Vault:
SIRI AUSTEEN
Kronebreen kalver, 2018
20.04. - 17.06.2018
Siri Austeen´s project Kronebreen kalver attempts to bring us closer to a reality we know well, but struggle to perceive. As a sound artist, Austeen often investigates various environments true its sonic nature. For her, listening as an artistic practice, offers a way to receive the world, and thus a way to move in to, and with the world. In this work sub sonic, visual and factual matters forms a dynamic installation asking for our focused presence.
Austeen is concerned with connections between sound, place and identity, and through this explores ways of understanding reality within and around us. Her artistic practice examines sound both as medium and phenomenon. One of her recent ongoing projects, "Soniske forplantninger" explores transducer technology combined with materials such as glass, cardboard and wood as acoustic mediums for field recordings and composed sound. Austeens work includes installations, performance, sculpture, drawing, participating art projects and public art.
Kronebreen kalver reflects on specific environmental issues based on seismographic monitoring of one of the fastest flowing and most heavily studied glaciers in Svalbard, Kronebreen. This small and austere installation is imbedded with actuality far beyond its size. The high arctic stands at the front line of climate changes through global warming. Sea level rise is happening now, and the rate at which it is rising is increasing every year. The two major causes for this are thermal expansion caused by warming of the ocean (since water expands as it warms) and increased melting of land-based ice, such as glaciers and ice sheets. Glacier loses mass through calving, and knowledge of these processes is important to measure the transmission of mass to the sea. For this project Austeen used low frequent seismic and underwater-acoustic data from Svalbard, recorded in the CalvingSEIS research project.
Austeen is an active member of Concerned Artists Norway. CAN is an open genre crossing and interdisciplinary network of artists who are addressing questions pertaining to environ-mental-, climate- and social topics. The aim of CAN is to table arenas for creating new stories in our present time.
Artist´s thanks to:
Seismic and underwater-acoustic data from Svalbard were recorded by: Andreas Köhler, University of Oslo, Christopher Nuth, University of Oslo, Giusi Buscaino, Institute for Coastal Marine Environment of the National Research Council, Italy. CalvingSEIS research project:
http://www.mn.uio.no/geo/english/research/projects/calvingseis
Please find more about Siri Austeen here
Our institution´s involvement in the environment and art presented itself in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in September, 2017. In collaboration with The Climate Festival and the Institute of Art (KMD) Kunsthall 3.14 launched an appeal for change. An independent political campaign encouraging, through various artistic strategies, the Norwegian people to vote for a government which relates to climate challenges hands on. You might remember the Plastic Parade through the city center? However, Kunsthall 3.14 is concerned with the playful and critical strategies of art in dialogue with what is happening at home and abroad.