Carina Vela Puppis
Connect the dots and paint by numbers
Ad Undas
An expression (used excessively in Norwegian) of latin origin meaning to the waves, often used when you've failed and everything's going straight to hell.
Any chance it can be connected to sleeping with the fishes e.g. "It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." ?
Any chance it can be connected to sleeping with the fishes e.g. "It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." ?
To the Circus 1922
Teaching the Ocean the Alphabet
Orrestranda, Jæren, Norway
Dregg
While searching for the etymological origin for the English word write and draw, I discovered some pretty exciting links to Norse language and the sea. The English word write is of Germanic origin related to the German reissen (Norwegian risse) meaning sketch or drag. The Old Norse word for to drag is dragan meaning to draw, but the noun drag is also related to the German dragge meaning grapnel. A grapnel is a small anchor and called dregg in Norwegian.
Just another curious connection that I appreciate.
Trying to make sense of it all
Let's put it into words
Khoreia "dancing in unison"
NAUSEA documentation
Arne Nordheim (1931 - 2010)
Yesterday I got the sad news about the Norwegian composer and critic Arne Nordheim's death.
Born in 1931, he was a well-known character in the modernist era of music, after WW2, and probably the first in this country to perform and compose electronic music.
Not only did he compose, but he was also a leading figure in the political battles concerning the artists rights in the 60s. Rights that the Norwegian artists still benefits from today.
Some months ago I wrote Arne Nordheim a letter, where I was asking if he had a possibility to meet me for a tutorial and to have a conversation about the sound and compositions related to my projects. Sadly right after writing the letter, I discovered that Arne Nordheim was already quite ill in a nursing home. The chance for me to have a conversation with one of the leading composers of Norway had passed. I never sent that letter, but I will keep it as a reminder of how close I was.
Face Tunes
While visiting the John Cage show at Henie-Onstad earlier this month I discovered the American choreographer Simone Forti in a video piece where she gives a lecture about movement. I was not familiar with her work and started out with buying her book "Handbook in Motion" (1974) in the museum shop. On my way home on the bus I started reading about her work and especially one piece for drawings and whistle called "Face Tunes" (1967).
The profile lines of different faces are drawn on to a roll of paper slowly being rolled from one side to another. The performer follows the trace of the profile contours with a stick attached to a slide-whistle. In this way, the whistle plays the profiles as the drawings rolls by.
In all of her sketches and practice it's quite captivating how the written score of choreography and the drawing and sound can resemble musical scores, but with movement.It has all the aspects of traveling/movement/linear/time-based -it's video, sound, travel, linear, choreography, written score, movement. Everything that I enjoy.
A heap of Language -Robert Smithson
NAUSEA
My next show which I've decided to name "NAUSEA" is an installation with drawings, sound, film and postcards.
Formalisticly it looks upon how movement can be materialized in 2D, on paper. The drawing of a boat's repetitive vertical movement on heavy seas seeks to be a score of movement.
Etymological speaking the English word nausea is directly linked towards seasickness as it derives from the Greek word naus meaning ship.
Linked to surrealist automatic writing, the drawings are produced directly from looking at videos from YouTube which shows vessels at sea in bad weather. The drawings carries the name of the videos.
The format of the postcards is more or less a nostalgic view on the traditional rites one does while traveling -you go away to exotic and new places and write home about your experiences and new knowledge.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's debut novel "La Nausée"/"Nausea" the main character, Antoine Roquentin, is rebelling and gets nauseated by the thought of being pushed into the secure and socially accepted life form. He clearly wants something more in life than to honour objective values of the bourgeoisie.
Only one generation ago, sailors were the ones to break with the expectations of society and headed towards the big blue to experience something else and to explore exotic places.
"NAUSEA" opens May 6th, 18.00 at Galleri 21:24 in Oslo.
Opening hours are Friday May 7th -Sunday May 9th 12.00 -16.00.
Trying to civilize nature
John Baldessari's videowork ”Teaching a Plant the Alphabet” (1972) in which is basically a response to Joseph Beuys' "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare", shows in a quite ironic manner flash cards being shown to a common houseplant. The flash cards holds the alphabet, one letter at a time, while the person pronounce the letter several times before changing to the next card. The clip underneath is a really short one (A and B), but there's no need to watch the whole thing, thus the idea is understood quite instantly.
As before discussed on the post Drawing and handwriting this is yet another attempt, or actually the quite opposite, to civilize nature with the abstract construct of language. The abstract expressionists embraced the primitive nature of monkey paintings while the plant in Baldessari's video is tried, though with the ironic tone of failure, forced into civilization by the artificial system of signs.
As before discussed on the post Drawing and handwriting this is yet another attempt, or actually the quite opposite, to civilize nature with the abstract construct of language. The abstract expressionists embraced the primitive nature of monkey paintings while the plant in Baldessari's video is tried, though with the ironic tone of failure, forced into civilization by the artificial system of signs.
Confession
During the Marstrand Festival at Black Box Theater in Oslo last week I saw some really nice performances. One of them was the play by Petter Goldstine and Sarai Alons entitled "Markings -the longest journey is the journey within".
While entering the stage the audience received a booklet and a felt-tip pen. The actors/performance artists had close communication with the audience and the scenes where chosen by the audience in a "pick-a-card"-manner and the scenes referred to a page in the booklet that we had to look up and read, look at or follow instructions. One of the pages contained a small confession form that we were supposed to fill in and tick boxes. This was not handed in after the play but was merely an exercise to clear things for ourselves.
While entering the stage the audience received a booklet and a felt-tip pen. The actors/performance artists had close communication with the audience and the scenes where chosen by the audience in a "pick-a-card"-manner and the scenes referred to a page in the booklet that we had to look up and read, look at or follow instructions. One of the pages contained a small confession form that we were supposed to fill in and tick boxes. This was not handed in after the play but was merely an exercise to clear things for ourselves.
Drawing and handwriting
A couple of weeks ago the Norwegian Broadcasting Radio (NRK P2) discussed in the radio show "Språkteigen" the possibility for the handwriting to die away in the future. A hundred years ago 95 % of all written texts was done by hand, but now that most of us are using keyboards instead of pen and paper, write e-mails instead of letters, this might be a fact. At least that's what director of Copenhagen Institute of Futures Studies Johan Peter Paludan thinks.
Handwriting has been controlled by trends trough-out the years. In Norway the handwriting has been influenced by both Gothic, German and English handwriting styles. Handwriting (skjønnskrift) was an important part of the curriculum in primary schools. I remember I easily wrote 25 tightly written pages by hand in my art history exam 8 years ago, but after being used to typing on my computer I simply don't think I could've done that today.
On the height of abstract expressionism the interest for animal paintings increased. The monkey paintings showed the purest abstract painting. The painting was cleansed by the cultural filter that held back the liberated man (not yet woman). Child paintings was looked upon the same way. They were painted by hands that had yet no training in writing and the gestures were thus primitive and genuine. From the abstract expressionist's view the skilled writing hand was the modern literate hand and thus not free. Although I am fascinated by people who can write nicely with both hands, I am also fascinated about the uncontrollability and the lines of my left hand while drawing or writing. I tried for a while to use my left hand more, on the reasons that it would stimulate my right hemisphere of the brain which controls creativity, artistic awareness and imagination. But in the middle of the experiment I just had to stop with the reason that I did not want my left hand to be that skilled and trained so that it would loose it's primitive lines. But from time to time I use my left hand and, by Paul Klee's description of drawing, "take a line out for a walk".
Handwriting has been controlled by trends trough-out the years. In Norway the handwriting has been influenced by both Gothic, German and English handwriting styles. Handwriting (skjønnskrift) was an important part of the curriculum in primary schools. I remember I easily wrote 25 tightly written pages by hand in my art history exam 8 years ago, but after being used to typing on my computer I simply don't think I could've done that today.
On the height of abstract expressionism the interest for animal paintings increased. The monkey paintings showed the purest abstract painting. The painting was cleansed by the cultural filter that held back the liberated man (not yet woman). Child paintings was looked upon the same way. They were painted by hands that had yet no training in writing and the gestures were thus primitive and genuine. From the abstract expressionist's view the skilled writing hand was the modern literate hand and thus not free. Although I am fascinated by people who can write nicely with both hands, I am also fascinated about the uncontrollability and the lines of my left hand while drawing or writing. I tried for a while to use my left hand more, on the reasons that it would stimulate my right hemisphere of the brain which controls creativity, artistic awareness and imagination. But in the middle of the experiment I just had to stop with the reason that I did not want my left hand to be that skilled and trained so that it would loose it's primitive lines. But from time to time I use my left hand and, by Paul Klee's description of drawing, "take a line out for a walk".
(Pro)Found
When writing about the collages and compositions of Kurt Schwitters from the 20s and 30s, I remembered my own experiments with the exact same thing some years back.
Then, as now, I had seen an exhibition of Schwitters' work; "Kurt Schwitters en de avant-garde" at Boijmans in Rotterdam, and was struck by the immediate fulfilling correctness in the compositions.
It was an instant logic.
I came back to Norway after my half-year stay in Rotterdam and spent my summer at Voss making postcard sized collages with found materials.
Kurt Schwitters and Jaap Blonk
October 4th last year I saw Jaap Blonk performing Kurt Schwitters' "Ursonata" at Henie-Onstad Art Centre just outside Oslo. Ursonata continously developed between 1922-32 until the notation was published in the last Merz journal. Each journal was dedicated to a specific theme, for instance prints by Hans Arp (Merz 5 1923), photos by the Rietveld chair, a sculpture by Arp, photogram by Moholy-Nagy and contribution from Tristan Tzara amongst others (Merz 4, 1923) and a number edited by El Lissinsky (Merz 8/9 1924).
The written score of Ursonata which was designed and typeset by Jan Tschichold shows four movements; rondo, largo, scherzo -trio-scherzo and presto-denoument-cadenza-finale.
This is Schwitter's own comments:
Though I've never worked purely with notations, my «POLARSTAR» project was all about hearing typography and topography. The shape, size and the distance between the marks, contour intervals and letters on the bathymetric map decided the sounds.
Sound poetry (or "nonsense poetry" as I've seen at least one blogger preferred calling it, though I don't agree, then we'd have to call all music nonsense in the terms of communication; Ursonata is communication all right) is the reverse -the sound is often the fascination first found and so follows the letter and the typography. On the other hand, the pure typographic works of Schwitters holds the synesthetic qualities of sound, the sensibility of musical arranging and composing with shapes and colours.
Besides his touring performing Schwitters' work, Blonk also draws his own visual poetry in large scale. I certainly want to hear them.
The written score of Ursonata which was designed and typeset by Jan Tschichold shows four movements; rondo, largo, scherzo -trio-scherzo and presto-denoument-cadenza-finale.
This is Schwitter's own comments:
The Sonata consists of four movements, of an overture and a finale, and seventhly, of a cadenza in the fourth movement. The first movement is a rondo with four main themes, designated as such in the text of the Sonata. You yourself will certainly feel the rhythm, slack or strong, high or low, taut or loose. To explain in detail the variations and compositions of the themes would be tiresome in the end and detrimental to the pleasure of reading and listening, and after all I’m not a professor.
[...]
Letters, of course, give only a rather incomplete score of the spoken sonata. As with any printed music, many interpretations are possible. As with any other reading, correct reading requires the use of imagination. The reader himself has to work seriously to become a genuine reader. Thus, it is work rather than questions or mindless criticism which will improve the reader’s receptive capacities. The right of criticism is reserved to those who have achieved a full understanding. Listening to the sonata is better than reading it. This is why I like to perform my sonata in public.
Though I've never worked purely with notations, my «POLARSTAR» project was all about hearing typography and topography. The shape, size and the distance between the marks, contour intervals and letters on the bathymetric map decided the sounds.
Sound poetry (or "nonsense poetry" as I've seen at least one blogger preferred calling it, though I don't agree, then we'd have to call all music nonsense in the terms of communication; Ursonata is communication all right) is the reverse -the sound is often the fascination first found and so follows the letter and the typography. On the other hand, the pure typographic works of Schwitters holds the synesthetic qualities of sound, the sensibility of musical arranging and composing with shapes and colours.
Besides his touring performing Schwitters' work, Blonk also draws his own visual poetry in large scale. I certainly want to hear them.
Acoustic listening. Analogue style.
"Acoustic listening devices developed for the Dutch army as part of air
defense systems research between World Wars 1 and 2."
More funny stuff here.
Documentation «POLARSTAR»
Here's some documentation photos of how my exhibition «POLARSTAR» at Rom8 November 2009 in Bergen looked like.
(Above: Photo of stone collected at East Greenland 1966)
(Above: Still Image from loop on the editing table screen. Wave filmed at Hoek van Holland. Below: "And it curled up and broke on the shore", Editing table, 16mm film loop and EKG )
(Above: Detail of the film in the light boxes. This is box #1 - scannig the harbour map og Juliannehåb/Quartotoq.
Below: "The distance from A to B", light box installation and sound.)
(Above: The catalogue/ artist book "POLARSTAR -the sound trail/ POLARSTAR -the voyage" was of course a part of the show.)
Parts of the exhibition was also shown at Open Academy, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Fine Arts in December 2009.
(Above: Photo of stone collected at East Greenland 1966)(Above: Still Image from loop on the editing table screen. Wave filmed at Hoek van Holland. Below: "And it curled up and broke on the shore", Editing table, 16mm film loop and EKG )(Above: Detail of the film in the light boxes. This is box #1 - scannig the harbour map og Juliannehåb/Quartotoq.Below: "The distance from A to B", light box installation and sound.)
(Above: The catalogue/ artist book "POLARSTAR -the sound trail/ POLARSTAR -the voyage" was of course a part of the show.)Parts of the exhibition was also shown at Open Academy, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Fine Arts in December 2009.