NORDIC PAVILLON | VENICE BIENNALE

Photo: OCA / Marta Buso.

Camille Norment Rapture Performances by: Camille Norment Trio 20 and 22 November 2015, 2:30pm Sofia Jernberg  21 November 2015, 2:30pm  The Nordic Pavilion Giardini di Castello Venice Italy www.oca.no

Commissioner: Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) Curator: Katya García-Antón, OCA Director, in collaboration with Antonio Cataldo, OCA Senior Programmer  The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) is pleased to announce the upcoming and concluding performances within Rapture, Norway's contribution to the 56th Venice Biennale. This year Norway is solely responsible for the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for the first time in its history. For this unprecedented occasion, OCA has commissioned artist Camille Norment (b.1970) to develop the project. Norment's Rapture is a site-specific sculptural and sonic installation in the Nordic Pavilion, for which the American-born, Oslo-based artist has composed new music on the glass armonica—a legendary 18th-century instrument which creates ethereal music from glass and water. Invented by Benjamin Franklin and once played by Mozart and Marie Antoinette, the glass armonica was at first celebrated for curing people with its entrancing music, but was later banned because it was thought to induce states of ecstasy and arouse sexual excitement in women. If it had the power to cure, so the logic went, this bewitching instrument might also have the power to kill by overexciting its listeners. In a contemporary context, Norment explores the tensions this music sustains today by creating a multi-sensory space within which she reflects upon the history of sound and contemporary concepts of consonance and dissonance. The artist composes a chorus of voices corresponding to the unresolved notes of the much-censored "devil's" tritone of the glass armonica, thus immersing visitors into Rapture. Rapture explores the relationship between the human body and sound through visual, sonic, sculptural and architectural stimuli. Today the sonic realm can be both a space of misuse—as we have seen in the militaristic use of sound to abuse the body—and of affirmation—as in the performative utterance of free speech to affirm the right of the body's very existence. The body can be stimulated and moved by sound, and in Norment's work, the Nordic Pavilion itself becomes a body in rapture and rupture, subject to consonance and dissonance. Throughout the run of the Venice Biennale, Norment has been performing new compositions on the glass armonica and has invited artists as well as musicians to participate in a series of performances that echo elements of the installation. On Friday 20 and Sunday 22 November at 2:30pm, Norment will present new compositions with The Camille Norment Trio, whose instrumentation parallels the artist's investigations into the relationship between vibration and the body as perceived during the Enlightenment period and today through social and scientific discussions. The Camille Norment Trio consists of the glass armonica, played by Norment; the Hardanger fiddle, played by Vegar Vårdal; and the electric guitar, played by Håvard Skaset. Each of these instruments was thought, at various points in history, to invoke a socially and sexually transgressive experience in the body, especially the female body, and was subsequently banned. On Saturday 21 November at 2:30pm the Swedish soprano, voice-artist, improviser and composer Sofia Jernberg will perform in the pavilion.Throughout her career, Jernberg has developed a unique vocabulary of sounds and techniques which include split-tone, pitchless and distorted singing which allow her to appear in a broad constellation of music performances across time and genres. Jernberg's versatile vocalisation will expand the 12-voice chorus that Norment composed for the soundscape of the pavilion, pushing the limits of sound and music. The performances are co-produced by OCA, nyMusikk and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, with the kind support of Music Norway. Another counterpart to Rapture is a three-volume publication reflecting on the relationship between sound and the visual arts across time, while complicating the hegemony of vision in contemporary theory and art practice.Rapture Vol.1, 2 and 3 features contributions by an international set of practitioners from various fields in music, research and theory. These include David Toop, María del Pilar Blanco and Rob Stone (first volume, published May 2015); Anne Hilde Neset, Greg Tate, and Sami Khatib (second volume);and Nabil Ahmed and Nida Ghouse (third volume). The publications also contain a series of discussions between Norment and curators Katya García-Antón and Antonio Cataldo, addressing the reasoning behind an artistic practice which seeks to highlight the influence of sound upon our collective consciousness. For media enquiries please contact OCA's Communications Manager Tara Hassel at tara.hassel@oca.no. For more information about the artist and performers, please click here. About Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) OCA is a foundation created by the Norwegian Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs in 2001 with the aim of developing cultural collaborations between Norway and the international arts scene. OCA aims to become one of the main organs in the international contemporary arts debate through initiatives such as exhibitions, seminars and publications, as well as by providing support to Norwegian artists for their activities in the international art arena, and by inviting international curators and artists to Norway. OCA has been responsible for Norway's contribution to the visual arts section of the Venice Biennale since 2001.

VENICE BIENNALE | TOP 6 EXHIBITION

The iconic canals of Venice are once again flooded with visitors for the Venice Biennale, a major international contemporary art exhibition. This year we celebrate the 56th festival, which brings an expected 370 000 visitors to see the 89 national pavilions and 44 collateral events in addition to theAll The World’s Futures exhibition. After visiting many of the pavilions and collateral events and having seen many impressive installations, we have chosen our top 6 most memorable ones.

Hito Steyerl – “Factory Of The Sun” (2015), film still; copyright of the artist

GERMAN PAVILION
The German Pavilion is altered with a temporary architectural structure that divides the space into installations by Olaf Nicolai, Hito Steyerl, Tobias Zielony, and duo Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk. Called the Fabrik, or Factory, the pavilion explores concepts of economy and work, identifying the human role as an agent of change. In the Fabrik, the artist is responsible for generating images of reality, not passively representing it.

In the lower part of the central room, visitors can sit on white plastic lounge chairs and watch Hito Steyerl’s ‘The Factory of the Sun.’ The film is stunning and a comprehensive collage of the digital information age presented with a dry humour – including everything from mock commercials to Deutsche Bank drones, using motion capture technologies to mediate the interaction between the human body and the virtual.

Hito Steyerl – “Factory Of The Sun” (2015), film still; copyright of the artist

FRENCH PAVILION
In the French Pavilion, Celeste Bousier-Mougenot confronts viewers with a surreal scene in the exhibit ‘revolutions’: an installation of three living evergreen trees, two outside the pavilion and one inside, that move very slowly and produce a deep noise. The metabolism of the trees – variations in sap flow, or changes in light – is registered by technologies and translated into motion and sound, creating a cyborg creature – part organic, part technology. Visitors are immersed in a marvellous and theatrical garden, in which Boucier-Mougenot tests the relationship of the natural and the technological and contests determinist notions.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – “revolutions” (2015), installation view at the French Pavilion; photo by Laurent Lecat

‘THE UNION OF FIRE AND WATER’ COLLATERAL EVENT

Almagul Menlibayeva – “Fire talks to me” (2015), installation view, 10 channels video installation, 17 min; ©Almagul Menlibayeva, photo: Berlin Art Link

In the grandiose but noticeably crooked space of the Palazzo Barbaro, visitors can find a Collateral Event titled ‘The Union of Fire and Water.’ The beautiful historic building now houses the multiple channel video and sculpture installation by Amagul Menlibayeva and Rashad Alakbarov. The artists explore how architecture withstands, sustains and traces major cultural conflicts, exchanges, and transformations of history though the example of the Mukhtarov’s Palace in Azerbaijan.

Almagul Menlibayeva – “Fire talks to me” (2015), video still, 10 channels video installation, 17 min, ©Almagul Menlibayeva, all rights reserved, photo courtesy of the artist and YARAT

Representative of the superimposition of two cities – Azerbaijan and Venice – the Mukhtarov Palace was built in 1912, inspired by the Venetian Gothic style. Over the course of the last century, the building withstood a series of significant transformations and several changes to its function and ownership. A beautiful and memorable installation, the many layered narrative of the space is unfolded in a complex exploration of cultural plasticity.

HONG KONG PAVILION
The exhibit ‘The Infinite Nothing’ at the Hong Kong Pavilion is a narrative journey of transformation, represented in four separate video installations by artist Tsang Kin-Wah. The work explores Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence and Buddhist beliefs of reincarnation, reflected in the layout of the pavilion which brings the viewer back to the first room at the end. Tsang makes creative montages of text based visuals and moving projections in otherwise empty rooms. Visitors are taken through a cyclical journey through shimmering projections that result in a deeply affective experience of self inquiry and contemplation.

Tsang Kin-Wah – “The Infinite Nothing: 0″ (2015), single-channel video and sound installation, 6 min. 20 sec, dimensions variable; photo: Berlin Art Link

URUGUAY PAVILION

Marco Maggi – “Global Myopia (Pencil & Paper)” (2015), installation view; photo courtesy of the artist and Ugo Carmeni

The pavilion by Marco Maggi is notable for its profound and thoroughly considered simplicity. Walking into the room, it at first appears empty, maybe with slightly textured white walls. Only once the viewer comes right up to the wall does it become evident that the entire room is covered in an intricate collage of white paper bits, folded, curled, in small geometric shapes or strips and neat arrangements of perfectly sharpened pencils. Literally made from paper and pencil, this work is a representation of the potential to represent, without actually representing anything. By being insignificant, the work attains a certain freedom by not being prescribed with any possible meaning or signifying function, and this freedom is visible in the whimsical twists of paper that appear animated with a playful energy.

Marco Maggi – “Global Myopia (Pencil & Paper)” (2015), installation view; photo courtesy of the artist and Ugo Carmeni

LUXEMBURG PAVILION

Filip Markiewicz – “Paradiso Lussemburgo” (2015), installation view; photo by Sven Becker, Atelier d’images

At the Luxembourg Pavilion, there appears traces of the same rock influence that we saw two years ago with Catharine Lorent’s installation. The pavilion this year houses the work of Filip Markiewiez, titled ‘Paradiso Lussemburgo’, referencing both Dante’s Divine Comedy and the film ‘Cinema Paradiso’ by Giuseppe Tonatore. Markiewiez has used all 6 rooms of the pavilion for an exploration of the various facets Luxembourg’s contemporary national image as a contemporary paradise – both a tax haven and a haven for immigrants. This exploration manifests in different forms: including drawings, political cartoons, DJ sets with a dance floor, a film, and a speaker’s corner/karaoke.

Filip Markiewicz – “Sorry” (2015), crayon sur papier, 250 x 130 cm; copyright of the artist

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Additional Information

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
“All Tomorrow’s Futures” – 56th International Art Exhibition
Exhibition: May 9 – Nov. 22, 2015

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Article by Berlin Art Link in Venice, Friday, May. 15, 2015