the collapse of the DDR.



12/6/14

Spor og Rester / Traces and Remains (part 2)

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

Révolution Périphérique (2010) consists of two video recordings made on the circular motorway surrounding Paris, one recorded in each direction (clockwise and counter clockwise). The piece continues Bull.Miletic’s exploration of the cinematics of the mobile gaze, a theme they have developed through many collaborative works. They use the term “Cinéma Trouvé” to describe their working process - whereby they use existing systems such as the automobile, subway train, elevator, revolving restaurant, etc, to “animate” the gaze of the camera.  As in the work of many French auteurs and film theorists, they are interested in the dispositif - the apparatus and mode of production that is intrinsic to their aesthetic and to the construction of meaning in their work. The two-screen video is accompanied by a 12” vinyl record whose grooves are concentric loops rather than spirals. Once it starts playing, the record player’s needle is stuck in the same groove, circulating endlessly and at the same time moving toward entropy as dust accumulates and the vinyl is progressively worn away.







The Atmospherics (2014) is an ongoing collaborative project by Trond Lossius and Jeremy Welsh, based on field recordings made with surround sound and HD video. The first iteration of the project was exhibited at 3,14 in Bergen in November, under the title “The Place Sound Builds In Passing”, where the exhibition included live improvisations inside the installation by musicians from the ensemble Bergen Barokk. During summer and autumn 2014, Lossius and Welsh have made recordings in Sogn & Fjordane, Hardanger, Nordhordaland, Bergen Vest and Sotra. Elements of audio and video from these locations are combined within the installation, which does not aim to be a literal depiction of a given place, but rather constitutes an exploration of the abstraction of  a “sense of place” through juxtaposition, distancing and the manipulation of ambience or atmosphere. The project has been supported by Bergen Kommune, Norsk Kulturråd, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond and BEK (Bergen Senter for Elektroniske Kunst)









Tracings (2013) was realised within two parallel research projects at Bergen Academy of Art & Design: Re:place and Topographies of The Obsolete. and was first shown in the exhibition “This Must Be The Place” at Kino Kino, Sandnes, in October 2013. The material was recorded at the site of the former Spode ceramics factory in Stoke on Trent, England. Imagery was collected in various parts of the factory complex. The material that was finally used in “Tracings” was recorded in one of the oldest mould stores at the site - a building containing plaster block moulds which were the “originals” for many of the company’s renowned products. The objects are steeped in history and resonate with accumulated knowledge and memories - but at the same time are dormant or suspended in time. Layers of dust, mould spores growing on the moulds themselves, partly discernible inscriptions on the surfaces of the objects - all of these are traces from which one might construct a narrative around the disappearing history of this site and its former production. 



Tracings and Révolution Périphérique




12/1/14

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)

The Place Sound Builds In Passing (2014) Trond Lossius & Jeremy Welsh at Galleri 3,14 Bergen
(part one of The Atmospherics)

11/19/14

Material Memory: The Post Industrial Landscape as Site for Creative Practice.

Here are a few images from the Material Memory conference, held at Newcastle University on Friday 14 November. The conference programme covered a range of different ways in which the post-industrial environment can be a site for artistic research, intervention and reinterpretation. Speakers represented a broad range of disciplines including contemporary art, geography, architecture and landscape architecture, art history and music. A publication and online documentation will be produced in coming months.

Jane and Louise Wilson - keynote speech

Jane and Louise Wilson - The Toxic Camera

Anne Helen Mydland - Topographies of The Obsolete

Rowland Byass - on in-between spaces and weeds in Berlin

And the city itself.... several bridges over the Tyne

Matters for reflection.....

11/11/14

The Place Sound Builds In Passing

Installation with Trond Lossius at Stiftelsen 3,14 in Bergen, 4 - 9 November 2014.  16 channels of sound and 3 HD video projections. The material presented comes from our ongoing project "The Atmospherics; River Deep, Mountain High" and features sound and video recorded in Sogn & Fjordane and Hardanger, during summer and autumn 2014.

The next iteration of the project will be an installation at Visningsrom USF in Bergen from 5 - 14 December.











10/24/14

Vegard Vindenes - art for Norges Handelshøyskole, Berge

On 23 October the final instalment of commissioned artwork for NHH (The Norwegian School of Economics), for which I have been a consultant, was installed. Bergen-based painter Vegard Vindenes installed two works in corridor areas, adding to projects realised earlier by Lello & Arnell, Anders Sletvoll Moe and Kurt Johannessen.

Vegard's highly coloured, geometric paintings add focal points to areas that are otherwise simply places to pass by on the way to somewhere else. Building on earlier figurative works, that were often paintings of three dimensional models for fictitious architecture, Vegard Vindenes has developed a visual language that combines an intense use of colour with an intricate and precise use of construction in works that are assembled from multiple individual painted surfaces.

Vegard Vindenes together with architect Anne Russel Bothun

Work installed in a corridor linking the old and new buildings

The piece is assembled from many individual parts

A series of six pieces for a corridor in the new building






10/21/14

Upcoming events, November - December 2014.

November and December this year promise to be rather hectic, with several different presentations scheduled.

From 4 - 9 November at Galleri 3,14, Bergen, Trond Lossius and I will be presenting an installation as work-in-progress, from our current ongoing project The Atmospherics (River Deep, Mountain High). The exhibition is entitled "The Place Sound Builds in Passing". On 14th. November I will be making a presentation entitled "Fumbling in The Debris" for the conference Material Memory at the University of Newcastle. On 25th. November at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival I will be joining Langham Research Centre for a performance of our recent collaborative work Muffled Cyphers, recently performed at Dokkhuset in Trondheim. Finally, from December 5th - 14th. I am staging an exhibition entitled "Spor og Rester" (Traces and Remains) at Visningsrom USF in Bergen. The show will include an installation "Peripherique" by Bull. Miletic, a new version of my 2013 video work "Tracings", based on recordings made in the former Spode ceramics factory in Stoke on Trent, and a second iteration of the collaborative installation with Trond Lossius from the ongoing project The Atmospherics, which continues through 2015.


Hardanger Fjord, Lofthus, September 2014

Odda, Hardanger, September 2014

Rong, Sotra, Hordaland, October 2014

Derelict wave power facility, Toft, Sotra, Hordaland, October 2014

Tyssedal, Hardanger, September 2014

10/16/14

images, sounds, words

Seminar at Dokkhuset, Trondheim on 15th. October, with presentations by Daniela Cascella, Scott Rettberg and Heli Rekula, and a concert by Langham Research Centre. Seminar presentations and concert all investigated different interrelationships and configurations of the connections between images, sounds and words.


Daniela Cascella
Daniela Cascella read excerpts from her forthcoming book, interspersed with film clips and short sound pieces. She will develop further her inquiries into writing sound in a project she has curated for Lydgalleriet (The Sound Gallery) in Bergen in November.


Scott Rettberg
Scott Rettberg showed a series of projects he has realised in collaboration with film maker Roderick Coover and poet Nick Montford, and he demonstrated a VR project developed recently in a Cave II facility at the University of Chicago. The piece is based on a research project where US military personnel who have been involved in abuse of prisoners in Iraq give their personal testimonies and accounts. The accounts have been edited, scripted and performed by voice actors, to distance them from the interview subjects.


Heli Rekula
Heli Rekula presented her recent exhibition project In Hemingway's Garden, which has been exhibited in Norway, Denmark and Finland, and she read extracts from her newly published book on the same subject.

Video documentation of the lectures and the concert will soon be posted online at the Trondheim Academy of Art website.


Langham Research Centre
Langham Research Centre performed "Muffled Cyphers" an electronic composition with slide projections by Jeremy Welsh.  The piece was initially made for and premiered at the Only Connect Festival of Sound in Oslo, May 2014. The festival was devoted to the influence of JG Ballard's writing, and featured musicians, artists, writers and others who had responded to Ballard's work.  Muffled Cyphers is based on responses to Ballard's 1970 novel The Atrocity Exhibition.

The score for Muffled Cyphers

9/3/14

A walk in Bergen, August 2014

Items observed while walking from Møhlenpris via Nygårdsgaten to the centre of Bergen one day in August 2014. Some art is very intentional, some less so.....