ReMida Trondheim

Meta.Morf 2022 / ReMida Trondheim /  Workshop for children April 25 – May 8, 2022.
Workshop exhibition May 7 & 8, 13.00 – 15.00 / Curator: Pål Bøyesen

Natural remake

An important aspect of children playing and learning to understand the world is to place us and all living beings in relation to each other and the surroundings. What kind of materials children have access to in everyday life then becomes important for this play to unfold.

ReMida invites children into a room with a variety of natural materials: sticks, stones, clay, shells, seeds, etc. as a starting point for constructing worlds with new connections and ideas about what nature is and can be for us on Earth.

Snow cannons already exist, we want to manipulate the clouds; how can we pollinate all the flowers while discussing how to grow food on Mars? Maybe can the children create new machines that help nature put us on a new track as well?

There will be opportunities to draw along the way, and as a contrast to nature, we want the children to construct machines that we build together and set in motion within the new natural environment. Here, artist Øystein Kjørstad Fjeldbo will assist with his expertise in the use of sensors, mechanics and sound.

BABEL visningsrom for kunst

Meta.Morf 2022 / Babel visningsrom for kunst / Exhibition April 1–April 24 /
Curator: Lena Katrine Sokki

Performance anxiety

Samuel Brzeski [UK]

A sea of language flows through a panopticon of palm sized screens vying for attention and demanding cognition. Mirrored echoes of the disjunctions between phonocentric and logocentric forms of communication act through stuttered speech, residual sound, fading text. In an environment where information overload is deployed liberally, text begins to haunt as it accelerates to an almost spectral speed. Barely visible — a ghost image.

The solo exhibition Performance anxiety presents new multimedia installation works at BABEL visningsrom for kunst. Taking the methods of digital age language-based information transfer as a starting point, the work focuses on such things as speed reading applications, practices of compulsive list-making, and neoliberal productivity drives. The screen is seen as a sculptural object in its own right; the hand-held tablet as a pressing conduit. Through video, text, sound, and voice, Performance anxiety explores acts of reading, misreading, and force-feeding.

This exhibition is supported by Bergen Kommune, Norsk Kulturråd and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond.

Samuel Brzeski
Samuel Brzeski’s (1988, London) current work deals with the situation of language within a post-digital context, particularly in relation to articulations of affect. His works search out the place and presence of the emotive body within the swirl of excess language surrounding the contemporary subject. Working primarily with acts of reading and vibrational semantics, the works investigate how the emotional impacts of digital culture are manifested through language in its many malleable forms. Reconfigurations of existing texts feature prominently, with texts selected for their poetic and political vibrations. A guiding principle of inherent rhythmicity is seen throughout the projects, which materialise as multimedia installations, vocal performances, and hybrid texts.

Brzeski has a BA in English Literature from the University of Sheffield, an MA in Fine Art from Bergen Art Academy. He also studied at the Mountain School of Arts program in Los Angeles. Recent and ongoing projects include exhibitions, performances, and publications with Lydgalleriet (Bergen), Østre (Bergen), Studio 17 (Stavanger), Inversia Festival (Murmansk), KRAFT (Bergen), Galleri Box (Gothenburg), and Chao Art Centre (Beijing). Since 2016, Samuel has been a leading member of the art writing collective and publishing platform TEXST.

Samuel is based in Bergen, Norway.

samuelbrzeski.com

Header Graphics: “Performance Anxiety” by Samiel Brzeski.
Portrait Photograph: Nayara Leite.

Dropsfabrikken

Meta.Morf 2022 / Dropsfabrikken / Exhibition April 28–June 26 / Curator: Anniken Storhaug

By drawing the waves I saw the sea where the waves gathered

Simone Hooymans [NL/NO]

The exhibition title By drawing the waves I saw the sea where the waves gathered refers to the way Simone Hooymans works. She draws separate elements that are often inspired by natural and organic forms which become part of one universe. There the elements transform over time. It is also symbolic for the way of believing that humans, flora, and fauna are all connected with one another and together are part of a complete cycle of life and that to damage one is to damage the other.

For the most part, Hooymans’ works develop from her interest in ecological ideas concerning the state of the earth and the relationship between humans and nature. Her sources often come from her fascination for historical manuscripts and scientific research like the botanical Voynich manuscript and Ernst Haeckel´s vision of nature. But also from the vision of the Apocalypse from the middle ages. All researchers are searching to declare life in any form based on scientific proof as well as on humans’ belief in hope and desire for natural beauty.

The video installation Chapel of Very Small Creatures invites you to enter a sacred chapel with a dark universe where fragile illuminated creatures are floating around. They seem to be aware of the one who watches and they move towards them and away to finally disappear into the vastness of the Universe. Why are they there and what are they telling us? Are they the keepers of nature or tiny angels or do they come from our own theatre of the mind?

The illuminated creatures are inspired by the primitive life forms drawn by the illustrator and scientist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel strongly believed that nature in all its forms is divine and should therefore be worshiped.

In contemporary nature religion, there is often talk of a sense of connection and belonging to the earth’s living systems or the universe as a whole. Hooymans lures you into the worship of nature’s beauty and magical universe. Asking the question: how strongly do we believe in nature and to what extent do we project our needs and reflections on nature and make it our own?

Hooymans explores the convergence point between our reality and the so-called invisible world of belief. With a fascination for ecology and the inexplicable in science, she explores how the two translate and interact with contemporary life and how to convey the essence of her research on an imaginary level.

Simone Hooymans
Simone Hooymans (1974) is born in the Netherlands and for the past 10 years has been living and working in Norway. She graduated from the Art academy for visual art in Arnhem (Artez) and the Art Academy Breda (St.Joost) in the Netherlands. Hooymans is an awarded filmmaker and has participated in a number of international group exhibitions and film festivals. Among others, Ars Electronica (2009), Høstutstillingen (2017/2019), Vestlandsutstillingen (2017), Grimstad Short Film Festival, the Beijing Short Film Festival, the Suwon IPark Museum of Art in South Korea. She won the audience award for best animation during the animation festival ReAnima in Bergen in November 2020 for the film Earthfall.

In 2020 she distinguished herself during the opening exhibition of Deichman’s new main library in Oslo, with a larger video installation Talking Plants. Hooymans works a lot with the interplay between innovative music and art with her animations and video installations. She has collaborated with several Norwegian musicians.

Simone Hooymans works primarily with drawing and animation. Her experimental animations are based on a hand drawn world which is brought to live with digital animation techniques to make elusive yet disturbing landscapes. The reason she started using this technique is because she had a desire to step into her own drawings. She wanted to see how the compositions of her drawings would enfold if she kept on going deeper into the drawing and let the story tell itself naturally. Simone’s hand-drawn animations are characterized by fantastic colors and fascinating movements that take the viewers into new universes. The botanical and organic drawings are created out of research about shape, color and movement and is often a pre-drawing before the actual animation is made. The characters are revealing themselves during this process.

Her work is built in layers, physical and metaphorical, incorporating images that are frequently disembodied from one another, but create a visual whole. Mostly Hooymans works develop out of her interest in ecological ideas about the state of the earth and the human relation with nature. But also a political view emerges often in her animations.

simonehooymans.com

Header Graphics: “Chapel of Very Small Creatures” by Simone Hooymans.

Nils Aas Kunstverksted

Meta.Morf 2022 / Nils Aas Kunstverksted /  Installation  June 18 – August 14 / Curator: Maria Veie Sandvik

KRAFT

Øyvind Brandtsegg [NO] & Erlend Leirdal [NO]

Kinetic wooden sculpture with sound elements.

Composer and musician Øyvind Brandtsegg is a well-known name at Inderøy and has previously created sound art for the sculpture Flyndra by Nils Aas. Flyndra is situated by the tidal stream Straumen as part of the sculpture park Muustrøparken, which is Inderøy’s millennium site. In a collaboration between Meta.Morf and Nils Aas Kunstverksted, Øyvind Brandtsegg will develop a new work for this year’s biennale themed Ecophilia, which will use the tidal current that has given Straumen its name. Brandtsegg has invited the artist Erlend Leirdal as a collaborator. Like Nils Aas, Leirdal has a special fondness for wood as a material. In the middle of Straumen, where Nils Aas grew up, these two artists will realize the tidal sculpture KRAFT in collaboration with NTNU Oceans, craftsmen from Stiklestad National Cultural Center and young adults from the local community.

The eternal tide of high tide twice a day is the pulse of the sea. The rhythm occurs as a result of the moon’s gravity and its rotation around the earth. The ebb and flow set enormous forces in motion; giant bodies of water move and create a breath. Nutrient-rich water masses are pumped up from the depths and provide living conditions for plankton, which is the basis for all life in the sea. The water in the fjord systems circulates and is exchanged with the sea.

Straumen at Inderøy is a unique local ocean current where the water from Borgenfjorden is exchanged with the Trondheimsfjord itself. It gives life to valuable banks of mussels from which large flocks of eider ducks feed.

The Trondheim Fjord is characterized by a supply of fresh water from the large watercourses. The fresh water is rich in nutrients and gives life to rich fish deposits in the country’s largest fjord, measured in cubic meters.

The water from the rivers that flow into the fjord, gives the water a pale feel through tiny clay particles that refract the light. This is marine clay from former seabeds in the Trøndelag landscapes, which in an eternal process is transported into the fjord massif.

In the Trøndelag lowlands we find large occurrences of Or (Alder). The alder forests have tubers at the roots, small nitrogen-producing factories where the tree has joined forces with bacteria. These forests are absolutely crucial for the stability of this type of landscape, such as reinforcement against erosion and landslides, especially in connection with open watercourses. In the spring, as a result of autumn, winter and spring floods, large numbers of alder trees will float around in the fjord, and wash up into ramparts on the beaches at the mouths of the large rivers.

The wooden sculpture KRAFT is made to talk about how the forces of nature affect us. Do we perhaps understand nature better by seeing our cultural and physical influences in it?

In the project’s technology and material use, we seek a poetic approach to this narrative. The tidal wheel will be set in rotation by the tide and change direction four times a day. The speed will vary according to the lunar phases as the tidal effect increases considerably around the new moon and new moon. In the execution, we will emphasize a craftsmanship angle and local use of materials made of alder so that this becomes a wooden sculpture with several layers of meaning potential. The forces provided by the power wheel will be converted into sound through a simple mechanical instrument that is an integral part of the sculpture.

Technical description:
The tidal wheel that the sculpture KRAFT consists of is built around a wooden shaft with spokes towards a circular frame with wooden shovels. Total diameter of about four meters. The wheel rests on a wooden structure of two bucks on a raft of two floating elements with a slot for the meeting between the wheel and the water. They will be positioned by means of two weighted land ropes and two anchor jumps.

Øyvind Brandtsegg [NO]
Øyvind Brandtsegg is a composer and performer working in the fields of computer improvisation and sound installations. He has a deep interest in developing new instruments and audio processing methods for artistic purposes, and he has contributed novel extensions to both granular synthesis, feedback systems, and live convolution techniques. Brandtsegg has participated on more than 25 music albums in a variety of genres. Since 2010 he is a professor of music technology at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway.

ntnu.edu/employees/oyvind.brandtsegg

Erlend Leirda [NO]
Erlend Leirdal (b. 1964) has worked with wood all his life and is very close to the legacy of ancient wood culture. The properties of the grown wood help to determine the design of his art, and from there grow the ideas that become three-dimensional works. That wood as a living material also changes in the face of weather and wind, Leirdal takes as a natural part of the work, and performance and other physical approaches also play a role in his art. Leirdal’s art has been purchased by i.a. The National Museum and KODE.

erlendleirdal.com

Header Graphics: “KRAFT” by Øyvind Bandtsegg & Erlend Leirdal.
Portrait Photograph (Erlend): Mats Linder.

Vitensenteret i Trondheim

Meta.Morf 2022 / Vitensenteret i Trondheim / Installation May 3 – June 19 / Curator: Åshild Adsen

PLASTIVORE

Oliver Kellhammer [CA/DE/US]

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest crises of today. And, although many countries today are banning the use of single use plastics, the amount of plastic surrounding us can feel overwhelming. Polystyrene is a large component of our global waste problem. A non-biodegradable material and a major component of both marine and terrestrial pollution. Styrofoam (expanded polystyrene) is a difficult to recycle component of the global waste stream. With his botanical interventions Oliver Kellhammer seeks to find solutions through his art practice.

Kellhammer collaborated with students at Parsons School of Design in New York to demonstrate how insects could help us break down this plastic problem making a protocol and allowed viewers to watch mealworms dine on polystyrene.

Recent research shows that the mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) has the amazing ability to biodegrade styrofoam via symbiotic organisms that live in its gut. Kellhammer has worked with students at Parsons over the past few semesters to develop protocols to demonstrate this process.

The installation consists of partially degraded Styrofoam objects that have been exposed to the mealworms for a while. As objects of contemplation, they are reminiscent of the Scholar’s Stones (pinyin: gõngshí) that have long been celebrated in China and Japan.

Kellhammer’s installation was first exhibited at Science Gallery Dublin in 2018 and Melbourne in 2019 and we are delighted to present this project at the Science Center in Trondheim.

Oliver Kellhammer
Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, writer, and researcher who seeks, through his botanical interventions and social art practice, to demonstrate nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. Recent work has focused on the psychosocial effects of climate change, decontaminating polluted soil, reintroducing prehistoric trees to landscapes impacted by industrial logging, and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfields. He is currently a lecturer in sustainable systems at Parsons, NY.

oliverk.org

Header Graphics: “Plastivore” by Oliver Kellhammer.