Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

BEK has been hosting a week long residency for 5 artists from home and abroad. The open day is a chance to see their practice and the results of this. The artists have been chosen for their ability to put important contemporary social issues under the microscope, opening them out to the public. Their artistic practices are complex and are influenced by collaboration and engagement with current concerns such as light pollution, the disappearing topsoil, gentrification and the question of community. During the week, they worked as a research team, where the distance between micro and macro was the object of their thought and exploration.

We have arranged LAB as a practice oriented workshop, to produce artistic results from raw materials as a community. The project is initiated in partnership with Future DiverCities, which has four year funding from the EU. Two local and two international artists from different disciplines were invited to explore new technology together. These artists are: Kirsti van Hoegee and Njål Clementsen (both from Bergen, Norway), Emma Fält (Kuopio, Finland) and Myriel Milicevic (Berlin, Germany). Piotr Pajchel was invited to teach drone technology, as well as share his expertise from his work with Verdensteatret. Anne Marthe Dyvi, artist and Artistic Developer for BEK, has programmed and facilitated the week. (Bios below.)

FROM MACRO TO MICRO AND BACK, the physics and metaphysics of____________________________________________________________distance is the title of the LAB. The point of departure was to establish an artists’ research group, to work together to explore distance as a phenomena in both concrete and abstract form.

Programme

Time: from 3pm
Place: BEK, C. Sundtsgate 55, 8th Floor

– Presentations and examples of drone film recordings shown in the project rooms
– All artists will be present
– Possibility to try our technology and fly a drone
– A light meal and drinks will be served – weather permitting on the terrace
– Presentation of the EU project FutureDiverCities (more info below)

We look forward to sharing the project and experiences from the LAB with you!

About the Participants

Kirsti van Hoegee (Bergen)
Kirsti van Hoegee lives in Bergen, where she works as an artist. She is also curator and producer at KRAFT Gallery. Kirsti holds a BA in Photography and a MA in Visual Art from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and works with diverse media, often with photography as a starting point. Recently van Hoegee has been investigating parallels between insect behaviour and the increasingly artificially lit globe. She looks at our relationship to the universe, and how this has changed in line with the development of the technology of photography and history of artificial light. How are we affected by losing access to the starry sky?
Kirsti’s website

Njål Clementsen (Bergen)
Njål Clementsen is an artist and musician based in Bergen. He finished his BFA at the Institute of Art at the University of Bergen in 2016. His work is founded in the time based, utilizing media such as video, sound, performance and installation. With an extensive background as a musician, both touring and recording, applying musical approaches to his work has become a natural part of his practice. In 2015 he participated in the one year joint study programme Nordic Sound Art. The programme was concluded with a group exhibition at HIAP, Gallery Augusta, Helsinki, Finland.
Njål’s site on vimeo
Njål’s site on soundcoud

Emma Fält (Kuopio)
Emma Fält is based in Kuopio, Finland. She studies the world through drawing and performance art. Her work takes a comprehensive look at drawing as a live act, an instrument of communication and a means of collaboratively exploring our experience of the world around us. The drawings are not intended to end up being objects, they are in constant flux, changing and evolving.
Emma’s portfolio

Myriel Milicevic (Berlin)
Myriel Milicevic is an artist, researcher and interaction designer based in Berlin. In Neighbourhood Satellites, she explores the hidden connections between people and their natural, social, and technical environments. These explorations are mostly of a participatory nature, emerging from collaborations with other artists and scientists, in the context of workshops, classrooms, exhibitions, residencies and out in the field. Myriel received an MA from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy and a diploma in Graphic Design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. She also studied at the Conceptual and Information Arts Department of San Francisco State University.
About Neighbourhood Satellites

Piotr Pajchel (Oslo)
Teacher and participant
Piotr Pajchel is a visual artist living in Norway, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. His work with real-time video is used in installations, performances and live jams. He is currently responsible for the extensive video work in Verdensteatret and is a full time board member. Verdensteatret is a group of artists from different fields who make live art and inter-disciplinary work. They endeavour to use a collaborative process to deeply integrate different artistic disciplines into projects that bridge the gap between artistic borders. They build exquisite links between seemingly incompatible technologies and materials. The experimental use of audiovisual technology in a close dialogue with more traditional and historic tools of artistic expression results in complex orchestral works or space related musical compositions.

Anne Marthe Dyvi (Bergen)
BEK/Facilitator
Anne Marthe Dyvi  is an artist based in Bergen. She graduated from The Bergen Academy of Art and Design with an MA in Fine Art in 2010. In addition to her own practice as an artist, she is a member of the artist group Ytter, and works as Artistic Developer at the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts. She works with different mediums: video, sculpture, text, sound, performance and installation, without being faithful to any of them. Her work could be described as interdisciplinary, site-specific and process-orientated. She was part of the project group developing a national archive for video arts in Norway for the Arts Council, and is currently a member of the board at NBK(Norwegian Artist’s Union). She writes, lectures and curates on a freelance basis.
Anne Marthe’s website

Future DiverCities Project Context

#cocreation
Future DiverCities has been initiated by 10 partner organisations in Europe and Canada, all key players in the field of city-making and the development of new artistic forms, funded by the Creative Europe Programme, to explore the power of creative innovation in challenging urban spaces. Using intercultural collaboration in a socio-cultural and digital context, Future DiverCities is looking to expand the vision of art in cities and harness the spirit and thinking of “City 3.0”, a vision of cities in our digital era “harnessing the collective imagination and intelligence of citizens in making, shaping and co-creating their city” (Prof. Charles Landry, The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators.)
Future DiverCities explores new modes of collaboration and co-creation by using innovative co-design methodologies in artistic processes, incubating artwork that recomposes urban geographies, or explores new participative digital tools to creatively experience the city.

#livingcities
Future DiverCities is a holistic programme looking at the ever-changing role of art and creative work in the urban context. The programme includes a wide range of activities, community labs, citizens’ workshops and artistic interventions, to explore and show how artists and creatives can propose innovative ways to build our future cities, and how this responds to current thinking and needs around urban transformation.

Future DiverCities sees creative innovation as a tool to enable citizens to see things in a different way, supporting the development of stronger communities and contributing to the concept of happy and resilient cities.

The project is co-funded by Creative Europe Programme/EU