In this site specific work, Kjersti Sundland and Anne Bang-Steinsvik is using real time audio and video processing as an interface connecting the interior and external surroundings of the building. Participation is explored through levels of technological invasion and feedback connecting audience, performer and the projected image.

What does it mean to be lost? I follow the path the forest, stray from the path, and all of a sudden, I feel completely disorientated. Space is still organized within the conformity of my body. There are regions to my front and back, to my right and left, but they are not geared to any reference points, and hence are quite useless. Front and back regions suddenly feel arbitrary, since I have no better reason to go forward than to go back. Let a flickering light appear behind a distant clump of trees. I remain lost in that I still do not know where I am in the forest, but space has dramatically regained its structure. The flickering light has established a goal. As I more towards that goal, front and back, left and right has reassumed their meaning: I stride forward, I am glad to have left dark space, and make sure that I not veer to the left or right.
Yi –Fu Tuan "space and place"

CONJOIN | FOLLOWER
Bergen Kjøtt, Skutevikstorget 1, Bergen
22. – 23. januar 2015, kl 20.00 – 22.00

Kjersti Sundland about Conjoin | Follower:
As part of my research I am in constant dialogue with other artists whose artistic projects cover territory similar to mine. Opening up the work for collaboration both in the making of Conjoin and as part of an extended conversation, the exhibition includes KHiB MA graduate Nora Adwan and her work; Follower. Nora Adwan is working with dancer Lisa Nøttseter on a live and screen based work. Recorded from several angles, Lisa moves between images of herself mapped out in the space.

There will be continuous performances throughout the two evenings, alternating between the 2 works, Conjoin and Follower. 

In my current artistic research, I am investigating embodied spectatorship through the use of real time sound and video.  The sonic and physical gesture trigger "scenes" in a moving image. I am interested in the relationship between human physical (carnal) presence and the "screen", and how video can function as both as observer and an infiltrator between performer, audience, and the artwork. I see the presence of screens in our culture today; TV, computer, cinema, and smart phones screens, all representing parts of an electronic presence, acting as physical extensions of our human body, like a prosthetic limb. By removing it, will we suffer from a phantom pain? Could this pain somehow be made spatial, temporal and visible?

Writer Vivian Sobshack reflects upon the subject of embodied consciousness and its relation to the moving image culture in her essay "The scene of the screen".  Sobshack is comparing today's moving image and media culture, with how the powerful technology of the x-ray, telescope and the microscope, fundamentally altered the perception of ourselves, and argues that todays technologies is having an even greater impact, because these technologies are also "culturally persuasive"., infiltrating our cultural practices in a much more direct way than the technology of a specialist elite. While x-ray, telescope and microscope have become powerful metaphors for our imagination, the omnipresent media culture shapes our expressions directly.

The exhibition is part of this on-going artistic research process, made possible with support by Funds for Artistic Research, Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Equipment, support and programming (Conjoin) by Stian Remvik. BEK, Bergen Centre for Electronic art. Thank you Kristian Skjold and Nathan Corum for building assistance.