E39 fra kunst til folk.

Currently showing The Atmospherics 12 (Standing in the shadows) in E39 fra kunst til folk at Surnadal Billag. From 6 - 28 August.

2022 - half year summary

July 2022, currently in pause mode, looking back at projects that have been produced and exhibited so far this year. The first months were quite productive with a variety of collaborative productions presented at several different venues.

January: audio visual concerts with Michael Francis Duch at Inderøy Kulturhus and Dokkhuset, Trondheim. Premieres of new pieces composed by Lene Grenager and Mads Gustafsson. The headlining piece in the programme was Grenager's Reconstruction V, a 28 minute piece for live double bass, recorded sound and video projection.

Reconstruction V

Composition by Mads Gustafsson for two double basses, turntables and vinyl records

March: a screening of The Atmospherics 11, with Trond Lossius, at WRAP, Bergen. 

March: opening of the exhibition Infinitesimal Gradations that I guest curated for Atelier Nord, Oslo, with works by Hasan Daragmeh, Kaia Hugin and Magdalena Manderlova with Kristoffer Lislegaard.

Panoramic video installation by Hasan Daragmeh

Video installation by Hasan Daragmeh and sound work / listening station by Magdalena Manderlova

Film projection & installation by Kaia Hugin

Concert by Magdalena Manderlova and Kristoffer Lislegaard

April: closing event of the exhibition at Atelier Nord with a second concert by Magdalena Manderlova and Kristoffer Lislegaard, launch of Manderlova's sound work Straw Bales on the Breton Cassette tape label, and screening / artist conversation with Kaia Hugin and Jeremy Welsh.

May: Recording video and audio with Trond Lossius in Gudbrandsdal for a new work in The Atmospherics series, to be shown in the summer exhibition at the Centre for Ceramic Art at Ringebu.

May: Exhibition at Surnadal Kulturhus with Jon Arne Mogstad, for Varsög festival 2022, and a four screen video work as a permanent installation at Surnadal Middle School,.

Paintings by Jon Arne Mogstad and video projection by Jeremy Welsh & Trond Lossius

TMTR 3 (Take Me To The River) video on 4 screen matrix

June: The  Atmospherics 12, video by Jeremy Welsh and sound by Trond Lossius, showing at the Centre for Ceramic Art Ringebu from June to September.

Video projection on free-standing screen

Video projection with sculptures by Torbjørn Kvasbø in the foreground

June: concert and screening at Trondheim Cinematek as part of Meta.Morf biennale of art and technology, 2022. Screening programme "Screens revived and revisited" featuring Ivar Smedstad; Inger Lise Hansen; Vibeke Jensen; Kaia Hugin; Øivind Brandstegg with Piya Wanthiang, Tijs Ham and Jeremy Welsh. Concert; Reconstruction V composed by Lene Grenager, live double bass Michael Francis Duch with projections by Jeremy Welsh.

July; photo fram a visit to Aros Museum, Aarhus. Reflections in an installation by Elmgreen and Dragseth. A father/son selfie.

Next exhibition upcoming in August, followed by some months of preparation and pre-production in the autumn for scheduled projects in 2023.

The Atmospherics 12, Senter for Keramisk Kunst, Ringebu.

 

The Atmospherics 12

Dato 5.juni –  11.september 2022 Sted Kjøringa Trond Lossius & Jeremy Welsh

Siden 2014 har Trond Lossius og Jeremy Welsh arbeidet sammen med prosjektet The Atmospherics, som har vært presentert i en rekke utstillinger, festivaler og visninger. Tidligere versjoner har vært basert på feltopptak fra Vestlandet, Trøndelag og Lofoten. Til installasjonen ved Ringebu blir det gjort opptak i området rundt Gudbrandsdalen, og dette blir første gang metodene i prosjektet møter landskap og omgivelser fra denne delen av Norge. Ved å fange opp ulike aspekter av et gitt sted i lyd og bilde, og ved å bearbeide og kombinere ulike opptak, skaper vi et temporært sted i form av en installasjon. Selv om arbeidet refererer til stedene som opptakene kommer fra, er ikke dette et dokumentarisk prosjekt. Vi tar friheten til å “gjenskape” stedet i måten vi redigerer og bearbeider materialene. For betrakteren ønsker vi å skape et rom for refleksjon og opplevelse. At det kan ligge vesentlige temaer om miljø, natur, økologi innbakt i lyd og bilde er noe vi er oppmerksomme på, men velger ikke å tvinge på betrakteren.   Prosjektet er støttet av Fond for lyd og bilde og Den norske filmskolen, Høgskolen i Innlandet

Infinitesimal Gradations: Kaia Hugin, Magdaléna Manderlová, Hasan Daragmeh. Curated by Jeremy Welsh.

The exhibition Infinitesimal Gradations opened at Atelier Nord on Thursday 3 March with works by Kaia Hugin, Hasan Daragmeh and Magdaléna Manderlová. During the opening there was a concert by Magdaléna Manderlová and Kristoffer Lislegaard.  A planned artist talk with Kaia Hugin was postponed until later in the exhibition period. The exhibition consists of a new film (Motholic Mobble part 11) by Kaia Hugin; Timescape No. 7 (wide eyes) a 3 screen digital video work by Hasan Daragmeh; Straw Bales, a performance and sound work by Magdaléna Manderlová. On Thursday 31 March there will be a new concert and the launch of a  release by Magdaléna Manderlová on Breton Cassettes.

Hasan Daragmeh; Timescape No. 7

Kaia Hugin; Motholic Mobble part 11

Magdaléna Manderlová & Kristoffer Lislegaard; Straw Bales, concert version.

 

2022 / 2

The second project in 2022 is the exhibition Infinitesimal Gradations at Atelier Nord, Oslo, curated by Jeremy Welsh and featuring works by Hasan Daragmeh, Kaia Hugin and Magdaléna Manderlová. The exhibition opens on Thursday 3. March in Atelier Nord's gallery at Olaf Rye's Plass in Grünerløkka, Oslo. 

During the opening Magdaléna Manderlová will perform her sound & text work "Straw Bales" accompanied by electronic musician Kristoffer Lislegård. 

Magdalena Manderlova performing Straw Bales

On Saturday 5 March there will be a gallery talk with curator Jeremy Welsh and video/film artist Kaia Hugin, discussing her film series Motholic Mobbles -  (2008 - 2022).

Kaia Hugin, still from Motholic Mobble part 11

Hasan Daragmeh shows a new digital work Timescape No. 7 (Wide Eyes), displayed over several flat screens.

Hasan Daragmeh  still image from Timescape No. 7

2022 / 1

The first project in 2022 was the live music & film concert Reconstruction V, at Inderøy Kulturhus and Dokkhuset, Trondheim, on 26 and 27 January. The piece was composed by Lene Grenager and performed on double bass by Michael Francis Duch. The projections were based on video recordings and photographs of machinery from textile industries. The composition has three parts - a soundtrack of machine sounds that runs through the whole piece, a score for live double bass and a digital film to be projected behind the performer.

Reconstruction V is scheduled for two more performances. First at Kafé Hærverk in Oslo on March 5th. and at Trondheim Cinematek as part of the 2022 edition of Meta.Morf biennale for art and technology on June 17th.

Michael Francis Duch performing at Dokkhuset, Trondheim, 27 January

DECEMBER 2021

After a month of inactivity on this blog it is time to reactivate. Maybe because the world seems to be closing in again and Covid is reinventing itself from season to season. 

Reading is one of the things that I have used most time on in 2021. I keep finding more books and new authors who are oriented to themes to which I return continually. Things that feed into whatever I am (trying to) work with myself.

Craig Wells: Emergent Ears

Emergent Ears is a little book published as part of Craig Wells' Phd submission at the Dept. Art, Design and Music at the University of Bergen. The book was accompanied by a double LP of new music released under the artist name Vonrik Haug (Three other albums are released online through Apple Music). The album and book were launched at the opening of his excellent exhibition at Lydgalleriet, Bergen - an immersive, multi channel installation with sound  that combined field recordings and digital synthesis. Craig joins the growing cohort of sound-writers whose work makes an essential contribution to sound studies and the expanding field of sound art. Craig and Lydgalleriet are also publishers of a small series of booklets in the Blue Rinse series, related to a concert programme of the same name. Two of these feature texts by artists I have been collaborating with in 2021, Tijs Ham and Magdalena Manderlova, and others in the series are by Alexander Rishaug, Andrea Parkins, Francisvo Lopez and Craig Wells himself. Well worth checking these out, contact Lydgalleriet to get them!

Blue Rinse publications: Tijs Ham and Magdalena Manderlova

Among others whose books I have recently enojoyed are Kate Zambreno, Moyra Davey and Terju Cole, all of whom address themes that chime with my artistic and academic interests. Drifts by Zambreno and Index Cards by Davey both return repeatedly to questions around photography, memory and writing and often cite Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, WG Sebald, Chantal Ackerman, Chris Marker and Rainer Maria Rilke. Teju Cole's new essay collection Black Paper is a timely publication, combining analysis of today's global social-political situations with a deeper historical gaze, including a text on Carravaggio which is one of the finest pieces of art historical writing I have encountered.

Photographer/filmmaker Moyra Davey and novelist Kate Zambreno address similar themes

In one of his essays in Black Paper, Cole discusses painting in a way that I find engaging and insightful.

The following quote would quite well describe my own relationship to (contemporary) painting and seems to me to be a description of the practice of my colleague Jon Arne Mogstad, a painter with a deep knowledge of tradition and the will to reinvent continuously.

    " I am drawn to painters who are in a proper present tense, painters who have a well-calibrated relationship with what painting has been, who manifest what painting is, and allow for what painting could come to be. Such artists are convincingly contemporary, their practices and gestures confirming their inheritance of the lineage. As custodians of the history of painting, they know their place in it. They are twice timely: just in time and right on time."

Elsewehere in the same text, Cole discusses a work of Julie Mehretu, another artist whose work I have admired since first seeing it in a group show at the Drawing Centre in New York in the late nineties. Her works were for me a highlight of Documenta 13 in 2021 - though I felt they were challenged by unsympathetic hanging in Kassel.

Jon Arne Mogstad's studio in November 2021, with works in progress.

Julie Mehretu's painting Conjured Parts (tongues) discussed by Teju Cole in Black Paper

Detail of Julie Mehretu's work at Documenta 13

Aside from reading, making notes and sketches and updating documentation of recent projects, photographing the changing weather conditions in the environs of home and studio seems to be an appropriate way of spending time these days.... Winter has arrived in Bergen with sometimes spectacular results.

The sad news of the last days has been the death of Alvin Lucier, a composer whose work has such profound significance not only for avant garde music but for much of contemporary culture. Lucier was one of the references discussed in "Reiterate, rerun, repeat", the exposition I co-authored with Michael Francis Duch for the March 2021 edition of Vis, Nordic Journal for Artistic Research.

I will be sitting in this room for most of the winter.