EXHIBITIONS
Momentum – 8th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art: “Tunnel Vision” at Momentum Kunsthall and Galleri F 15, Moss
Momentum Kunsthall
Momentum 8 explores tunnel vision as a cultural and artistic condition. Today’s networked culture not only generates hyper-connectivity, but it also produces a range of disconnects that allow people and communities to thrive in their own bubbles. Momentum 8 focuses on artists and cultural producers who inhabit worlds of their own logic and take their ideas to the ultimate consequence.
Momentum takes place in Moss, a small city just outside of Oslo where Edvard Munch withdrew for four years. The relative solitude that he enjoyed there, and which helped to cultivate his eclectic and highly personal practice, is not exceptional. Instead, it is exemplary. Some might tend to condemn the notion of tunnel vision as alarmingly asocial, but artists have long celebrated the concept as disarmingly eccentric. Not only addressing phenomena symptomatic of contemporary society and culture, Momentum 8 also draws on the longstanding idea of “a room of one’s own” as an important premise for artistic practice.
Current techno-scientific developments encourage individualism while simultaneously fostering segregated communities into which individuals can delve and disappear. The personalization of the Internet through the abundant use of cookies and algorithms generates so-called filter bubbles and you loops. User data is deployed in a manner that determines what we find and consequently also what we seek. If the Internet has been considered a window to the world, it is now also becoming our own mirror image on the screen.
Immersion in self-referential loops is echoed in a renewed interest in psychotropic substances within society at large. Whereas the psychedelic movement of the 1960s was concerned with the expansion of consciousness, Momentum 8 focuses on the experience of a narrowing of mind. As we are submerged in a constant flow of data, new drugs and technologies are used to create a tunnel vision that hones the spectrum of information available to us and our access to it. Addressing conspiracy theories, paranoia and altered states of mind, the biennial explores what might be called compressed consciousness, which may appear incestuous, navel-gazing and idiosyncratic.
At Momentum 8 the theme of tunnel vision will unfold as a multisensory experience triggering altered states of mind, physical awareness and an atmosphere that ties the various venues and events together across time and space. The artists of Momentum 8 will present fragrances, sound pieces, 3D works, apps, music, installations and performances.
Momentum 8 Reader by Mousse Publishing
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at Momentum Kunsthall and Galleri F15, Moss
until 27 September 2015
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Above – Christine Ödlund, Tower of Eukaryote, 2015
Agnieszka Kurant, Air Rights 2, 2015
Steina (Steina Vasulka), Machine Vision, 1978
Sissel Tolaas, MOLECULE MOVX_015, 2015
Cristobal Lehyt, Untitled, 2013
Julius von Bismarck, Jugendbewegung, 2015
Johanna Heldebro, To Come Within Reach of You (Gunnar Heldebro, Hässelby Strandväg 55, 165 65 Hässelby, Sweden), 2009
Ferdinand Ahm Krag, Heliotropic drift, 2015
Brody Condon, Zeigarnik Effect, 2015
Sofia Hultén, Indecisive Angles (VI), 2015
Joanna Lombard, Orbital Re-enactments, 2010
Zhala, like a moment ago, when we just stood here, 2015
Sissel Tolaas, MOLECULE MOVX_015, 2015
Hrafnhildur Arnardottir a.k.a Shoplifter, Nervescape IV, 2015
Valia Fetisov, Dzina Zhuk, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Paranaioaapp, 2015
Ryan Trecartin, A Family Finds Entertainment, 2004
Zhala, BaBYy Wwheeree isS ThE KI, 2015
Edward Shenk, Part II – A Message from Anonymous to the Nordic Biennial and Part III – Battlefield Wikipedia, 2015
Sofia Hultén, Indecisive Angles (IV), 2015
Zhala, Hide and Tweak, 2015
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Momentum – 8th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art: “Tunnel Vision” installation views at Momentum Kunsthall, Moss, 2015
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Galleri F15
Steingrimur Eyfjörd, The Yellow Earring, 2015
Ola Pehrson, Hunt for the Una Bomber, 2006
Minna L Henriksson, Hidden, 2012-2015
Sissel Tolaas, MOLECULE MOVX_015, 2015
Sofia Hultén, Indecisive Angles (X), 2015
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Phantom (kingdom of all the animals and all the beasts is my name), 2013-2015
Bjarni H. Thorarinsson, Visio-Rose, 1995-2014
Eva Löfdahl, Telluric Touch, 2015
Eva Löfdahl, Under Frequency Holder, 2013
Sissel Tolaas, MOLECULE MOVX_015, 2015
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, 16mm, 2007-2011
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Momentum – 8th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art: “Tunnel Vision” installation views at Galleri F15, Moss, 2015
Photos: Vegard Kleven.