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.
Sounds of Another Home: Telepresence, COVID-19 and a Bioscience Laboratory in Transition
(2021)
author(s): Rebecca Carlson
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Based on an ethnography of a bioscience laboratory in Tokyo before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper focuses on telepresence, and the growing demand for workers to maintain extended simultaneous presence in multiple electronic, or electronically augmented, spaces. In contrast to views promoting the liberating affordances of telework in the maintenance of healthy work-life balance (reduced commute time; increased “presence” in family life), an analysis of sound reveals the way the home becomes reorganized, and ultimately de-prioritized, under work demands. In particular, online meetings, which privilege discrete information exchange, position the home as a barrier to productive communications. Receding the soundscape of the home in this way reflects a normalization of the neoliberal imperative to find self-realization in workplace forms of sociality.
The Production of Listening: on Biopolitical Sound and the Commonplaces of Aurality
(2018)
author(s): Huw Hallam
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Expression and listening imply a complex interface. Neither can be conceptualized without the movement of intention and receptivity implied by their conjunction. Yet nothing is less certain, since conjunction requires an intermediary space, where a relationship may be formed in common or else violently impelled. This space – of listening and making oneself heard – is fundamentally political, and this essay explores its key forms in the age of biopolitics and neoliberalism. It is examined via artistic evocations of sonic production and listening in works by André Kertész, Iannis Xenakis and Federico Fellini. Then it is analyzed through two major contemporary paradigms of listening: the institutional network where sound art continues to stake out territory; and the private auditory ‘bubble’ generated by the mobile personal audio-player. Finally, in work by Pedro Almodóvar, a revolutionary approach to expression is found that acknowledges the common space of listening on which it depends