Artists Steffen Håndlykken and Stian Eide Kluge run a special and brilliant gallery in Grønland, Oslo called 1857. It consists of a run down, little green house in Tøyenbekken that is actually quite nice on the inside. In the back of the small gallery space there is a door. Pass through it, and you are suddenly inside a enormous concrete hall. They have had very good exhibitions with a wide variety of international artists, but the winter is a difficult period for using the big hall. It is so big that it is impossible to heat. So, instead of making normal winter exibition, they decided to build a lighthouse instead. A lighthouse standing nine meters tall with a spiral stairway leading up into a tiny cinema. The light shining out of the room is not just a lightbulb, it is a videobeamer that projects seemingly random videos for 128 hours. Here you can sit as long as you like. It is heated and you look at all kinds of interesting stuff, although you never know what is coming. It can switch between a short animated film to a program directed at teaching you how to make sausages. None of the videos are ever repeated. I loved the idea and offered to help.
The boys were working hard on building the “Telephone”, I didn´t really have time to help them on his part, but many friends were helping out collecting videos. I also did this, bigtime, but I was also responsible for getting all of the collected video into a working system on a harddisk. It was labourous and complicated utelising different computer programs, editing video and categorising all of the TERRABYTES of video into nice folders for each day the gallery was to be open.
I am very glad to have friends like Stian and Steffen to make my life more interesting. The exhibition is a great experience and has some heavy theoretical implications. Some are discussed here, others in another article only found on paper and others not being discussed at all. Stian and Steffen have not signed the artwork in any way. I heard Steffen call the tower the exhibition architecture. What is being shown is also not from any particular sender. It seems like the whole thing is lacking an ego, even though there is a nine meter tall structure standing like a giant phallos in the room. After the exhibition period was over, they had another exhibition using the tower. This time, all the windows inside the lighthouse were painted by Allison Katz. Yes, a woman.
Some friends of mine had the idea of making a music festival called Jovialbiennalen. Jovial means goodnatured, festive and somehow happy. Many alternative bands were playing in Sound of Mu, MIR and Søndagbarn. I had a meeting with the søndagsbarn gang where we planned the event and ate great Duck confit. I engaged myself in the visual aspect of the festival. I wanted got make the festival go around and around. (In norwegian, “å få festen til å gå rundt” means making the party go around, but also to be economically sustainable). As many things a possible should spin! So I made some spinning sculptures. Really just a bunch of readymades mounted onto motorised stuff like turntables. Oh, and a Wheel of Fortune!
I have been really busy the last five months working on Snik and Snok on the Moon. Frustrating at times, rewarding at others; it has been a real challenge, and a great learning experience. I have already writen about the start of the prosess, and about our trip to Jordan. Now I would like to illuminate a part of the building process in my litte studio at the best atelier community in Oslo: Grynerløkka Lufthavn. It is impossible for show it all, because there are hundreds of images, but I will roughly try to guide you through the process.
As part of our prosess with developing the Snik og Snok på Månen project, we had an eleven day residence in Amman, Jordan. Why should we travel to Jordan to make a show for kids in Norway? Well, Helle Siljeholm and Sara Christophersen have done several contemporary dance performances in the middle east and have great relations there. The National Centre for Culture and Arts, King Hussein Foundation (NCCA) offered us to use their great theatre hall for the developement of our project. In return we would hold a series of workshops for the in-house theatre company on how to create live performances together with video projections.
Yvo Warmers and me, AKA [!!!?] made a short documentary about the consciousness of capitalism in Leipzig, Germany. I made a website for the project, so that the participants could see the finished film when it was ready.
Hooray! I was accepted as a participant to a fabulous open space process in Leipzig, Germany called Platforma11.
Valerie Waldow, a positive, energenic, smart, superaware and superpolitical German woman told me about the underground in Berlin and Leipzig. She told about massive coalissions between culturally active people of numerous disciplines. That, exactly that, is the sort of activity that I am the most interested in. The more the merrier! She was working on a new experimental project with an international network, reflecting on the topics “art, politics and education” and their relationship to one another. I wrote an application. It was accepted. Read on>>
I am collaborating with the dance duo Siljeholm/Christopersen on a wonderful production that blends theatre and dance. They (Helle Siljeholm and Sara Christophersen) have been looking for funding for a long time and have finally gotten it. We have started production and are having lots of fun.
For over a year ago I made some illustrations for the television series called “Hvem tror du at du er?”. It was directed by Ketil Karlsen, produced by Monster Entertainment and screened on NRK. It was a sucess! As the show now has been screened I am free to post my illustrations here.
I made some detailed drawings for the documentary Imagining Emanuel by Thomas Østbye. I was to make a drawing of a boat we didn’t have an exact descripion of. So I had to do a lot of research to find out the right kind of boat. Even then, I could not get hold of the blueprints for the actual real boat, so I had to make a realistic but fictuous design. Is this wrong? I don’t think so. After all the research I know that the ship Emanuel rode on was quite similar.
Carsten Aniksdal and me just finished making a music video for Karl Seglem. The name of the song is Old Movement. We recorded it in Oslo with a simple, but abstact, concept. Movement of random objects from one cut to the next. This way we hoped to surpass conventional logic and enter the surreal. Our budget was small as usual, but we got good help from friends. We invited them to bring an object, select a mask and spend half an hour with us and our Casio slow motion camera. Check it out!
It´s been a long time since I have updated my website! New things are happening and I am participating in various longer projects that I don´t want to show until all the parts are finished. Sorry! Anyways, I can show you a poster I made for the Critical Mass in Oslo.
Critical mass is a flashmob that has spread from San Fransisco to Oslo. Hundreds of bicycle riders meet and ride together throught the streets.
I made a 10 second animation for the Natt & Dag award ceremony. It was specifically for the “Best Club Concept” prize. Click on the foto to read more and to see the video.
These past weeks I have been working for Monster on a historical documentary called “Hvem tror du at du er?”. It will air on NRK in 2010 and I am not allowed to reveal anything before then. Boy o´boy, am I exited about this project!
Scanpix called me up and asked if I wanted to draw some court drawings for them. I was surprised and flattered, naturally, even more so when I learned that the case in question was the famous and dreaded “Lommemannen” case. Read on…>>
The 12′th of september is the opening day of the new club in town. It is an attempt to make a total concept activating as many fractions of culture as possible. For now we have a concert, dj, performance, contemporary dance, sculpture, lighting design, bar, disco, foto installations and several videos. The location is Dansens hus and we have a lot of great people involved. The organisers are: Ida Mary Cowell, Helle Siljeholm, Carl Nilssen-love, Sara Christophersen, Evelina Dembacke and me.
Click to read more and see the poster I made..>>
Jazzmontør asked me to make a whole bunch of drawings for an exebition about the town of Skien in the year 2030. Our goal was to make four short animated movies that each represents a path Skien can go down in the future. We slaved for ten days and actually managed to deliver on time. Puh!
I drew this to support the activities of my good friend Leif Richard Bones Egge who is very idealistic about electric cars. But he doesn’t like hydrogen cars because they are like wolves in sheepskin. Apparently they don’t pollute at all since water is the only waste product, but the production of their platinum fuel cells causes extreme amounts of polluting gases. The hydrogen car is really a crutch for the oil companies to lean on and is not a serious attempt to save the world. Electric cars is the answer! So beware of the Hydrogen monster!
Finished an Illustration for Utflukt an intellectual periodical aimed at literature, social issues an culture in general. My Illustration is for an article about Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975). I hope it makes you wanna read the article. Buy the Magazine!
(Fun tip: Scroll, baby scroll!)
