27/03/23
Seagull Fountain installed
Mobile Kittiwake Hotel / Seagul Fountain part 2: installing and first guests checking in! We tried various distances from their original nesting place on the building (that will be renovated soon), different materials ad colors. They clearly prefer the sunny side and ledges with prefab / recycled nests. Tests with moving the tripods on big skis is also promissing so far. Next phase is to gradually move them away from the building towards a permanent large wall (designed by @kjeldnash) further down the park.
With support of Tromsø Kommune, Koro, Tromsø Kunstforening,
In collaboration with Kjeld Nash & AT arkitektur.
Green modules designed by @kåregrundvåg
2023
01/02/23
Seagull Fountain wip 2
Meanwhile above the arctic circle, work in progress with 3 mobile Kittiwake hotels. Kittiwakes are a type of seaguls, threatened with extinction yet here in Tromsø there are too many invading the city (probably due to climate change). In collaboration with resarchers of NINA, @Kjeld Nash from AT arkitektur, artist #kåregrundvåg and @Robert Menzoni from #tromsøkommune we came up with an experiment: How to move the birds from Tromsø Kunstforeningen (art museum that will be renovated) to a new permanent structure further down in the park?
1 Cover the museum, with nets and fire gel,
2 invite the birds on our strategically placed, light weight and mobile hotels
3 and then slowly move them step by step, while the birds are out fishing. Ps these seaguls only eat fresh fish and are not to be confused with the other type that steels the food from your terrace table. With lots of help of @solvangingeborg, DelphinRuche, @jackelinekarcher, @orlandohaugen and more. Music Giuliano Cercato
03/12/22
Seagull Fountain in progress
Test set up of a mobile Kittiwake hotel just outside the studio today. ‘Can you make it light, cheap and hurricane proof please.?’ To be continued …
Thanx to @kjeldnash, @mihalystefanovicz, @kaare.grundvaag.
2022
15/11/22
Flood @ Chroniques
Last week in Marseille: first version of ‘Flood’, commissioned by #chroniques #bienale An old robot raises itself and falls@down in an@endless Sisyphean cycle.
01/06/22
Nevel x 4
Just installed NEVEL x 4 (adapted version of the older work with 9 larger walls) at Hamsunsenter in Norway, opening on saturday in the spectacular museum designed by Steven Holl.
Jezus! 18 years after the first version of 2004 I'm still trying to improve bugs and weaknesses. Why didnt I become a painter? But's magical when it finally works. Thanks to @tinkartank, @ Milhalystafanovicz and @mari_b0
22/05/22
PLEXUS UPDATE
PLEXUS, permanent instalallation at Hamsunsenteret, Norway, opening next saturday. Added some safety wires and made other technical improvements. A lot of work that nobody will notice unless it was not done. Thanks to Mihaly Stefanovicz for defying vertigo and gravity on various shaky scaffoldings.
22/03/22
Safranumérique
What to do when suddenly surrounded by chaos and no fxxxing switch to turn it of? Observatorium @ Safranumérique in Amiens, opening tonight.
14/02/22
Simpler times
Shrink wrapping in our backyard, 2 years ago, in simpler times. Thanks to Jet Pascua for filming
09/02/22
Boreas back in Bruges
14 years later, an update of this installation, once made for Muziekteater LOD, was back on the enormous stage of Concertgebouw Brugge during SLOW 36h. Well only 24 of the 64 sticks so far. still looking for another mecenas to finnish the rest. Thanks to @tinkartankt for making new drivers to control each stick individually, to Concertgebouw for coproducing and the fantastic musicians of Taurus quartet, Keiko Shichijo and Organo. It was an honouir to aaccompany them live with my nearly silent instrument. (Music in video performed by Taurus quartet)
28/01/22
Nevel @ New Religion
New Religion (Dance performance by Mathilde Caeyers) with good old 'Nevel', tonight at Nordlysfestival, Hålogaland teater, Tromsø.
21/01/22
PLEXUS install
Finally installed Plexus at Hamsunsenteret. Now testing, solving bugs and hope it survives the next 10 years.
17/12/21
2000 Pixels
Do you want to give a nearly plastic free Christmas gift? Send a portrait photo. 500 stripes or 2000 dots.
2021
12/12/21
Portrait
Do you want to give a plastic free Christmas gift? Engraved portraits in solid Norwegian oak 30 x 30 x 4 cm
01/12/21
Winter in the studio
Getting better at designing with renewable materials but electronics are still hard to replace. Great help from super assistant Mihaly Stefanowicz. Too bad Eylul Kusat has finished her internship in the meantime. Tx and good luck!
17/11/21
Orbit 02002 at Lightenupnorth
What we know is surrounded by what we doubt, and beyond that lays the infinite unknown
01/11/21
Boreas update in progress
Today my daughter Isadora helped me out in the studio, revamping an old installation that has her exact same age. 'Boreas' should be ready for exhibition at Concertgebouw in Brugge in February . Check out the nice PCB by Tinkartank at the end!
25/08/21
Conversations @ Chengdu
I made Conversations back in 2012 for a play called Alexander (Hålogaland teater, directed by Jon Tombre), But it has been travelling quite a bit ever since. If I would be smart I would make more of these simple and fun projects, light and compact in transport, easy to adapt in size too. Anyway this time the chairs are on their way to ZHI Art Museum in Chengdu for an exhibition called YI - A Chair. I made an elaborate install manual so I don't need to travel.
26/06/21
Time machine
Last night I made a time machine. It allows to travel instantly to any place in time, and to change the past.
26/06/21
NR Premiere!
Last Monday première of New Religion with a new and hopefully bulletproof version of the Nevel installation. Great choreography by Mathilde Caeyers.
23/06/21
Sara open!
Yes, the exhibition on Sara Fabricius finally opened after being pandemically postponed 50 times. The third floor, the archive, will open later though, somewhere in Autumn. Come & see: Perspektivet museum, Tromsø.
18/04/21
Sand sculpture
I made this cast of a crying child 2 years a ago for 'Dette Barnet', a play where the actors were making heads in sand live on stage (Det Norske Teatret, directed by Jon Tombre). But this particular cast was too complex. Happy it found it's use in this exhibition about Sara Fabricius at Perspektivet museum.
15/04/21
April in the studio
New coffee machine and a physicist point of view: 'The future behaves exactly like the past'. Messing around with spring steel structures for a large scale project at Hamsunsenter on Hamarøy, Norway.
02/04/21
Rehearsal
Shrink rehearsal with super assistant Mari Bø.
Good intentions: trying to develop a carbon neutral art practice with renewable and lightweight materials. Just read PVC is terrible, but at the same time it's made of 58% rock salt and can be recylced 8 times, which is more than many other plastics. Is that enough? So much to learn.
09/03/21
Nevel update
Working with Gabor and Mari on the total makeover of Nevel. New mechanics, new electronics, no more wireless interference traumas and exploding batteries this time. The installation will be used in 'New Religion', a new choreography by Mathilde Caeyers.
12/02/21
SULT animation short
Installation and exhibition design for Hamsunsenter in Norway based on the SULT novel by Knut Hamsun. Prototyping in 2021, installation on site in 2022.
12/02/21
Pavilion @ Scopitone 2019
Charly Alfred sent me this video of one of my Pavilion sails at Scopitone in Nantes in 2019. Thanx Alfred. And yes Pavilion was made long before mister Forsythes black flags :-)
29/01/21
Sara January
Fine tuning at the Cora Sandel / Sara Fabricius exhibition. Yet no opening in sight.
17/01/21
Nevel + model
New version of the old 'NEVEL' installation 02004 in the making for 'New Religion', a dance performance by Mathilde Caeyers, première in June 2021.
15/01/21
NIMROD work in progress
Just read that all human activities including all industries put together consume about 500 exo-joules annually. The equivalent to the amount of energy earth perceives from the sun in just 90 minutes!
08/01/21
2021 week1
New year, new lock down, new president, new light in my office.
As Mister Weinberger puts it in 'EVERYDAY CHAOS': 'We need to give up on our insistence of always understanding our world and how things happen in it. We humans have long been under the impression that if we can understand the immutable laws of how things happen, we will be able to perfectly predict, plan for and manage the future. Yet we live in a universe where EVERYHING INFLUENCES EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, AT ONCE.
20/12/20
The eternal amateur
I love trying new things, but it involves a ridiculous amount of failure. It's terribly inefficient to make this kind of art.
2020
18/12/20
Sara still in progress
Work in progress for the Cora Sandel / Sara Fabricius exhibition at Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø. A series of still life compositions integrated in he authentic furniture and objects of this fascinating Norwegian writer/painter.
18/09/20
Merzbau @ Waterfront
Last week at Tromsø Waterfront Laboratory in Tromsø: Merzbau, a collective construction by the audience made of dried Heracleum Persicum stems.