The Valley at Høstutstillingen 2020
Published
The video The Valley will be shown during this year’s Høstutstillingen 2020 at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. In The Valley, the small village of Dale in Western Norway is used as a prism to look at global changes related to production and economy. The video was created by Åse Løvgren and Stine Gonsholt, and was partially produced at BEK during a work residency in spring 2019.
In Dale, the old textile factory has been transformed into a data park that digs for bitcoin. The data park was located here because of access to cheap hydropower, just as the textile factory was founded here in 1879 because of the large hydropower resources surrounding the valley. Water flows through pipes and streams, data flows through wires, and capital and jobs flow globally to where they are most efficient.
In the film, the visual artists have collaborated with Alexander Rishaug who made the sound of the film. Through field recordings and visual “recordings” of the site, the descriptions are abstract and gives a nuanced image with many layers.
Read more about the project and artists when they was doing their work residency at BEK here.
Høstutstillingen is Norway’s oldest artist-run arena for contemporary art, and was first organized in 1882. It is the origin of the Norwegian artists’ union Norske Billedkunstnere (NBK). As an annual national art exhibition, Høstutstillingen has been supported by the state since 1884, but run by the artists themselves according to the peer review principle and organized by NBK. Høstutstillinen is a juried exhibition shown at Kunstnernes Hus – where it has been located since the house opened in 1930.