Abyss, Knut Åsdam
For information in English, please scroll down
Harstad Kino
Kr 90,- / Gratis med festivalpass, men billett må hentes ut på Harstad Kino
Kortfilmprogram med påfølgende paneldiskusjon
Knut Åsdam er utdannet ved Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York (94-95), Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (92-94), Goldsmiths College, University of London (89-92), Wimbledon School of Art, London (88 -89), Universitetet i Oslo og Maui Community College, Maui, Hawaii. Åsdams arbeid har blitt vist på Tate Modern, Bergen Kunsthall, Tate Britain, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam; Biennalen i Venezia, Kunsthalle Bern, Istanbul Biennial, Frac Bourgogne, MACRO, Roma, Samtidskunstmuseet, Oslo, Manifesta7, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, P.S.1 MOMA, New York, og Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
I forbindelse med Arctic Moving Image & Film Festival har den Tromsøbaserte kuratoren Hanne Hammer Stien kuratert et todelt kunstprosjekt som består av bestillingsverket ‘du mah heures pah maj’ av Georgia Munnik og et program med filmer av Knut Åsdam, med påfølgende debatt under tittelen Arktisk urbanisme. Tema for kunstprosjektet er språk og arkitektur.
Knut Åsdam er blant annet opptatt av hvordan språk påvirker relasjonene mellom mennesker. Dette kommer til uttrykk i et filmprogram satt sammen spesielt for festivalen. Programmet består av de tre filmene Oblique (2008), Abyss (2010) og Egress (2013). Åsdam har lenge vært bosatt i London, og livet i det urbane europeiske samfunnet er et tilbakevendende tema i hans kunst. Han er opptatt av hvordan individer konstruerer og kontinuerlig forhandler sin identitet som en reaksjon på både de fysiske og de psykiske strukturene som vi omgir oss med, blant annet representert gjennom arkitektur og språk. Åsdam er bosatt i Oslo og han er professor på Nordland kunst og filmfagskole i Kabelvåg. Han holder for tiden på med en nytt filmprosjekt som finner sted i grenseområdet mellom Norge og Russland i Finnmark.
I tilknytning til visningen av Åsdams filmer arrangeres det en debatt med Knut Åsdam, samfunnsgeograf Tone Huse og filmviter Scott McKenzie. Debatten ledes av kurator Hanne Hammer Stien. Utgangspunktet for debatten er at Nord-Norge og Arktis omfatter urbane samfunn. Spørsmål som stilles er hvilken virkelighet er det som utspiller seg i de urbane samfunnene i Nord-Norge og Arktis? Hvilken betydning har språk og arkitektur i arktisk kontekst?
Filmprogrammet er listet nederst på siden.
INFORMATION IN ENGLISH
Venue: Harstad Kino
NOK 90,- / Free with festival pass, but ticket will need to be collected at the venue
Filmprogramme with following panel discussion.
Knut Åsdam is a graduate of the Independent Study Program at Whitney Museum, New York (94-95), Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (92-94), Goldsmiths College, University of London (89-92), Wimbledon School of Art, London (88 -89), the University of Oslo and Maui Community College, Maui, Hawaii. Åsdam’s work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Bergen Kunsthall, Tate Britain, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (Rotterdam), La Biennalen (Venice), Kunsthalle (Bern), Istanbul Biennial, Frac Bourgogne, MACRO (Rome), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Oslo), Manifesta7, Moderna Museet (Stockholm), P.S.1 MOMA (New York) and Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
As part of the Arctic Moving Image & Film Festival, Tromsø-based curator Hanne Hammer Stien has curated a two-part art project consisting of the commissioned work ‘du mah heures pah maj’ by Georgia Munnik and a programme of films by Knut Åsdam, followed by a debate entitled Arctic urbanism.
Knut Åsdam is amongst other interested in how language affects relationships between people. This is expressed in a film programme he has produced specifically for the festival. The programme consists of three films: Oblique (2008), Abyss (2010) and Egress (2013). Åsdam lived for a long period in London, and life in the urban European society is a recurring theme in his art. He has a special interest in how individuals construct and continually negotiate their identity as a reaction to the physical and psychological structures surrounding us, represented amongst other things through architecture and language. Åsdam now lives in Oslo and he is a professor at the Nordland College of Art and Film in Kabelvåg. He is currently working on a new film project set in Finnmark County, in the border area between Norway and Russia.
The debate that will take place in conjunction with the screening of Åsdam’s films is based on the assumption that Northern Norway and the Arctic also feature urban societies. It will address the realities that unfolds in these communities. What significance do language and architecture have in an Arctic context? Human geographer Tone Huse and film scholar Scott McKenzie will participate alongside Knut Åsdam in the debate, which will be moderated by Hanne Hammer Stien.
FILM PROGRAMME:
Oblique, Knut Åsdam (2008)
Urban environments, and their heterotopic sites, are locations for Knut Åsdam's investigations into social design, patterns of behavior and modes of subjectivity, with a particular focus on spatial identity's disorder and pathologies. Åsdam perceives a city as a machine of desire, its geography as a system of desire and its architecture as a generator of desiring practices. Usage and perception of public urban spaces, their structures of political power and authority occupy a central place in the artist's studies of identities.
Oblique, which premiered for Manifesta 7, is a hybrid narrative of cinema and architecture which quotes public or semi-public spaces within a city, building up a labyrinthine setting within the gallery space. The film, Oblique, is an articulation of identity in transition: the artist invites to a journey through a continuous “city” built up from cities and regions of diverse political, economic, cultural and social landscapes.
The characters are traveling in a suspended generic space in-between the realities of various places. Thus Åsdam animates representational systems and orders of belonging that map cross-regional tensions where complex identity factors are negotiated, and express the struggle between a desire to find a place within the language and a necessity to adapt to social changes. Asdam narrates spaces of intense psychological charge: newly built outer areas around the cities, construction sites, institutional and office buildings, transitory places, between growth and collapse, marked by quasi-contradictory processes of economic progress and development of slums, but at the same time, he constructs an objective critical space of political urgency.
Oblique was produced by Manifesta 7, FRAC Bourgogne, Galician Contemporary Art Center (CGAC) with the support from Office for Contemporary Art Oslo, Galleri SE Bergen, Galeria Juan Prats Barcelona and the Cultural Council of Norway.
In the collection of FRAC Bourgogne, Galician Contemporary Art Center (CGAC), Kunsthalle Bern, Bergen Kunstmuseum and Tate Modern
Abyss, Knut Åsdam (2010), 43 min
Abyss was filmed in various locations in East London, at the Thames Gateway and on the outskirts of the area where the Olympic Arena is being constructed.
The film portrays an urban reality characterised by migration and change – the movement of people, the movement of money and power, and the drift of the imagination. The 43 min experimental film and installation work is set within spaces of the modern city – markets, gyms, parking lots, parks, squares, streets and stores. The main character, O, negotiates her material world but the city’s economical, political and social demands appear to have been absorbed into her movements, speech and psychology. The urban sprawl that takes in the Olympic site and the Thames Gateway features the sorts of “composite architectures” that often provide the backdrop to Åsdam’s films. In Abyss, the cityscape is the other main protagonist of the film, one that the other protagonists are subjected to. The film drifts between a material world and its psychological effects, and gives keen attention to the physical and material environment of the city without privileging a realistic dramaturgy or narrative. The characters move through the public and private spaces of the contemporary city and interact with one another as if the economic, political and social dynamics of the city had inscribed themselves within their language, movements and psychological make-up.
Abyss was made possible by the support of the UK Arts Council, The Norwegian Film Institute and Bergen Kunsthall.
In the collection of The National Museum, Oslo
Egress, Knut Åsdam (2013), Norway, 41 mins
Egress is a narrative set in a gas station in the edgelands of Oslo. The main characters work at the bottom of the oil company hierarchy and are engulfed in the everyday and the dark economic and psychological shadows of their society. Egress is the story of a young woman who deals with her every day work situation with independence and stubbornness in her work and life in the periphery of the city. The film shows relationships between control and independence, about labour, class and work, but it is also a poetic film about a socially insecure edgeland of the city—and about a psychological flipside or cost of the everyday, somewhere near the bottom of the huge economic ladder of the oil industry which secures Norway's stability. Egress' world is a world of social instability and economic insecurity as part of a society undergoing major changes. Egress is shot entirely on "location" in Oslo's Groruddalen, mainly between an apartment complex and a gas station. The film is an experimental fiction built up from documentary material which mixes the environment- and character-based to talk about contemporary society.