Still from The Poet’s Antidote (2019), by Tanya Busse
Harstad Kino, screen 2
Screening followed by a panel conversation with artists Tanya Busse and Miloš Trakilović, moderated by the curator of this screening, Liv Brissach
Language: English
Image-making and warfare technologies are intimately connected, historically and presently. In this screening, works by three artists whose work actively engages with the politics of war and the politics of the image, are presented. Their speculative approaches to present day image operations, counter-war strategies and memorialisation are examples of pertinent artistic approaches to current and past events, the media and technology.
Adversarial Infrastructure (2020), by Anna Engelhardt
10 min
Initial research into the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine yielded a key insight: logistical infrastructure is a form of hybrid warfare. The contemporary Crimean Bridge, a propaganda megaproject built to reinforce the Russian occupation of Crimea, inflicts harm to both Crimean populations and Ukrainian maritime logistics. By producing a deepfake video where Putin unabashedly declares the bridge as the epitome of Russian colonialism, the project exposes the weaponisation of logistics.
The Poet’s Antidote (2019), by Tanya Busse
12 min 33 sec
Created against the backdrop of northern Europe – Cold War fears, a changing political landscape, and the remnants of post-military architecture – The Poet’s Antidote was originally conceived for a site-specific installation located in a now defunct Nato submarine base. The video, which is part of a work series with photographs and sculptures, is the result of an ongoing conversation the artist has with a Noaidi (Sami shaman, poet and friend) in which they attempt to imagine a spell that destroys the war machine. Norway is one of the world’s largest arms exporters, and in its own way, this work tries to confront the military industrial complex through spiritual means.
Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously (2023), by Miloš Trakilović
24 min 40 sec
Filmed in the Netherlands, Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and oscillating between simulated and existing landscapes, Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously unfolds as an inquisitive and poetic dream sequence that challenges the hegemonic role of vision and truth in the narratives of war and visual culture at large. Through the lens of his family history, specifically his mother’s escape from the Bosnian War with her two children in 1995, Trakilović invokes the invisible, unrelenting spectral forces that constitute the experience and memory of war and its aftermath. The film entwines heartfelt triangulations between green, grass, and freedom with the coded and simulative nature of digital technologies in which green plays an imperative role, such as the green screen or chroma key, and computer-generated imagery.
Miloš Trakilović is a Bosnian-Dutch artist. He obtained a BFA and MFA from the University of Arts in Berlin, where he graduated from the department of Experimental Film and New Media Art. His work focuses on the political aspects of perceptibility, exploring issues such as dissolution, fragmentation, memory and loss. His practice includes a strong research component and is primarily centered on digital media, with film, video, animation, and installation as central elements. His work has been presented in National Art Center, Tokyo (2024); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2023); Trafó Gallery, Budapest (2023); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022); Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2021); Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2021); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2020); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2019) among others.
Tanya Busse is a visual artist working across mediums of moving-image, installation and photography. Her practice explores the synthesis of nature often combined with an industrial, post-human presence. She is interested in deep-time, invisible architecture and how power is produced and articulated through material relationships and histories of place. Her works have been presented in a number of exhibitions, including Greenlight Triennial 2024, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, the 13th Turku Biennial of Art in Finland, the Toronto Biennial of Art, the Nanaimo Art Gallery in British Columbia, Gallery 44 Center for Photography in Toronto Canada, Mumbai Art Room India, Podium Gallery, Oslo, Vaga Center for Art and Knowledge, Sao Miguel, Azores, Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg, Sweden, amongst others. She is the co-director of New Mineral Collective, a collaborative practice that explores landscapes of extraction, and also Mondo Books, an independent book platform that publishes and distributes printed materials across the circumpolar north. She currently lives and works in Tromsø, Norway.
Anna Engelhardt is an alias of a video artist and writer. Her investigative practice follows the traces of material violence, focusing on what could be seen as the ‘ghost’ of information. The toxic information environments she deals with stem from structures of occupation and dispossession. Her work has been shown at transmediale, Berlin; ICA, London; Kyiv Biennial; Ars Electronica; Biennial TEA Tenerife; National Gallery of Art, Lithuania; BFI London Film Festival; B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt; The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, Oslo.
Liv Brissach works as a curator at the Northern Norwegian Art Museum / Davvi Norgga Dáiddamusea. They previously worked as Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH in Oslo, Norway, and as Project Officer at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Brissach was co-curator of the MUNCH Triennale – The Machine is Us (2022) and assistant curator for The Sámi Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. They trained as an art historian at University College London and at the University of Oslo, and their texts can be found in publications by Artes Mundi, MUNCH, OCA and Fotogalleriet.