Vilde Salhus Røed: Cataract
Published
The exhibition Cataract by Vilde Salhus Røed at Visningsrommet USF revolves around some inherited negative roll films that once were exposed, but have been sitting undeveloped in the cartridges for decades. The title piece Cataract was developed at BEK earlier this winter during a work residency, and it is BEK’s equipment that is used in the playback of this sound work.
Opening reception Friday March 29th at 19.00
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Cataract revolves around some inherited negative roll films that once were exposed, but have been sitting undeveloped in the cartridges for decades. The concealed photographs testify to something that took place and was worth taking pictures of, something that begins to exist again only when the photographs are developed and the stories are told.
One often takes pictures to remember. But how unreliable is not both the photograph and the memory? Where digital image archives can appear impenetrable in their all-encompassing volume, a small selection of exposures can open up to a myriad of possible stories. The memory and the imagination are closely linked in the brain. Is it really possible to imagine something one doesn’t already have experience with? And how can one evoke invisible photographs?
The exhibition at Visningsrommet USF shows three new works where memories, the written story and imaginations are linked together through the negative roll films and inherited camera equipment. In Technical Department, the camera equipment is documented as polaroid photographs, and its technical specifications are tied to the actual use history of the equipment. The photographs in the series Suspense are copies made from the negative roll films, and show how light and chemical processes over time have erased the pictures into something unrecognizable. The title work Cataract is based on the sound images the artist heard when she visited the negative roll films using the technique Remote Listening, an adapted version of Remote Viewing that amongst other has been used in intelligence by the CIA to get impressions and information from distant and unseen places and/or goals using “extrasensory” perception or to “sense” with the mind. Cataract are sonic descriptions of situations, where photographic properties, techniques and processes affect the way in which the sound is built up.
The exhibition is kindly supported by BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, Norwegian Arts Council, Regional Project Funds and the Municipality of Bergen.
ABOUT VILDE SALHUS RØED
Vilde Salhus Røed (b. 1981 in Bergen) graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from Bergen National Academy of Arts in 2008, and has since been living and working in Bergen. Vilde is interested in how visual representation shapes our personal and collective understanding of history. In particular, she is interested in the role photography plays as a document – when photography is used and/or communicated in attempts to understand, or to put the world into system. Vilde’s art projects often revolve around photography, where she examines both the material, the contextual and the technological side of the medium. She rarely takes her own pictures, but archive and reuse of historical material has been central to several of her works.
Vilde has exhibited at amongst other Visningsrommet USF (Bergen), Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Kunsthall 3,14 (Bergen), Galerie Jette Rudolph (Berlin), Preus Museum (Horten), Fotogalleriet (Oslo), Platform Stockholm, Entrée (Bergen), Sørlandets Kunstmuseum (Kristiansand), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), The Woodmill (London) and KODE – The Art Museums in Bergen.
Vilde’s website here.