Exhibitions 2014

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Relations between the visible and the invisible operate as an underlying question and theme within artistic production. As Merleau-Ponty suggests, often the drive of art is to make visible what is often unseen, overlooked or under-appreciated. Such fundamental views though find additional expression in strategies of secrecy, camouflage, dematerialization and covert occupation, reminding of the tensions inherent to visibility. At times when the freedoms of expression central to artistic work come into conflict with prevailing ideologies, invisibility may become a question of survival. By the same token, in the case of Magic Block, we exhibit artists whose aim has been to stress erasures, suppressions or the impossibility of representation, through a play of phantasmic appearance.

Magic Block seeks to explore these relations, specifically highlighting artists working in Chile over the last 35 years. The example of Chile offers a compelling view onto the power plays of visibility and disappearance. The dictatorship of Pinochet, from 1973 to 1989, brought forward a difficult structure under which many artists struggled. And even now, in recalling its current traces. In doing so, questions of what was permissible or not lent to experimental approaches, and often the issue of what can be shown, and how or what can be seen, provided a challenging backdrop to the arts. This led to performative, ephemeral and conceptual approaches, inspiring artists to work directly in public space, while also turning inward to the experiences of private life, to gauge the politics of silence and silencing.

Examining these methods and histories, the exhibition focuses on aspects of magic, the phantasmic and the imaginary, drawing these out through works that often search for ways around the weight of history and its forgetting. Currently, these issues have led to an incessant revisit by artists onto historical matters, often relating these to individual memories, or those still not fully recalled or recovered. Explored through a constellation of issues that span from the unperceived and the missing, the life of the secret and the hidden, or towards their fantasy presence, and the impossibility to fully grasp or tell, currents in contemporary Chilean art may be appreciated as pointing toward new forms of poetic and political agency.

Magic Block – Contemporary Art from Chile
Catalina Bauer / Gonzalo Díaz / Juan Downey / Voluspa Jarpa / Rainer Krause / Michelle-Marie Letelier / Claudia Missana / Enrique Ramírez / Eugenio Téllez /
Sandra Vásquez de la Horra
Curated by Soledad García and Brandon LaBelle
Produced by Stiftelsen 3,14
17.01.-02.03.14

18.01.14
The Invisible Seminar: Magic
13:30 - 17:00
with Alena Alexandrova, Soledad García Saavedra, Brandon LaBelle, Michelle-Marie Letelier.
The seminar is in collaboration with Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

The Invisible Seminar is an ongoing project investigating the topic of invisibility and aims to consider questions of agency and appearance, the immaterial and identity, and how these interlink to perform within culture and politics.
read more >>>

06.02.14
Lecture: "By Reason or By Force" by Valentina Montero
In Chile, in recent years there have been renewed forms of demonstration and protest. Through the occupation of public space (physical and virtual), social movements have used creative and poetic practices for disturbing public order, questioning the neoliberal model implemented during the dictatorship, deepened by recent governments and the democratic crisis. One of the important features of these manifestations is the appropriation of resources, strategies and aesthetic borrowed from advertising, film and pop culture in general, along with the use of technology and media.
The lecture will show some of the most representative examples of these actions, trying to understand them within its political context and its symbolic dimension, tracing their connections to conceptual practices carried out since the 70's and 80's in Chile and Latin America.
>>>

Lecture text:
Disobedient Poetics From kisses to megalomaniacs strategies of demonstrations on streets
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Catalina Bauer

Gonzalo Díaz

Juan Downey

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra

Voluspa Jarpa

Michelle-Marie Letelier

Claudia Missana

Enrique Ramírez

Eugenio Téllez

Gabriel Lester
The Silent Trilogy
- The Blank Stare, 2013
- The Big One, 2011
- The Last Smoking Flight, 2008
Video
21.03.-04.05.14

Gabriel Lester, the world-renowned artist, is for the first time, exhibiting his silent film trilogy. It consists of the following works: The Blank Stare, The Big One, and The Last Smoking Flight.

Gabriel Lester works impressively cross very diverse disciplines. This includes cinema, music, performance, installation, sculpture and architecture, with a strong theatric flare as a red thread tying his artistic oeuvre together. The artist is an innovator of the visual language. He speaks of his work in terms of «from a desire to tell stories and construct environments that support these stories or propose their own narrative interpretation.» Distinctly the driving force of the artist’s practice is an investigation of perception and observation. In general, one could say that Lester practice is cinematographic without essentially employing film or video, but posing a fragmented and atmospheric exploration of the powerful narrative media and its qualities. Then again, when the work is filmatic, Lester perfects techniques like editing, cutting, repositioning and perspective to create tension, suspense and drama. The viewer is offered minimalistic and atmospheric abstraction which allude ways to relate to the world and focus on the means and aspects that constitute our perception and understanding of it.

Parallel with his exhibition at 3,14, Gabriel Lester also exhibits in the 19th Biennale of Sydney (21 March–9 June, 2014).

Rainer Krause

The Blank Stare - 2013
14' 43" - HD-video

The Blank Stare is the last film in the silent film trilogy in which explores the inward gaze (introspection, reflection, daydrea-ming and magical thinking). The film consists of a sequence of five rooms in which people, creatures and spirits are all connected by their gaze. Here arises an inward look, for the characters in the film, but also for the spectator of the film. In a seamless linkage the film moves from a scene of an everyday waiting room to an observation room in a mental institution, what could be the prayer room of a religious sect, a company of creatures in the future and, finally, to a space where infinity awaits.

The Blank Stare does not have any spoken dialogue, but is supported by a sound environment and a music composition by Job Chajes. The sets were designed and build by Gabriel Lester.

The Big One - 2011
17’ 24” – RED to HDV

The film depicts a grand spectacle, where a group of people partaking in the lottery rite, are observed as they proceed through the various stages of the ceremony and imagine destiny unfolding. The film depicts both man’s desire for change and a sense of (cosmic) justice, as well as the gaze inward, when the characters in the film seem to undergo an inner search, looking for what they could imagine would happen if they were to become the lucky winner. A lottery draw, a spectacle that follows the logic of narrative drama, without proposing a plot or characters.

The Last Smoking Flight - 2008
23’ 44” – RED to HDV (2008)

A triptych – clouds, airplane and smoke – the film depicts a group of passengers in a small airplane trapped in time and space; on the way from somewhere on the way to nowhere. The passengers are gazing both inwardly as well as outwardly, and seen wrapped up in thought, lost as much in their imagination as the airplane is in time and space. The film meditates on the ephemeral: the way life and ideas eventually pass and fade away. Simultaneously this work is both a tribute and a lament to a highly potent and versatile symbol of the 19th and 20th century.

Katrine Sunde
"I C"
Video screening
21.03.-04.05.14

Katrine Sunde´s work I C is an extensive series of photographic images carefully selected and sequentially presented as a slide show. The images are an abstraction, a term delineating to a method more than a style and movement. The abstraction is of our eyes abstraction of nature. The abstraction in photography proceeds in a reductive manner. The starting point is a complex situation, and by increasingly leaving out non-essential elements, moves on towards essential elements, to ‘pure’ knowledge. In this work, the centre of our eye.

Conseptually Sunde progress in an inductive manner. Her research is exploratory. She begins with an idea, in order to create a new complex of positions or typologies. We might say that the abstraction here transforms matter into something intellectual, while conceptually transforms something intellectual into matter.

The Eye is the organ of vision. The combination of pigmentation and pattern in the iris, makes each eye unique. This unique pattern in the human iris is formed by 10 months of age, and remains unchanged throughout one's lifetime. The probability of two irises producing the same random pattern is nearly impossible, and a distinctive iris pattern is not susceptible to theft, loss or compromise. When a human die, the pupil dilate completely and is no longer susceptible to light stimuli. Lack of life one sees in the eye. From historical times in the west, the eye has been viewed as the mirror of the soul. The eye revealed happiness, lies, sorrow etc., and while in traditional Chinese medicine the eye is used in diagnostics. The eye is the window of the heart.

One could also talk about the work in terms of microphotographs. With the microscopic vision and by focusing in on particular segments of a whole, it abstracts the objects to such an extent that they end up creating a very own world as seen in some of the images. The pictures they generate become autonomous images in their own right, the origins obscured in some of them.

Seeing such a large series of irises, and how they compare and contrast to each other, constitutes also as a form of structure-based images. Placing IC within New Topographic movement. With their pure form and pattern, each image is an object in itself. Any detail that might detract from the core theme is excluded, and distilled away. The work is made for comparisons of viewpoints. The eyes can be appreciated for their aesthetics, re-presented, and re-framed individually. However, it is the repetitive structure and how they relate to each other, that pure essence of the work.

The photograph can also be an expression of human ideas and symbols: a pictorial equivalent of abstract ideas, visions, hopes and dreams. «I C» as in «I see» and «Eye see» focuses on human relation and interaction. She poses a number of questions such as if we as individualists are able to see the other as just that, an individual. Do we see the other as is? Do we see them differently? Do we focus on only being seen ourselves? Are we like Narcissus, the beautiful Greek, who discovered his own refection and fell in love with it? Like fixated, not realizing it was merely an image, he became unable to withdraw his gaze and leave his reflection. He died staring at his own mirage.

Katrine Sunde combines photographic techniques – convincingly combined creativity and technical expertise to an impressive compositional degree. She has clear references to photographic history just as much as she strive to transcend it and move forward. The power of the work is the stark elegance of the images and the fascinating effect of repetition. IC does not necessarily demand explanations and instructions for us to perceive and comprehend them properly, but rather seek a direct, immediate and convincing pictorial effect. IC is simply accessible. The work draws an intuitive, spontaneous and enthusiastic response.

ANGELICA DASS
"humanae"
Photographs.
29.08.-26.10.14
Opening reception: Friday 29th at 18:00
Angelica Dass will be present.

Cardamomyang: Bringing North Korea to Norway
Students from Kum Song Music School in Pyongyang.

www.nknews.org/2014/03/cardamomyang-bringing-north-korea-to-norway/

se også:
http://www.tv2.no/2014/05/03/nyheter/utenriks/5559551
http://www.tv2.no/nord-korea#
http://tv2.no/video/?progId=704202
http://tv2.no/video/?progId=709159
http://www.ba.no/hvaskjeribergen/article7358044.ecehttp://www.bt.no/tv/Bruker-tiggere-i-markedsforingen-3119090.html?paging&section#.U3d9xfl_uu
http://www.ba.no/puls/article7369427.ece

The Holy Trinity

The Promised Land

Yes / No

SEPARATISM

YES, WE LOVE THIS COUNTRY, Documentary

GILLES AUBRY
"L’Amplification des Âmes"
sound shower

L’Amplification des Âmes (The Amplification of Souls) is an audio essay on the amplified religious soundscape of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 2011, Aubry recorded the sound of several christian neo-pentecostal church ceremonies in Kinshasa. The use of powerful sound amplification systems is an essential element that contributes to the creation of new ‘urban religious identities’, while simultaneously sustaining some traditional elements.
21.03.-04.05.14

Humanæ is a “work in progress” by the Brazilian Angélica Dass, who intends to deploy a chromatic range of the different human skin colors. Those who pose are volunteers who have known the project and decide to participate. There is no preconceived selection of participants and there are no classifications relating to nationality, gender, age, race, social class or religion. Nor is there an explicit intention to finish it on a specific date. It is open in all senses and it will include all those who want to be part of this colossal global mosaic. The only limit would be reached by completing all of the world's population.

A photographic taxonomy of these proportions has rarely been undertaken; those who preceded Angélica Dass were characters of the 19th century that, for various reasons - legal, medical, administrative, or anthropological - used photographs to establish different types of social control of the power. The best-known is that of the portraits of identity, initiated by Alphonse Bertillon and now used universally. However, this taxonomy close to Borges´ world, adopts the format of the PANTONE ® guides, which gives the collection a degree of hierarchical horizontality that dilutes the false preeminence of some races over others based on skin color or social condition. These guidelines have become one of the main systems of color classification, which are represented by means of an alphanumeric code, allowing to recreate them accurately in any medium: is a technical-industrial standard.

The process followed in Humanæ also is rigorous and systematic: the background for each portrait is tinted with a color tone identical to a sample of 11 x 11 pixels taken from the face of the photographed. Aligned as in the famous samples, its horizontality is not only formal also is ethical. Thus, without fuss, with the extraordinary simplicity of this semantic metaphor, the artist makes an "innocent" displacement of the socio-political context of the racial problem to a safe medium, the guides, where the primary colors have exactly the same importance that the mixed ones. It even dilutes the figure of power that usually the photographer holds. The use of codes and visual materials belonging to the imagery that we all share, leaves in the background the self-referentiality of the artist, insistent and often tiresome.
The will that the project evolves in other directions beyond their control (debates, educational applications, replicas and a host of alternatives that have already triggered by sharing Humanæ on social networks) contributes also to the dilution of the hierarchy of the author. Many of the ingredients that characterize the [best] spirit of this time appear to be part of this project: shared authorship, active solidarity and local proposals likely to operate globally, networking, communication expanded to alternative spaces of debate, awareness without political ideology, social horizontality...

The spectator is invited to press the share button in his brain.

By Alejandro Castellote

Courtesy of Galería Max Estrella, Madrid, Spain.

Work in progress: Angélica Dass will display a set of 150 photographs in the spaces of the gallery. A make shift photography studio similar to which the artist has used in previous sessions will be located in the back of the display wall (where later the portraits taken in Bergen will be featured) During the week leading up of the exhibition opening, there will be an open call, offering the possibility to take part in the project.

Angélica Dass (Rio de Janeiro, 1979) graduated as a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). She completed a Master in Photography (Concept and Creation) at EFTI School of Photograph, in Madrid.

www.angelicadass.com | humanae.tumblr.com/About

Cinthia Marcelle
"Cruzada"
2010, Brazil | video | 8'36'' in loop
29.08.-26.10.14

Cinthia Marcelle has in her work a unique approach which challange our perception about conventional aproach and interaction. This she often bring forth with a playful manner.
Sixteen musicians come from the four extremities of a cross, 4 from each side, wearing 4 colors: yellow, red, blue and green. The four groups (one with the ride cymbals, one with the snare and bass drums, one with the trumpets and trombones and one with the baritone saxhorns and tubas) each one at a time, come into action, playing the sounds in a chaotic way until they've reached the crossing point of the cross. When they all meet, face to face, they begin a duel, which ends up in a choreography where the musicians exchange places, forming then four music bands of colors and mixed instruments. At the sound of the same song finally in harmony, the musicians leave the crossing point, each one at a time and spread around, through the four ways of the cross.

Produced by KATÁSIA FILMES.

Courtesy of Gallery Vermelho, São Paulo, Brasil.

Cinthia Marcelle is one of Brazils most exiting young artist and will be featured for the first time in Norway.

Cinthia Marcelle won The Future Generation Art Prize 2010 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, juried by Daniel Birnbaum (Sverige), Okwui Enwezor (Nigeria), Yuko Hasegawa (Japan), Ivo Mesquita (Brazil), Eckhard Schneider (Tyskland), Robert Storr (USA) and Ai Weiwei (Kina).

> PARABOL
Richard Glover
"Logical Harmonies"
Sound
29.08.-26.10.14

more >>>

TROND LOSSIUS
The Place Sound Builds in Passing
Trond Lossius åpner sin lydinstallasjon i samspill med Bergen Barokk på 3,14.
31.10.-09.11.14

Fredag 31.10.
> 17.00 Åpning
> 17.30 Bergen Barokk
Lørdag 1.11.
> 14.00 Bergen Barokk
> 15.30 Trekantsambandet
> 17.00 Bergen Barokk, til ca 18.00
Søndag 2.11.
> 14.00 Bergen Barokk
> 15.30 Jostein Gundersen og Hans Knut Sveen
> 17.00 Bergen Barokk, til ca 18.00

OBS! ÅPNINGSTIDER LØRDAG 1. & SØNDAG 2. NOV.: kl. 14.00-18.00

31. oktober åpner Trond Lossius sin lydinstallasjon ”The place sound builds in passing” i samspill med Bergen Barokk på Stiftelsen 3,14 i Vågsbunnen. Gjennom Bergen kirkeautunnale og uken etter vil innspilt lyd fra forskjellige uteområder flyttes inn i galleriet og bli lydomgivelser i et rom som har sin egen historie, sitt eget lydmiljø og en særegen akustikk. I korte eller lengre intervall vil utøvere spille opp mot dette, gjennom musikalsk eller visuell presentasjon, elektronisk eller akustisk. Fra tirsdag 4. november vil de skiftende lydlandskapene gå i dialog med videoarbeid av Jeremy Welsh.

De senere årene har Trond Lossius gjort lydopptak i ulike utemiljø. Han benytter en Ambisonic mikrofon som fanger opp lyd fra alle retninger på en slik måte at opptakene kan avspilles i surround. Heller enn å være opptak av enkeltlyder og lydkilder, er dette opptak av lydomgivelser, og opptakene gir en fornemmelse av sted. Mange som arbeider med feltopptak fokuserer enten på det urbane, i en forlengelse av en futuristisk ”art of noise” tradisjon, eller gjør opptak i uberørt natur. Trond Lossius sine opptak er hovedsaklig gjort i bydeler og forsteder. Dette er steder som hverken er utpreget urbane eller uberørt natur, men hvor lydbildet i stedet blir en ”skitten” antroposcenisk miks. Disse miljøene fremstår mange ganger som hverdagslige, banale og anonyme, og i lydopptakene er det få markører som gjør det mulig å identifisere det enkelte stedet. I stedet preges opptakene av auditive fellesnevnere som går igjen fra et sted til et annet, fra en bydel til en annen, og fra et land til et annet. Lydomgivelsenes kvaliteter er mer tidsspesifikke enn geografisk bestemt. Opptakene dokumenterer hvordan lydomgivelsene påvirkes av trafikk og andre kommunikasjonsmidler, og hvordan disse fremkomstmidlene har blitt en grunnleggende premiss for organiseringen av det moderne samfunnet.

Samtidig skifter lyden karakter når den lyttes til løsrevet fra visuell informasjon om stedet og lydkildene. Mange lydkilder blir vanskelige å identifisere og kategorisere, og nye koblinger og fellesnevnere oppstår. Parallelt med immersiv lytting til landskapene hvor opptakene er gjort, innbyr opptakene også til en fenomenologisk redusert lytting til lyden i seg selv, som lydobjekter, i tråd med tenkning innen fransk akusmatisk musikk. I lydinstallasjonen vil bearbeiding og abstraherende prosessering av lydopptakene bidra til å fremheve og undersøke disse kvalitetene. Samtidig vil lydinstallasjon være tilpasset stedet hvor den presenteres, og gå i dialog med akustikken, arkitekturen og lydomgivelsene ved Stiftelsen 3,14.

Arbeidet med lydinstallasjonen er prosessorientert. Trond Lossius vil bruke visningsperioden til aktiv utforsking av lydmaterialet og undersøke hvordan det kan brukes og lyttes til på ulike måter. Lydinstallasjonen vil derfor forandre seg fra dag til dag, og inngå i samspill med musikkutøvere i improvisasjoner. Fra tirsdag 4. november vil video komme inn som en viktig del av installasjonen. I denne siste delen av prosjektperioden vil hovedfokus ligge på audiovisuelle feltopptak som Trond Lossius og Jeremy Welsh har gjort sammen på Vestlandet. Dette er en første utprøving av materiale fra et pågående samarbeidsprosjekt. Disse utforskingene vil fortsette senere i høst i en utstilling ved Visningsrommet USF som Jeremy Welsh står i spissen for, og hvor Trond Lossius er invitert inn som en av flere deltagere.

Ansvarlige for produksjonen er Bergen Barokk og Trond Lossius som tidligere har samarbeidet i liknende prosjekt, - ”Lines Converging at a Distance”, under jubileet i Håkonshallen i 2011 og i konsertform som ”Brudd. Flate.” under Holbergdagene samme år. Produksjonen skjer i samarbeid med Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen kirkeautunnale og Ekkofestivalen, med støtte fra Bergen kommune, Norsk kulturråd og BEK - Bergen senter for elektronisk kunst.

Du kan lese mer om Trond Lossius sitt arbeid med feltopptak i en artikkel som nylig ble publisert i Journal for Artistic Research.[1]

Trond Lossius har utdanning i geofysikk fra Universitetet i Bergen, komposisjon ved Griegakademiet, Institutt for musikk, UiB, og har vært kunststipendiat ved KHIB. Han undersøker forhold mellom lyd, rom og sted i installasjoner og andre tverrkunstneriske prosjekter. Han er tilknyttet BEK - Bergen senter for elektronisk kunst, hvor han arbeider med kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid, prosjektkoordinering, programvareutvikling og forskning.[2]

[1] http://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/48986/65823
[2] http://www.trondlossius.no=

Bergen Barokk regnes som et av Norges ledende tidligmusikk-ensembler, og ble stiftet av Frode Thorsen og Hans Knut Sveen i 1994. Foruten konserter i inn- og utland, har ensemblet spilt inn musikk av både kjente og tildels lite kjente komponister, som Arcangelo Corelli, Francesco Maria Veracini, Francesco Barsanti, Georg von Bertouch, Benedetto Marcello, Georg Friedrich Händel, Johann Christoph Pepusch, Jacques Paisible, Gottfried Finger, Johann Jakob Froberger og andre. I 2006 gav Bergen Barokk den første CDen i en planlagt komplett utgave av alle de 72 kantatene i Georg Philipp Telemanns Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst (1725-26). Femte av i alt 13 CDer i serien ble sluppet i 2013. Bergen Barokk er støttet av Bergen kommune, Norsk kulturråd og Universitetet i Bergen /v. Griegakademiet.

Jeremy Welsh er billedkunstner og professor ved Kunstakademiet i Trondheim, NTNU. Hans kunstnerisk arbeid omfatter video/film, foto og installasjon, ofte realisert i samarbeid med andre kunstnere og musikere. Til prosjektet på 3,14 skal han bidra med HD videoopptak spillt inn på Vestlandet sommer og høst 2014 under flere felles reiser med Trond Lossius. De siste årene har mye av Welsh’s arbeid vært fokusert på vår opplevelse og oppfatning av sted (Place) - et tema han har utforsket både som kunstner, lærer og kurator, med blant annet utstillingen “Tracking/Tracing” som fant sted på 3,14 i 2012.

WORKS LIST:
EXHIBITION SPACE:
- SEPARATISM (2014) Remix of Borderlines (2011-12) Authentic border posts from the Norwegian-Russian (ex-Soviet Union) border. Previously shown in Kirkenes and Oslo, Norway and Murmansk, Russia.
- YES/NO (2010-11) Two Centurion battle tanks of 50 tonnes each, on loan from Sweden’s Museum of Military History. Previously censored in 2010 and then shown in Oslo, Norway the following year.
- THE PROMISED LAND (2012) 226 Norwegian soldiers from Border Guards Regiment South Varanger, 30 civilians from Kirkenes area, North Korean mass gymnastics instructors, images from the Barents region. Previously shown in Kirkenes 2012.
- YES, WE LOVE THIS COUNTRY (2012) Documentary, 48 min. NRK State Television. Director: Vivi Stenberg. English subtitles
- THE HOLY TRINITY (2014) Remix of Body Armour (2010-11) Silicon shell on replica models of AK-47 (Kalashnikov, Soviet/Russia), M-60 machine gun (USA) and Mauser C-96 semi-automatic pistol (Germany). Previously shown in Oslo, Norway and Stockholm, Sweden.
- THE WHISTLEBLOWERS (2014) Music video for Laibach. www.laibach.org
- GIFT/SHOP (2014) Mixed media and merchandise. New work.

PUBLIC SPACE:
- UKUNST (2014) Performance: Human billboards, Roma people. New work.
- SEPARATISM (2014) - See nr.1 on the list Installation in “byparken” from 19.05 - 16.06.14