In the application process and the initial stages of the project, I used Robert Smithson´s nonsites as a starting point to illustrate a way of creating works that investigate the transformation process of representation, the relation between works of art and their origin at locations outside of the art gallery. Nonsites were installations in gallery spaces, consisting of photographs, maps and containers holding material, often rocks and sand, that Smithson had collected at what he termed sites - locations in the real world, often in desolate and abandoned landscapes. Smithson´s combinations of different forms of representation in the nonsite-installations set up a complex matrix of relations between presence in the gallery space and absence of the site.
I quickly realized that I would not be making direct references to Smithson or his works, as for example Tacita Dean has done in her project JG, which features Smithson´s Spiral Jetty. My use of Smithson was on a more structural level: I was concerned with how the use of a dichotomy such as site-nonsite could be used to investigate the phenomenology of the photographic medium. To use it as a fresh viewpoint from which to problematize photographic representation. By reading about how Smithson and others had interpreted his work, I could start to gather ideas for how to work with similar topics.
I became particularly interested in how Smithson highlighted the similarities between maps and photographs, as both instrumental image forms relating to physical locations. Today, maps and photographs are intimately intertwined in technologies such as Googlemaps, and I was particularly interested in how this enables the user to switch from a God's eye view from above to a street level view, where one is immersed in a photograph.
I started experimenting with how I could combine the two image forms in more physical and tactile ways. A technique that I often use to get sharp images, called focus stacking (explained in more detail in chapter 2), provided a way to make photographic objects where photographs and maps could merge together. In short, by “hacking” the focus stacking technique, I could output layers of paper from a digital image file, from which I could build a relief-like structure in the photographic surface, similar to elevation lines on a map. By making prints in 1:1 scale, and then trimming the layered photo out from the paper along the contour of the object, I could create a sort of semi-flat photo-sculpture. The effect was one of enhancing the photographic illusion of depth and realism, while at the same time creating objects that revealed their illusion in a quite obvious way.
Mapping has been related to exploration, and this got me interested in how explorers have been setting out to find “terra incognita”, undiscovered land, to conquer. Although this activity is associated with large moral problems in the post colonial world, I still could not help but be fascinated by how this idea of going to unknown places was a way of revealing hidden parts of reality. It reflected a deeper philosophical issue, a kind of romantic dream that there are areas of reality, not necessarily places or areas of land, but states or dimensions, that we have yet to discover. The last time such an effort of exploration took place on a grand scale was perhaps the moon landing in 1969. I became fascinated with the idea of going to a “place” which was outside our life-world to such a profound degree. It certainly is a physical location, but to leave earth, which for all intents and purposes constitute our lived reality, has a transcendental element to it.
The activity of travelling to produce photographic work has always been a strong motivation for me. The way that planning a field trip generates artistic decisions, and my way of being at location, by myself, working with my gear and focusing intensely on the production, facilitates a certain state of mind where I can not only think about my idea, but feel it. The journey itself becomes a method for steering the project in a particular direction.
Working from ideas of photographs and maps, thinking about being the first to chart new land and trying to find a subject matter that would fit my photo objects, I concluded that if I could locate a recent vulcanic eruption, where the earth had just re-shaped itself in a more permanent way, I could consider that “terra incognita''. Perhaps then, I could be the first one to photograph some of the material there, giving me an opportunity to get a feeling of being on a mission of discovery? I found out that the Apollo astronauts had been to the area around the Askja volcano in Iceland to train for geological observation. When researching a bit more I discovered that it was the site of a large eruption a few years earlier, and decided to go there.
Field trip 1
The site is a vast lava field stretching over an area of 85 km2, on a desert of black sand. It is located in the middle of Iceland, in the most remote area of the country just north of its biggest glacier Vatnajökull. To get there one will have to drive about five hours in a 4x4 truck, on a rocky gravel road, fording several rivers. If one gets stuck in such a river in a rental car, there is no insurance to cover the damage. Apart from the road, there is no civilization along the route, except a hut and national park station by the volcano Askja. Tourists can make this trip with a bit of experience and a good car, but doing this alone presented a definite challenge, and felt fairly out of my comfort zone, although not impossible.
I rented a pickup camper van, and obtained a permit from the national park to park it right next to the lava field, which is about a 45 minutes drive from the hut. This meant that I could be alone in the area for about a week. The first time I was there, my idea was to photograph fragments of the lava field at different locations, take notes of their position relative to each other, and then place the resulting photographic objects on the floor in the gallery space in the same pattern that the locations would form on the lava field when seen from above. Each photographic object was made to 1:1 scale relative to the original fragment, which meant that my project could now be seen as the start of a Sisyfos-like task of “mapping” the lava field in its entirety.
The experience of travelling to this site, and being alone in the presence of the monumental lava field in the desolate Icelandic landscape, was overwhelming. Particularly the fear that something would go wrong with the extremely expensive equipment or the rental car kept me in a constant state of alertness, and figuring out how to do the photography was frustrating. The lava field was a hostile place, with sharp rocks that could break under my feet so I would fall.
When returning I realized, like so many travellers do, what a different state of mind I had been in, and ordinary life seemed mundane and banal. This contrast was something I could not quite get over, and I found that it was enhanced when I tried to show pictures or explain what I had experienced. I kept feeling that I wanted to convey more than what the place looked like. I wanted to show how it felt, or perhaps more accurately, how my experience of it felt.
Teleportation #1
For the first exhibition I had been invited to Bruksrommet gallery in Stavanger, and produced four photo objects that I placed on the floor in an arrangement corresponding to the lava field as described. This arrangement was inspired by zen rock gardens that I had visited in Japan some months before, and in order to enhance this slightly solemn atmosphere, I asked the audience to remove their shoes at the entrance, as is customary in both buddhist temples and islamic mosques. This also made them slightly vulnerable, and also came “closer” to the floor and the works.
The space was a very clean, white cube space, with a smooth epoxy floor, and I put a lot of effort into cleaning all the spots on the floor so as to enhance the contrast between the clinical white space, and the rugged rocks depicted in the photo objects. In order for the layered surface of the objects to not be immediately visible I made a custom light setup to get a very soft, diffuse light in the space. This removed shadows and hid the transition between the different layers in the objects, which became visible only when bending down to look at the object more closely. Each object had a title corresponding to its GPS coordinates, from the idea that this would underscore the link between each object and their site of origin. Otherwise they would just be rock pictures without any anchor in a real situation.
Field trip #2
The first field trip contained a lot of experimentation, trying out different ideas to see what would work when coming back home. For the second exhibition I decided to go back to the lava field. The first exhibition had proven that the works I had produced there had worked, and I wanted to go back to produce more, to expand on my mapping of the lava field in order to have more works to put together. On my way in the car, on the phone with the national park administration, I happened to mention that I was using coordinates as titles. They were concerned by this, and eventually decided to not grant me the necessary permissions if I did this for the next exhibition, because they did not want unauthorized people to walk on the lava field. Since these had been the titles for my works, and an important way to link the lava field with the photo objects, I suddenly had to re-think for the next exhibition. It turned out that this was a beneficial turn of events, because now I had to find a way to make the material work without relying on this way of linking the material to the site. I started to think about how I could work in a situation where I let the objects detach from the lava field altogether, and I started detaching from initial ideas for the project. Now the field trips, material and exhibitions could start to become the subject matter itself, and the project start to live its own life.
Teleportation #2
In the first exhibition a lot of the dissemination and interest from the audience had been around the location in Iceland, how exotic it was to go there, the excitement of the whole idea of field trips. But to me, it was not important that the rocks were photographed in Iceland as such. To me, Iceland is where things happened to fall into place, but the work was not about Iceland or its nature. Therefore I found it liberating not to have to refer back to Iceland, but instead allow the photo objects to function as standalone objects. Teleportation #2 took place in the project gallery Rom 61 at KMD, and I now wanted to use the opportunity to build a large-scale installation from scratch. I made several sketches based on the idea of a central room within a room, with works on the inside and outside of this structure. Eventually I decided to let the work only be shown inside the inner room, which was a hexagonal structure about 3,60 m tall, with a diameter of about 5m, placed toward the opposite corner of the entrance of Rom 61.
Working with two technicians for three weeks, we meticulously constructed the space from wood and plasterboard. The inside was painted white, and I laid down an epoxy floor which gets a shiny, white surface that is slippery to walk on (the visitors were asked to remove their shoes for this exhibition as well). We constructed a skylight ceiling by stretching rear projection screen (a type of plastic material used to project video from behind on) on a frame, and then installing LED-strips above it. The screen diffused the light in a very soft way, and made it scatter in the space. The hexagonal shape of the space in concert with this type of light made the contours of the space disappear, and gave it a boundless feel. I wanted the space to have an almost cinematic quality, and function as a reference to both science fiction aesthetics, the white cube gallery and laboratories, as well as have a solemn atmosphere associated with sacral architecture.
The outside of the space was darkened, and the entrance to the space was at the back of the structure relative to the direction one would enter the gallery. By using micro cement, which is a form of paint used to emulate the look and texture of concrete on the outer walls, I wanted to give the structure a sculptural quality, as well as refer to modernist, sacral architecture. The mismatch between the concrete surface and the hollow quality of the plaster walls also gave the structure a sense of simulacra, what you would associate with theatre set design, or amusement parks. I saw this as a subtle way to underscore the play between reality and fiction that was starting to become the topic of the project.
The photographic work was placed on the floor, but this time, I decided to make six identical photo objects (with some small variations), and place them next to each other in a free configuration, so as to create a fantasy landscape on the floor. The complex visual quality of the lava rocks meant that one would have to look very intently to see that the work actually consisted of identical elements. My idea behind this was to once again play up the realism of the objects against their illusory nature, and to include a key to revealing the illusion.
I wanted to experiment with how I could include material from the field trips in the exhibitions, and decided that I would show a dashboard camera video from the drive up to the lava field on the outside of the gallery. I fed the sound from the video into two subwoofer speakers inside the gallery, which resulted in a low, drone-like rumble in the space. This was played on a low volume, so as to just add to the ambience.
The exhibition visitors to this exhibition seemed to be fascinated with the visual quality of the material, but were more confused about what they were actually looking at than in the first exhibition, since I had not included any description about what the objects were. Many visitors sat down on the floor and touched the works, and quite a few reported that they experienced a meditative calm inside the space.
This exhibition brought an important issue to my attention, which was that there was a big difference between being alone in the space, and being there with someone else. In a small space like this, the appearance of a stranger could quite easily become awkward, and I found that this social distraction was something I wanted to eliminate for the next exhibition.
I had a midway review inside this installation, and then decided to elaborate on the haptic nature of the work, by showing printed photographs that were passed around the audience, instead of having a projector which is so common these days.
Covid-19 and studio work
I had planned a third field trip before the final exhibition, but this was cancelled due to travel restrictions from the covid pandemic. Because a return to the lava field was not possible, I decided to make the material for the final exhibition in the studio, by photographing some small fragments of rock that I had brought back from the lava field. This way, the project and the objects could make another step of removal away from their initial context on the lava field, and I also had more control over the final result when shooting in the studio. This however led to delays because I now had to develop a whole new way of working in the studio, which I had not planned for. I had gotten a date for the exhibition that was carefully negotiated with KODE Art museums in Bergen, which could not be moved, and this caused a shift in the progression relative to the initial project timeline.
Teleportation #3
For the last exhibition in the project, Teleportation #3, I had secured the possibility to show it in Tårnsalen in KODE4, Bergen Art Museum. This is a large space with a dome in the middle measuring 6-8 meters across. I saw both possibilities and problems with working in this space, because of its spectacular architecture.
By planning this exhibition as an experience for a single visitor at a time, I could create an installation dominated by total darkness and exploit the possibilities this gave me to create an unpredictable experience for the viewer. I wanted them to have the experience of discovery, to let the work in the exhibition slowly reveal itself to them. I was inspired by a wide range of spaces for this show: tombs, cathedrals, bunkers, caves and so on. Spaces that contain hidden secrets and mystery.
By using darkness I could allude to this, more properly immerse the viewer in the situation. I could set up some dilemmas between photography, vision, space and touch.
In order to organize the flow of visitors I developed a system where each one could book a 15 minute slot in advance. 15 minutes was chosen in order to allow each visitor enough time to settle into the space, while also having enough slots if a lot of people wanted to come. We experimented with letting people stay longer and come out at their own pace if no one had booked the slot after them, and also with what to tell the visitors before entering. I decided that they needed to be told how to enter the corridor (walk through the curtain), because some have claustrophobia. They needed a warning that it was dark. Apart from this, I found out that we would not give them more reassurance, but after a while decided that we would tell them that they would be called out when time was up.
This was the result of several visitors complaining that they became preoccupied with keeping the time. I had wanted the visitors to not be able to use the torch on their phones, or take pictures, and therefore we collected their phones before they were allowed in, but this meant that they had no way of keeping the time. For many the experience of leaving their phone behind was both liberating and something that instilled them with a feeling of helplessness or nakedness.
Confiscating the phones was part of a strategy of keeping secret what was happening inside the exhibition, and I did not publish pictures of the installation in the promo material, except an abstract image of the light source. I also made sure to not have any written material as part of the exhibition, except some flyers with a QR-code that pointed to the press release which described the Teleportation project in more detail. This led to a certain mystique around the exhibition and it soon became a “snakkis”, something that people were talking about.
In order to make available some background information for those who were interested, I organized three artist talks, where one was directed at a more academic audience in KMD, and the two others were directed at the general public. Here I described the process of making the photo objects, the field trips and how we had built the installation.
The installation involved a cooperation between several actors - production at KMD, KODE, Bergen Kommune which is the owner of the building and responsible for fire safety, the property department at UiB and others. It was reviewed by Bergens Tidende and received 5 of 6 hearts.
Final presentation
Since several circumstances related to Covid 19 caused Teleportation #3 to not be the final show as planned, I developed an epilogue for the project in the form of a final presentation to be held in the Knut Knaus auditorium in the KMD building one year later. This also provided an interesting opportunity for experimenting with the final presentation of the project, and properly taking into account its nature as an artistic research project, where all the exhibitions and their development could be put forth for assessment.
In an attempt at documenting the almost undocumentable experience of Teleportation #3, I made recordings where visitors were asked to wear a microphone when entering the space, and then either describe what they experienced or just let it pick up their reactions. I had found that as my project had progressed, the objects and the exhibitions had moved away from their starting point at the lava field in Iceland, toward building their own internal dynamic and reality. For the final event I wanted to build on this logic and use the recordings of visitors, blended with sounds from the field trips to create a piece completely detached from vision. This way I could complete a trajectory that I had brought almost to its conclusion, but not quite, by removing vision from the initial experience of Teleportation #3, but then allowing it back in when the eyes adapted to darkness inside the installation. By presenting the sound piece in surround sound in a darkened space, this could be completed.