ABOUT NO BLOG The NO BLOG is a forum for further expanding on the themes and questions explored in Nordic Outbreak, as the project grows along the way. The blog will feature articles, artist interviews and reflections beyond the exhibition.
EDITORS Xavier Aaronson Christina Fleuron
Nordic Outbreak documentation February 19, 2014
All image documentation from the Nordic Outbreak exhibition project is now available free for download by creditation here.
Egill Sæbjörnsson on his work Brick Is The Key (2013) commissioned for Nordic Outbreak January 29, 2014
NO at Urban Media Kitchen, Berlin
January 24, 2014
On January 23 we presented Nordic Outbreak at Public Art Lab in Berlin invited by Susa Pop. Public Art Lab opened its doors in a kitchen-like atmosphere to bring together Berlin based and international urban media initiatives. The presenters included Momentum (Skyscreen), Screencity (Daniela Arriado), DAM Galerie (Wolf Lieser), Genius Loci Weimar (Anke von der Heide), MediaCity (Bauhaus-University Weimar), trampoline (Anette Schäfer und Miles Chalcraft), W33 (Martin Stebbing), LEAP (Sandra Moskova), Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (Jan-Gunnar Franke), University Leuphana (city planning Prof. Ursula Kirschner), Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss (Associated artists ZKM, Fraunhofer Society), Soenke Zehle & Henrik Elburn (xm:lab), Supermarkt (Ela Kagel), The Constitute (Christian Zöllner), Pfadfinderei (Toby & Codec).
The Urban Media Kitchen also opened its Telepresent Gallery, which shows footage from surveillance cameras from the cities of the Connecting Cities Network, which focuses on the worldwide presence of urban screens and media facades. The Telepresent Gallery is a depiction of an expanded perception of video control, of how we observe the world from its spy cam point of view.
Nordic Outbreak visits Sao Paulo
August 12, 2013 Nordic Outbreak visits Espaço Cultural Tendal da Lapa, São Paulo, Brazil, presented in collaboration with the University of São Paulo, Colabor Research Center for Digital Media, PGEHA, Cine Galapão, Pulso Filmes, Programa Vocacional and Secretaria Muinipal de Cultura de São Paulo.
Time: August 10 (5:30pm and 7 pm), and August 13 to September 13 (12 and 6pm daily) The exhibition presents Björk and Andrew Thomas Huang, Mutual Core, in MIDNIGHT MOMENT in collaboration between Streaming Museum and Times Square Arts. This is a special version of internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter Björk’s Mutual Core, which originally appeared in Times Square during the March 2013 Midnight Moment to launch the Nordic Outbreak exhibition.
The exhibition also presents the following artists form the Nordic Outbreak program: J Tobias Anderson, The Wind (2009) Ken Are Bongo, The wind whispers there is someone behind the tundra (2006) Jette Ellgaard, West Coast (2009) Jessica Faiss, Rewind (2011) Styrmir Örn Gudjonsson, First Level (2012) Mogens Jacobsen, Landscapes (2006-2007) Hannu Karjalainen, Towards an Architect (2010) Dan Lestander, Dreams and Wishes (2010) Magnus Sigurdarson, 1001 Dreams of Occupation (2012)
NO visits Johannesburg, South Africa July 30, 2013
Hannu Karjalainen, Towards an Architect (2010)
August 1, 7-10pm, at the corner of Fox Street and Kruger Street
A selection from the Nordic Outbreak program was exhibited by The Trinity Session in various locations in The Maboneng Precinct, Johannesburg, South Africa, in partnership between Streaming Museum, The Trinity Session, organized by Marcus Neustetter and Stephen Hobbs, and The Maboneng Precinct.
The Trinity Session is instrumental in the rejuvenation of the inner city of Johannesburg with public art projects, artists’ residencies and bringing the public together on regular occasions in open urban spaces and large abandoned warehouse/factories. Their local partnership extends to the City of Johannesburg Arts Culture and Heritage, The Johannesburg Development Agency and private developments such as The Maboneng Precinct.
Artists:
J Tobias Anderson, The Wind (2009)
Jeannette Ehlers, Black Bullets (2012)
Jessica Faiss, Rewind (2011)
Vibeke Jensen, Sleeper Cell (2012)
Hannu Karjalainen, Towards an Architect (2010)
Dodda Maggy, There, there (2013)
Miia Rinne, Sea (2012)
The exhibition also presented MIDNIGHT MOMENT featuring Björk in Mutual Core (2012), in collaboration with Times Square Arts.
Nordic Outbreak at ISEA2013 Sydney June 11, 2013
Nordic Outbreak has been invited as a special program during and post ISEA 2013 Sydney, June 8 – 28 by Urbanscreens TV, The Concourse, 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood Sydney NSW 2067.
ISEA2013 is an international symposium of electronic art and ideas that will take place in Sydney, Australia. Presented by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and held alongside Vivid Sydney – a festival of light, music and ideas – ISEA2013 will showcase the best media artworks from around the world and provide a platform for the lively exchange of future-focused ideas.
The 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art will comprise engaging presentations and thought-provoking speakers and discussions. Join ISEA Sydney for informed dialogues, dynamic debates, enlightening keynotes and experimental incursions into the extensive and diverse practice of electronic media arts.isea2013.org
The program for ISEA2013 Sydney includes a selection of artwork from Nordic Outbreak, including:
J Tobias Anderson, Ken Are Bongo, Jeannette Ehlers, Jette Ellgaard, Jessica Faiss, Søren Thilo Funder, Sigurdur Gudjonsson, Styrmir Örn Gudmundsson, Eva-Mari Haikala, Iselin Linstad Hauge, Kaia Hugin, Hanne Ivars, Mogens Jacobsen, Vibeke Jensen, Hannu Karjalainen, Antti Laitinen, Dan Lestander, Una Lorenzen, Pernille With Madsen, Dodda Maggy, Eva Olsson, QNQ/AUJIK, Miia Rinne, Magnus Sigurdarson, and Birgitte Sigmundstad.
Nordic Outbreak Launch Party April 3, 2013
The launch week of Nordic Outbreak in New York City opened with an exclusive opening event at the R Lounge at the Renaissance Hotel, overlooking Björk’s video for Mutual Core, directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, across 15 screens in Times Square.
Nordic Outbreak prelude shows Björk’s Mutual Core in Times Square March 25, 2013
Nordic Outbreak opens in New York with a special edited version of Björk’s ‘Mutual Core’, directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, which takes up Times Square Art’s Midnight Moment every night three minutes to midnight through March. This is a prelude to the launch week of exhibitions and events in New York City March 31 – April 6, 2013.
Video by David Bates, Jr.
Huffington Post: ‘Nordic Outbreak’: Curator Tanya Toft On How Nordic Art Extends Far Beyond Bjork March 23, 2013
Go to article
What do you know about Nordic art? If your knowledge begins and ends with Bjork we suggest checking out “Nordic Outbreak,” an exhibition illuminating the Northern region’s influences and aesthetics.
The Streaming Museum exhibition features over 30 moving image works from Nordic artists that will be projected on screens in public spaces throughout New York City — including a “Midnight Moment” with Bjork in Times Square.
Many of the works on display that were selected by co-curators Nina Colosi and Tanya Toft respond to the clashing identities in our new digital age. We reached out to Toft to learn more. Interview continues after the slideshow.
Antti Laitinen
Snowman (2006)
7 min
In this performative work of absurdity and physical endurance, the artist affixes a large carrot as his nose, as his body is covered in a snow of falling white powder. Antti Laitinen’s works combine performance with video and photography, while he smoothly mixes a sense of absurd seriousness and angular humor.
HP: The press release for the show mentions the stereotypical Nordic aesthetic as “minimal, melancholic and naturalist”… something this exhibition aims to change. Which artists were influential in casting Nordic art this way?
TT: An artist like Olafur Eliasson is a contemporary Nordic artist whose work with light, space, fog and sensitive play with colors of nature’s elements, reveal an aura of something Nordic. It conveys certain aesthetic ideas that reveal symptoms of romanticism and a seeking after the sublime rather than the beautiful. There is a melancholic feel to that meeting between man and nature, which we also find in the works of Jesper Just for example, who is in the Nordic Outbreak program with his work “Llano” (2012). In selecting the works for Nordic Outbreak, we were also interested in renegotiations of nature and landscape, which artists like Dodda Maggy, QNQ/AUJIK, Jette Ellgaard and Magnus Sigurdarson enact.
HP: Do you think there is a more accurate driving aesthetic of Nordic culture today? If so, what is it?
TT: I don’t think there is one driving aesthetic, but the artworks in Nordic Oubreak show symptoms of improvisation and play, which is somewhat “new” in a Nordic art context that might have been characterized more by control and high quality.
Some of the artworks express aesthetic cultures that were not “born” out of a Nordic context. There is a struggle between introspection and extroversion –- following a right wing and nationalist political period in some of the Nordic countries up through the 2000s, financial crisis, and in response to the digital age. There seems to be a clash between looking in and looking out, guarding and departing. In quite a few of these works, existential questions are brought beyond the invidividual and psyche –- which has been a tendency, perhaps –- and pointed toward one’s role in a greater context.
It is also characteristic that these artists express and awareness of the medium they are working with, and in many of the works the audience is addressed as individual viewers whose optics are shaped in a contemporary world. That we find in the works by for example Marit Følstad, Mogens Jacobsen, and Iselin Linstad Hauge.
Read full interview on Huffington Post
Creator’s Project: “Nordic Outbreak”: An Exhibit That Redefines The Aesthetic Of The Nordic Art March 22, 2013 by Kate Masaracchio March 08, 2013
Photograph by Ka-Man Tse. The nomads have gone digital. Working with the idea of artworks as files, capable of trekking across great digital plains and virtual seas, settling themselves in various formats on different platforms, more than 30 contemporary Nordic artists have come together to shine light “on the Nordic as a diverse aesthetic and existential concept in the digital age.” An internationally touring exhibition, “Nordic Outbreak” presents art-enthusiasts and digital mavens alike with a look at multi-media and moving image arts exhibited and projected in public spaces around New York City and the world.
This experimental project is presented by Streaming Museum, a 21st century cultural venue based in New York City. With the mission to spread and share art and ideas through the internet and their ever expanding network of big screens in public squares worldwide, Streaming Museum serves as the perfect venue for the artists behind “Nordic Outbreak” to challenge the organic and minimal aesthetic for which Nordic art has been viewed under for years.
Jeannette Ehlers’ “Black Bullets” is a tribute to revolt. Image via Streaming Museum
The animated film “In the Crack of the Land” by artist Una Lorenzen, was inspired by the Icelandic highlands. Image via Streaming Museum
Read full article on Creator’s Project