ART'S NEW NATURES
Digital Dynamics in
Contemporary Nordic Art

Jana Winderen (2014). Krísuvik, Iceland. Photo: Finnbogi Petursson

Art’s New Natures features theatrical monologue performance, virtual reality,
sound art and brainwave sculpture by
Nordic artists responding to the current realities of social isolation and crises

The program is made possible by

Æsa Björk & Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir, "Shield" (2015-ongoing)

By mapping their brain activity with EEG recordings, Æsa and Tinna set out to interpret the border between an intangible emotional state and the physical manifestation of brain activity. Feelings of isolation and solitude emerged through the composition of glass, electronics, brainwaves, video projections, and transducer speakers.

Anders Eiebakke, "The Park" (2020)

This theatrical monologue on film depicts the experience of the Corona-epidemic as an invisible threat. “It's a cinematic diary which contains everything: melancholy and anxiety, beauty and brutality, fact and fiction, both subtle and hard-hitting societal critique."

Lundahl & Seitl, "AmissingRoom" (2020)

This work is an app that transforms our smartphones to makeshift VR goggles through a physical process between two people. It is a poetic score of moving, sensing and reflecting on the absences created by the pandemic, but it is also the tangible presence of exploring the affordances of reciprocity and the conditions for being together in times of physical distancing.

Anne Katrine Senstad, "Utopie / Utopia" (2020)

This short film features Bill Sage, film and TV actor, in a theatrical reading performance set in city and land scapes through their remote collaborative process necessitated by the pandemic. The work is based on the theories of Roland Barthes’ book How To Live Together, and its utopian concepts of tolerance, considered a place of utopia. Senstad and Sage respond to the current human experience of isolation, societal and political deconstruction.

Jana Winderen, "Surge" (2020), "Out of Range" (2014)

Winderen composes audio environments of creatures which are hard for humans to access physically and aurally – deep under water, inside ice or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. "Out of Range” (2014) resonates with this sense of the secrets of nature, just as the world is overtaken by an invisible virus. "Surge" is included in "Isolation", a collection of music produced by Touch, London, to support musicians unable to perform live during the pandemic.

Artists in conversation

Through different media for online access and presentation, the artists address the current social and pandemic crises, for art’s place, meaning, and role in a world of rapid inter-existential changes.

ART'S NEW NATURES Digital Dynamics in Contemporary Nordic Art

ART'S NEW NATURES
Digital Dynamics in
Contemporary Nordic Art