Oceanic Horror or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism
(2024)
author(s): Soren Thilo Funder
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Søren Thilo Funder
PhD in Artistic Research
University of Bergen
Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design
The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art
Supervisors: Daniel Jewesbury, Darla Crispin, Anne Helen Mydland and Frans Jacobi.
Artistic reflection and documentation of artistic result submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) in Artistic Research at the University of Bergen.
Date of public defence: 8.12.2023
'Oceanic Horror - or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism' is an artistic research project that explores the potentials of utilising the genre of horror fiction to create new narratives in a political and time-based art practice. It is invested in the temporal qualities and entanglements of the horror genre and how these relate in strange ways, not only to our current tempor(e)ality and the modes of financialisation that informs this, but also to art practices using the temporal as material.
Framed around the revisiting of the mid-nineties trading firm 'Island' in the advent of high frequency trading and its successor the trading company 'Archipelago', pushing the algorithmic trading systems further into the splash of web 2.0, 'Oceanic Horror' uses the methodologies of Transrealism and Meandering to create new nonlinear narrations revolving around the relationship between the opaque structures of absolute capitalism and the socio-political horror experienced in everyday life.
The research project searches for a certain condition found in horror fiction, that relates to its relentless nowness, its proposed prolonging of this now, its relation to eventality and the quasi-event and finally how horror fiction wants to do things to the body - not only in a simple reaction mode but really in the very temporality experienced in and by the body.
The artistic result of 'Oceanic Horror' was exhibited at Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen 21.04.2023 - 04.06.2023, comprising a multi-channel video installation combining digital renderings with fictional cinematic scenes in an immersive total installation of office furniture sculptures forming makeshift sleep stations in the exhibition space.
The reflection for 'Oceanic Horror' is presented in this Research Catalogue exposition, including both written material, images and a comprehensive archive of all the video works that make up the entangled narratives of 'Oceanic Horror - or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism'
Norwegian:
'Oceanic Horror - or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism' er et kunstnerisk forskningsprosjekt som utforsker mulighetene i sjangeren skrekkfiksjon til å skape nye utrykk og narrativer i politisk og tidsbasert kunstpraksis. Prosjektet utforsker skrekksjangerens temporale oppbyggning, estetikk og kvaliteter.
'Oceanic Horror' anvender både som kunsteriske metoder og utrykk 'transrealisme' og 'meandering' for å skape nye ikke-lineære fortellinger og kunst som dreier seg om forholdet mellom de ugjennomsiktige strukturene i 'absolutt kapitalisme' og den sosio-politiske 'horroren' som oppleves i hverdagen.
Med utgangspunkt i historien om det reelle handelsfirmaet 'Island', som i midten av nittitallet var med i oppstarten av høyfrekvent aksjehandel, og dens etterfølger, selskapet 'Archipelago', som ledte bølgen av algoritmiske aksjehandelssystemer i web 2.0, søker forskningsprosjektet etter en viss tilstand som finnes i horror fiction, som relaterer seg til dens nådeløse nåhet, dens foreslåtte forlengelse av dette 'nå', dets forhold til 'event' og 'kvasi-event' og hvordan horror fiction ønsker å gjøre ting med kroppen - ikke bare i en enkel reaksjonsmodus, men egentlig i selve temporaliteten som oppleves i og av betrakterens kropp.
Det kunstneriske resultatet av 'Oceanic Horror' ble vist på Kunsthall 3.14 i Bergen 21.04.2023 - 04.06.2023. Utstillingen besto av en flerkanals videoinstallasjon som kombinerer digitale gjengivelser med fiktive filmatiske scener. Vist i en totalinstallasjon av kontormøbelskulpturer som danner provisoriske sovestasjoner i utstillingsrommet.
Den kunsteriske refleksjonen som følger 'Oceanic Horror' presenteres på Research Catalogue og inkluderer både tekster, bilder og et omfattende arkiv av alle videoverkene som utgjør de sammenfiltrede fortellingene til 'Oceanic Horror - or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism'
Urgent Affairs, Strange Empathy
(2023)
author(s): Sveinung Rudjord Unneland
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
In 2018, Kunst- og designhøgskolen i Bergen (KHiB) moved into brand new premises in Møllendalsveien, and at the same time changed its name and organizational affiliation to Kunstakademiet – Institutt for samtidskunst, Fakultet for kunst musikk og design, Universitetet i Bergen. At the same time, Sveinung Unneland began his work on the doctoral project Urgent Affairs, Strange Empathy. In the project, Unneland examines these structural and architectural changes, in parallel with that he explores how we can establish different autonomous spaces and practices within the institutional context as such.
Only by insisting on a radical openness about what art is or can be, is it possible, in my opinion, to maintain a meaningful relationship with the concept of art. An important question then becomes how we (as artists, researchers, and teachers) best cultivate and safeguard this openness, in our own practice and within the institutional framework many of us find ourselves in.
Urgent Affairs, Strange Empathy places itself in an institutional tradition that in Bergen goes back to the self-organized Vestlandets Kunstakademi (1973). Through practical collaborative projects, Unneland explores how this legacy can be continued within today's institutional framework. Parallel to this, he has worked with painting as an integral part of the research project; a personal practice where he can set up models for possible relationships between the fictional and the real, the personal and the common, the inside and the outside.
Bio
Sveinung Rudjord Unneland (1981, Farsund) is a visual artist and Ph.D. research fellow at the Art Academy – Institute of contemporary art, at the faculty of art, music and design, University of Bergen. He received his education at the Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen and Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee (2007). Sveinung Rudjord Unneland has worked with Urgent Affairs, Strange Empathy since 2018 under the guidance of Eamon O'Kane and Ane Hjort Guttu.
Porous Worlds – the Liminal Spaces of Relief
(2023)
author(s): Pauliina Pöllänen
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Porous Worlds – the Liminal Spaces of Relief was carried out as an artistic research PhD project in affiliation with The Art Academy, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. The project examines the relief, its connections to art, craft, architecture, and ornament, as well as its various dimensions as an artistic medium.
It has been the relief´s in-between status and the lack of contemporary art discourse around it that has informed the questions like: what is at stake working with relief form today? What kind of artistic potential and possibilities does ceramic relief have to offer?
Topographies of the obsolete
(2023)
author(s): Anne-Helen Mydland, Neil Joseph Brownsword
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Topographies of the Obsoleteis an Artistic Research project (KU Prosjekt) initiated by Professors Neil Brownsword and Anne Helen Mydland at Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB) in collaboration with partner universities/institutions in Denmark, Germany and the UK. Our main collaborative partner is the British Ceramics Biennial, who invited KHiB to work at the original Spode Works factory in Stoke-on-Trent, to develop a site specific artistic response as a core element of their 2013 exhibition program. More than 40 international artists and theoreticians have participated in this multidisciplinary project with a program of seminars, publications and exhibitions. Three residencies have accumulated individual artistic projects from which the overriding project has developed.
The project focus centres upon the landscape of post-industry, more particular; that of Stoke-on-Trent, a world renowned ceramic capital that bears in its city evidence of fluctuations in global fortunes. The original Spode factory, situated in the heart of Stoke-on-Trent, was once a keystone of the city's industrial heritage which operated upon its original site for over 230 years. Amongst Spode's contributions to ceramic history include the perfection of under-glaze blue printing and Fine Bone China. The factory's industrial architecture dates from the 1760's to the late 1980's, with spaces associated with all aspects of the design, manufacture, retail and administration in close geographical proximity. In 2008 Spode's Church Street site closed, with most of its production infrastructure and contents left intact.
re- radio
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Karen Werner
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
re- radio is an artistic research PhD project about relationality in radio articulated through three durational artworks: SkottegatenFM (2021), a three-month mini-FM radio station based in my apartment and neighborhood; Radio Multe (2021-ongoing), an experimental city-wide AM, FM and online radio station with an accompanying shadow station and Seijo & her Soul (2024), a nine-evening performance installation in an art exhibition space. The project situates the artworks in the contexts of mini-FM and community radio practices, radio art, theories of relationality, relational aesthetics and dialogical aesthetics. I chart the move from broad questions, such as what is relationality? What is community? What is communication? to more specific realizations: that the radio station as an artistic form can foster an immersive, collective subjectivity that supports many forms of unlearning and learning with and that on-air conversation can be an artistic material. By shifting attention from senders and receivers to the spaces between them, on-air conversation as co-creation contributes to a relational ethics. re- radio also contributes to the field of artistic research regarding relational methodologies and the politics of knowledge.
CCFT
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Johan Sandborg, Duncan Higgins, Bente Irminger, Linda H. Lien, andy lock, Ana Souto Galvan, Susan Brind, Shauna McMullan, Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Jim Harold, DÁNIEL PÉTER BIRÓ
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
As we move towards the first quarter of the third millennium, the impermanent and shifting influence of globalisation, economic division, migratory encounters, social media, historic narrative and tourism is having a major impact in our understanding of the making, belonging and occupying of place. It is widely documented that these conditions are contributing to a growing sense of displacement and alienation in what constitutes as place making, occupying, and belonging.
CCFT is asking how interdisciplinary artistic research practices contribute and share new critical understandings to aid this evolving understanding of place making, belonging and occupying?
DESERT DWELLING
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Christine Hansen
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Desert Dwelling is a research project conducted by Associate professor Christine Hansen and Independent Artist Line Anda Dalmar. The desert is used as a site and framework to reflect on landscape, environment and time. In addition, Desert Dwelling endeavor to explore the act of observation and documentation. The project uses common documentation/observation methods such as photography, video and sound. In addition, we employ more obsolete and time-consuming observation means such as drawing, casting and watercolor painting. This is to stress that different observation methods render the world differently, and provide noninterchangeable information about the world. Much of the visual material is from a field study in deserts in California in spring 2018. The study took place mainly in Death Valley and Joshua Tree and had a processual method. We selected a place in the desert and stayed there until we found something interesting to work with. Every day, we made experiences that we built on the next day. The working method focused on the fluid relationship between process, work and documentation.
Porous Worlds – the Liminal Spaces of Relief was carried out as an artistic research PhD project in affiliation with The Art Academy, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. The project examines the relief, its connections to art, craft, architecture, and ornament, as well as its various dimensions as an artistic medium. It has been the relief´s in-between status and the lack of contemporary art discourse around it that has informed the questions like: what is at stake working with relief form today? What kind of artistic potential and possibilities does ceramic relief have to offer?open exposition comments (0)