ABYSS: A presentation of the artistic research conglomerate
by Åse Løvgren, Frans Jacobi & Benedicte Clementsen
Tuesday 25. april 2017 09.00-15.45
Christiekonferansen 2017/vrimlearealet
Grieghallen i Bergen
It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations were dead, flowing like
bees stung from honeysuckle. The people hung back and watched the ocean,
animals flew in and out of focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never
grow old – they stay young and fit, and someday they might come to the
beach and have a few drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not
now. The time had come; we all knew it. But who would go first?*
You! You!
Reluctantly moving into the crisis, into the abyss!
What kind of visions can be glimpsed there, on the other side?
Crisis is preservation or it can be transformation. A system in
crisis is on the verge of collapsing, and only in this collapse can
the new evolve. As the various crises – environmental crisis, financial
crisis, social crisis – converge, transitions emerge. It is these
possibilities of transition that are being explored in the artistic
research project, Synsmaskinen.
Synsmaskinen is based at the new Institute of Art, University of Bergen.
Through a variety of interrelated artistic projects, a
politically-charged horizon comes into focus: apocalyptic abysses,
systemic entanglements, and hyper-complex realities.
We welcome you to stand here on the threshold together with us!
We invite you to contribute with your visions from the abyss;
your visions of the other side.
There’s no more futuristic avant-garde, or artistic avant-gardes to
speak of, as if the future had already moved back behind us.**
- André Breton and Philippe Soupault, The Magnetic Fields, 1920. This text is part of what is
considered to be the first surrealist text. Seen through the crisis that the WW1 was, this is how
reality was described.
** Sylvère Lothringer, The Accident of Art, 2005