The Photo Notebooks: Władysław Hasior

Now and again, the e-flux mai list comes up with real nuggets of gold. One such arrived today, announcing an online archive, hosted by the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, of the Photo Notebooks by Polish artist Władysław Hasior. 

Having much in common with Aby Warburg's Mnemnsyne Atlas  and Gerhard Richter's Atlas, as well as countless other collections by artists and photographers, it is a fascinating collection of images and a mapping of what are often familiar themes or obsessions. The archive has been digitised from a collection of  20 000 35mm colour slides -  a considerable collection in the world of pre-digital images.

I will be spending time browsing the archive in coming days and noting confluences with my own image-gathering habits!

http://artmuseum.pl/en/archiwum/notatniki-fotograficzne-wladyslawa-hasiora/o-archiwum

Lossius & Welsh exhibit in Luftskipet (The Air Ship)

In the exhibition "Søkjer Heim"  (seeking a home) Trond Lossius & Jeremy Welsh are presenting a short video from their ongoing series The Atmospherics. The piece was made in 2014 as a tribute to composer Morten Eide Pedersen (1958 - 2014) with whom they had both collaborated many times during the past decade.

The video features sounds and images recorded in Hardanger in the early autumn of 2014. New iterations of The Atmospherics will be shown during 2016, at Heimdal Kunstforening (January-February) and at Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum, Førde (June - September)

The premise of the exhibition "Søkjer Heim" is that visitors to the show can apply to own one of the exhibited works, for free.

http://sokjerheim.weebly.com

https://www.facebook.com/events/1521703274807968/

WINDOWS

Windows: a small selection.

Music Without Borders at Forum for Artistic Research 2015

21 October - update of the photo gallery with a recent series of images from Surnadal.

Below:
Monday October 19th. at Kick Scene, Kristiansand. Live musicians: Kirsten Bråten Berg (vocal), Annbjørg Lien (Harding Fiddle), Bjørn Ole Rasch (Keyboard) Karl Oluf Wennerberg (drums) and musicians appearing in the video projection: Savy Ouch (vocal), Theara Yun (Cambodian violin) and Sigurd Brokke (jew's harp). This was the first live presentation of part of the Music Without Borders project, featuring video I recorded during sessions in August 2014 and March 2015 with musicians from Norway, Cambodia, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. 

Towards the end of the project period, video material will be compiled into a documentation film and there will be some form of installation, as well as further live concerts. The project was also introduced and discussed within the framework of the Forum for Artistic Research at the University of Agder, Kristiansand.

Vocal by Savy Ouch (video projection)

Vocal by Kirsten Bråten Berg and Harding Fiddle by Annbjørg Lien

Jew's harp by Sigurd Brokke (projection) and harding fiddle by Annbjørg Lien

Theara Yun playing traditional Cambodian fiddle (projection) and Annbjørg Lien, harding fiddle

Kirsten Braathen Berg (vocal), Annbjørg Lien (Harding Fiddle), Bjørn Ole Rasch (Keyboard) Karl Oluf Wennerberg (drums)

Sigurd Brokke, jew's harp (projection) and Annbjørg Lien, harding fiddle.

Music Without Borders

On Tuesday 20 October, at University of Agder, Kristiansand, myself, Bjørn Ole Rasch and Ingolv Haaland will be presenting work in progress from the artistic research project Music Without Borders, within the Artistic Research Forum. I am involved as a visual artist, with the ultimate aim to produce a video installation that utilises some of the audio-visual material generated during the project. At this point it is too early to say what the final result will actually be, but we have so far made recordings with some great musicians from Norway, Asia and The Middle East. The picture below is one of my favourites, mouth harp virtuosos extraordinaire Sigurd Brokke, from Setesdal in Norway. His new cd, simply called Munnharpe II, is a fantastic demonstration of just how much it is possible to get out of one of the world's most basic instruments. Inspiring! The music is also timeless - even though he is playing pieces that are in some cases quite ancient, they sound fresh and contemporary. If somebody played me this and told me it was newly composed music by a contemporary composer, I'd believe them!

Sebald Variations

The exhibition Sebald Variations at the Centre for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona, was one of the exhibition highlights of 2015 so far, and probably better than 90% of what is on show in Venice this year. On show until 26 July, it is definitely worth catching for anyone visiting Barcelona. Highlights include two excellent films by Guido van der Werve and Josiah McElheny, as well as photographs by Susan Hiller and materials from Seabed's own archives. There was not an exhibition catalogue as such, but a free newspaper with short texts by curator Jorge Carrion. There was also an extensive programme of lectures, readings, performances and other events, all of which had already taken place before I visited the exhibition.

The exhibition blog is well worth a visit:  http://kosmopolis.cccb.org/en/sebaldiana/

The Things

The Things is a new blog - a place for collecting images of things observed while walking in the city or the landscape. Discarded and displaced items. Surprise encounters.

Mirror wall

This mirror construction appeared suddenly in the atrium of Industribygget in Trondheim, which houses Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, as well as various architecture and media companies. It is very reminiscent of the  permanent wall installation by Lello & Arnell at Norges Handelshøyskolen in Bergen.

Another ghost sign....Scandic

1. since this absent sign was photographed in late April, all traces of it have vanished, so this might be the only record of its existence...

Scandic Hotel in Trondheim, formerly known as Rica Nidelven

Ghost signs?

An article from the Australian broadcasting company ABC, posted to Facebook by Alec Shepley, referred to "Ghost Sign Hunters" - i.e. photographers who document old, decayed signs on the facades of buildings. This seems to correspond to one of the categories of things I have documented over the years and it prompted me to go into my photo archive and investigate how many of these images I have actually collected. Quite a lot it seems. A more or less random selection below, some more ghostly than others, collected in Venice, Bergen, Stoke on Trent, Greenside, Novi Sad and Sydney, among others. Interesting that the article emanated from Australia, as it was there, both in Sydney and numerous other places, that I photographed a lot of old, decaying signs in 2008, 2009 and 2011. This also reminds me of an excellent book "Amsterdam In Letters: typography and architecture" by Maarten Helle, where he documents the typography on the facades of Amsterdam buildings.

Venezia

Bergen

Greenside

Bergen

Can not remember where!

Sydney

Novi Sad

Stoke on Trent

The Atmospherics

Documentation of recent installations in collaboration with Trond Lossius. Links below will connect to video documentation on Vimeo of three installations. The photo gallery has also been updated recently with a new series of images - (sub)urban discoveries, continued....

The Atmospherics part 3: Till it rains I'm gonna stay inside

The Atmospherics part 2: Flags, Flames, Smoke and Bridges

The Atmospherics part 1: The Place Sound Builds In Passing

The Atmospherics part 3: Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, January 2015

The Atmospherics part 2: Visiningsrom USF, Bergen, December 2014

The Atmospherics part 1: Galleri 3,14, Bergen, November 2014.