Events

BEK Opening Week 2025: Exhibition Testing the Membranous Boundaries by Ingrid Bjørnaali, Fabian Lanzmaier and Maria Simmons

Lydgalleriet 30.01.2025 02.02.2025

Published

Thursday January 30 – Sunday, February 2
Lydgalleriet, Strandgaten 195
Welcome to the exhibition opening on Thursday, January 30, 19:00 – 21:00. We are open Friday through Sunday, from 12:00 to 17:00.
Free

Testing the Membranous Boundaries is a cross-Atlantic audio visual collaboration that explores the embodiment and translation of peatland knowledge through blending physical engagement with digital interpretations. As part of their collaboration Bjørnaali, Simmons and Lanzmaier have visited peat bogs in Finland, Estonia, Norway and Canada. Through recordings of the landscapes they find and interpret naturally created monuments like dead, standing trees held in place by the mires, and portals that connect past and present, the bubbles on the surface, and the subterranean world.

Sculptures, sound and photogrammetry based methods of digital gathering, depict sites that form new virtual spaces, seeking a re-mystification and a non-quantifiable approach to peatlands. As a natural part of all technology, glitches, in line with Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism, can testify to a possible resistance from a biotope in being reduced to binary codes. The exhibition juxtaposes a generative sound installation, moving image and sculpture into various combinations, offering alternative perspectives of the translated sites. 

Ingrid Bjørnaali is a multidisciplinary artist based in Oslo who records specific biotopes in various states of their ongoing world-building processes. Her works explore the omnipresence of the digital in our experience of the world as well as the inability of technology to articulate matter’s complexity.

Fabian Lanzmaier is a sound artist based in Vienna. In his practice he explores perception and ideas of natural/artificial sounds, fluid and ambiguous environments. He works with real-time audio synthesis utilizing digital/analog physical modeling techniques and feedback networks.

Maria Simmons is a Canadian symbiontic artist who investigates potentialised environments. Her work embraces contamination as an act of collaboration. She collects garbage, grows yeast, ferments plants, and nurtures fruit flies. She makes art that eats itself.

Supported by Arts Council Norway, Canada Council for the Arts and UKAI Projects.
Part of New Perspectives for Action – a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. Sound algorithm done in collaboration with Paul Gründorfer. Thanks to Aldea Center of Contemporary Art, Design and Technology.

The exhibition is organised by BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, as part of the BEK Opening Week 2025. Thanks to Lydgalleriet for the collaboration.

Accessibility

The main entrance of Lydgalleriet has three steps up from the street, for wheelchair users a ramp is available for this entrance. The upper level can be reached by elevator. Lydgalleriet has all-gender, accessible toilet facilities (door width 120cm) on the upper level of the venue. Service dogs are welcome at Lydgalleriet.

Images: 2) Testing the Membranous Boundaries, photo: Ingrid Bjørnaali. 3-11) Photo: Sasha Azanova/BEK

Back to the full programme of BEK Opening Week 2025