The Place of Shade
(2024)
author(s): Anthony Morton, Ray Franz
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
At first, the plan was simple — to be home by Christmas. To begin to view the very concept of home as built upon nostalgia. Imagining home is a pastime of any immigrant. If, as Breton suggests, ‘The imaginary is that which tends to become real,’ what were our imaginings bringing to life?
The Place of Shade is an artistic research inquiry into the contemporary wake of the Norwegian presence in South Africa. Norwegians began operating within the British colonial framework around 1840 — the same period as the migration to America. Lutheran missions, whaling, farming, business and family characterise this almost 200-year Afri-Norge diasporic heritage. It has been almost entirely overlooked in visual culture, until now. Their legacy remains an integral component of the city and the province's socio-cultural fabric to this day.
This exposition is just one expression within the broader scope of this ongoing project. Here, we on the one hand reflect on our preliminary research, methodology and fieldwork from a fictional standpoint — a kind of meta-methodological reflection — and, on the other hand, we address our Afri-Norge subject matter head-on. To achieve this, we narrate Ray Franz and Anthony Morton’s part in the initial fieldwork through the fictionalised perspectives of two PhD students at The University of Bergen — Vincent Dibble (RSA) and Bjarne Karlsen (NOR) — who leave their shared office to undertake an expedition which parallels ours, travelling to KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. This journey is set in the penumbra of the seismic socio-political events of 1999: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The South African Arms Deal, Case no. 4138/98, and the looming global spectre of Y2K. Dibble, an occidental eschatologist and accidental apocalypse-hunter. Bjarne, a philosophical cosmologist and photography enthusiast.
This exposition is imagined as the pair's pin board, suspended upon the expanse of their office wall upon returning to Norway. Behind them it hangs, a silent curation of fever dreams, as they weave theses into existence, their gaze drawn through the window onto the sprawling canvas of Bergen's cityscape.
One in Norway by One of Them: Vlogging for Classical Musicians
(2021)
author(s): Ursula Skaug
published in: KC Research Portal
The internet is a promising place for musicians; one can promote and perform music for free, with possibly endless reach. Especially online video and streaming are booming spaces with many opportunities. Online music videos are often either recordings of a live performance, or they are an "online performance" from a musician who acts as if they are part of a regular live concert with an audience. However, the practices of regular concerts and online video are very different in nature. Perhaps online video requires a different way of engaging with the musical material within the video format. What if classical musicians created videos that emphasized the more casual and chatty style of the online platforms?
Through an iterative process I researched how classical musicians can use the vlog-style format with classical music and music theatre. In these vlogs I draw inspiration from the book "Three in Norway by Two of Them" and combine it with music by Julius Röntgen and Edvard Grieg. From this process I drew some conclusions and came up with a process for other musicians to try out this video format.
Lineage
(2020)
author(s): Otto Ramstad
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
The project Lineage draws lines between the learning practices of experimental dance and somatic work, and personal ‘artistic genealogy’. ‘Artistic genealogy’ is a creative process Ramstad has been using to build relationships to his Norwegian ancestors and the land they inhabited and about which he knew very little. Lineage strings together these seemingly separate ways of gaining knowledge: official archives and private stories, his archive of somatic approaches and attempts to research land somatically – to think about what it was like to live in a body in rural Norway 100 years ago and ask how this affects how we are living in our bodies now. This exposition reflects a project that includes a video installation, a studio practice, and a performance which uses his archive of videos, stories, and movement. Here he shares thoughts about how we care for and engage in our personal histories and
how this engagement changes how we are living in our bodies now.
In this exposition you will see or hear the following people, listed in their order of appearance: Otto Ramstad, Lisa Nelson, Maura Gahan, Margit Galanter, Kristin Van Loon, Steve Paxton, Emmett Ramstad, Hans Steinar Gjerdet, Carle Lange, Olive Bieringa, Uma Rabbit Bieringa Ramstad, Andrea Parkins.
This is not / Dette er ikke
(2018)
author(s): Anne Marthe Dyvi
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
The language of art is often poetic and abstract.
Reduced and lawless in terms of grammar. I experience the poetic and abstract language as closer to the experienced world than the more concrete and descriptive language that is the norm in the majority of formulations in society. In my artistic practice at the moment, I work with color, movement and time. In the video medium. To say that art is a language is also an assertion, or a worn metaphor. We have no written language rules we agree upon in the arts, no defined alphabet. And maybe that's exactly what the making of art is? Creating form, while challenging form? Being the practitioner, and in that sense defining, in a landscape of concrete and abstract, in definite and indefinite and fluid and solid.
To create while shaping the form of it, is something else than performing within a given formation.
This contribution to a digital catalogue for artistic research are selections of my work, and thoughts, related to it translated into pieces of texts.
Some pieces of text along with some video pieces as well as a print from a video, a so-called 'still'. They are selected to function in different constellations, and for several reasons. A collage as a method and a way to relate to my own work, and with the selection, emphasizes the content of the texts. I apply my own thesis discussed in the text upon my contribution 'here' *. My contribution appears in Vis – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. The digital is representation. It is not. It is equally important to me that this contributed in form acknowledges that making a presence in an internet-based database is not without hyperlinks. It appears because the other is.
* Where is 'here', what is 'here'?
(Video and video with sound.)
The visual material in this exposition is from the videos 'La ditt liv vitne'(2017), 'Essay on Colour'(2017) and Perceptual Cycle (2016). By Anne Marthe Dyvi.
Breaking Circles
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Sunniva Storlykken Helland
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The project 'Breaking Circles' is matriculated in the field of social design - an area within the design field that has renewed itself in recent years. Social design is user oriented towards vulnerable and exposed groups within society.
Serving a sentence in prison is often associated with a range of penalties. Norway has only one penalty; denial of freedom. The inmates have the same rights as the rest of society, and are supposed to take part of it. The Norwegian Correctional Service’s unofficial slogan reads: ‘better out, than in’ meaning that rehabilitation overcomes penalty. The inmates have both the right and a duty to work, getting educated or attending amendment programs. The goal of their work is to qualify for working life after prison.
Having to go to prison will without a doubt be a personal crisis for anyone, and can lead to loss of jobs, housing, personal economy and social network. Inmates could benefit from building professional networks to avoid seeking out old acquaintances in criminal networks after prison, heading into criminal relapse. Having worked with design projects in the western region of the Norwegian Correctional Service, I have seen the vast areas and systems within prisons and the service that are untouched by design strategy. Design has considerable potential to help inmates benefit from their surrounding systems, both within prison and outside. I aim to use social design to ease inmate’s transitions to becoming potential employees through their work within prison.
To be able to do that, there are several problem areas to address: the content of inmate’s work in prison, inmate’s tools of sentence progress, barriers between prison and society and the lack of established professional networks to prevent criminal networks taking over after serving.
Using graphic design and visual communication in social design can contribute to a dawning interest in design and creative practice to prevent recidivistic crime and social marginalization. Breaking Circles is a project with a strong emphasis on design experiments through field work in a real-life context: prison.