The Sugarcane Labyrinth Film

The Sugarcane Labyrinth will premier as part of the exhibition Preternatural, curated by Celina Jefferey at The Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. December 9, 2011, to February 12, 2012.

http://preternatural.ca/

Exhibition catalogue is available for purchase from Puntum Books December 2011.

http://punctumbooks.com/titles/preternatural

The Sugarcane Labyrinth by Anne Katrine Senstad

Soundtrack composed and performed by JG Thirwell as both 4:1 surround sound and stereo versions. 


A short film about the making and experience of The Sugarcane Labyrinth located in Theriot, Louisiana. The Sugarcane Labyrinth is a 1,4 acre Time, Site and Process specific Agricultural Land Practice piece created through 2009. The piece was made in collaboration with sugarcane farmer Ronnie Waguespack, Triple K & M Farms - Thibodaux and agricultural economist Alexandre Vialou.


11.22 min
HD Video


Funded by : Norwegian Visual Artists Remuneration Fund/Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond 
©annekatrinesenstad 2011


Preternatural

Curated by Celina Jeffery
Dec. 9th, 2011 to Feb. 17th, 2012, Ottawa, Ontario

The Museum of Nature:
9th Dec., 2011 to 12th Feb., 2012
Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Mariele Neudecker, Anne Katrine Senstad, Sarah Walko and Andrew Wright

St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts:
Adrian Göllner, 10th-17th Dec., 2011
Avantika Bawa, 7th-19th Jan., 2012
Anne Katrine Senstad, 29th Jan. – 17th Feb. 2012

Patrick Mikhail Gallery:
Shin Il Kim, 4th Jan. – 7th Feb., 2012


The natural, unnatural and supernatural collide in an exhibition of contemporary art that will be launched at the Canadian Museum of Nature on 9 December. Preternatural will span three venues over three months and include artists from Ottawa, Hull, UK/Germany, USA, Norway, India and Korea.

Une série d’expositions qui prend pour objet l’en delà du monde naturel sera inaugurée le 9 décembre 2011 au Musée canadien de la nature à Ottawa. Préternaturel se déploiera dans trois lieux en plusieurs temps et présentera des artistes d’Ottawa, de Gatineau, du Royaume-Uni/Allemagne, des États-Unis, de la Norvège, de l’Inde et de la Corée.



Talks and Catalogue:

Talks with the artists and curator Celina Jeffery are planned throughout the course of the exhibition, full details will be available from the website www.preternatural.ca.

An accompanying catalogue will be published by publisher punctum books and will feature essays by curator Dr. Celina Jeffery and philosopher Levi R. Bryant.

Des discussions avec les artistes et la commissaire sont prévues pendant la durée de l’événement et les détails seront affichés sur le site web www.preternatural.ca. Le catalogue de l'exposition sera publié sur demande par l’éditeur punctum (punctumbooks.com) et comprendra des textes de la commissaire Dr. Celina Jeffery et du philosophe Levi R. Bryant

Exhibition Catalogue : Preternatural

punctum books ● brooklyn, ny

Preternatural

 CELINA JEFFERY » PRETERNATURAL

The preternatural, as explored by these artists, disturb the ontological boundaries of art, nature and metaphysics. They exist within the folds of classificatory thresholds: both beyond and between nature and supernature; human and animal; vegetable and mineral; living and dead. The confusion between animate and inanimate is a primary concern, a surreality which unites with the preternatural’s love for reveling in the mysterious: bizarre fragments, unreadable words, objects of absurd scale, and distortions of the relativity of time and space flourish throughout this exhibition.

by Celina Jeffery

Preternatural is the catalogue for a multi-site art exhibition (9 December through 17 February, 2011, in Ottawa, Canada) that draws from the idea that art itself is a form of preternatural pursuit, in which the artists participating explore the bewildering condition of being in between the mundane and the marvelous in nature. It questions a world that understands itself as accessible, reachable, and ‘knowable’ and counters it with a consideration of this heterogenous proposition.

At St. Brigid’s, a deconsecrated church Adrian Göllner (Canada), Avantika Bawa (India/USA) and Anne Katrine Senstad (Norway) explore the preternatural as a phenomenological condition through the investigation and exploration of perceptual illusions, the appearance of apparitions, and synaesthetic effects. In Adrian Göllner’s site-specific installation, puffs of white smoke appear and then dissipate in time with Handel’s Messiah from the ornate vaulted ceiling, gesturing at an ethereal presence. Avantika Bawa seeks to subvert, tease and create a play of artifice in an otherwise unique and extraordinary place with her interventions that involve the placement of yellow plastic wrapping along the pews, a yellow ramp on the altar, and the playing of the musical key of ‘e’ from a ‘boom box.’ Anne Katrine Senstad further investigates the tradition of mystical melody with The Kinesthesia of Saint Brigid, a video projection which frames the organ at the rear of the church.

At the Canadian Museum of Nature, there is both reverence and mystery in Mariele Neudecker’s (UK/Germany) works which capture, invert, and re-make nature. Informing Neudecker’s work is the preternatural’s ability to subvert the logic of that which is both strange and familiar, a condition which is shared by Andrew Wright (Canada), who addresses the landscape of the Arctic as a heterotopic space that is disorienting, bewildering, and curious. Marie-Jeanne Musiol’s (Quebec, Canada) electromagnetic photographic technique is used to create a herbarium, in which spectral images reveal microcosmic concerns through tiny particles of light that emanate through the darkness. Sarah Walko’s (USA) It is least what one ever sees is a highly intricate installation that comprises many hundreds if not thousands of tiny, disparate sculptural and live objects that seek to exist outside of ‘natural’ logic. In The Sugarcane Labyrinth, a video by Anne Katrine Senstad (Norway), we encounter the making of a labyrinth on a farm in Theriot, Louisiana, USA which engages with local farming strategies in an act of sustainability, recovery, and rejuvenation. Lastly, Shin Il Kim’s (Korea/USA) work at the Patrick Mikhail Gallery bridges the spectral inquiry at St. Brigid’s and the subversions of the natural world at the Museum of Nature exhibit.

This exhibition retains the preternatural’s engagement with prodigies: the exceptional and wonderful in the context of the natural, while acknowledging its critical unravelling of nature as art and art as nature.  As such, it accepts the bizarre and incongruous nature of its etymology, in which art, nature, and comprehension collide and asks: what may be the experience of the preternatural in contemporary art?

The catalogue includes a Foreword and an Introduction, “Beyond Nature,” by Celina Jeffery, as well as an essay by Levi R. Bryant, “Wilderness Ontology.”

FORTHCOMING in December 2011.

Celina Jeffery is an art historian, curator and educator. She received a Ph.D. in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex (2002), is Associate Professor of Art History and Theory, and the Chair of the Visual Arts program at the University of Ottawa. She is the co-editor (with Gregory Minissale) of Global and Local Art Histories (2007) and the co-founder and editor of Drain Magazine: A Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture (2004-present). She has curated more than fifteen international exhibitions, including: Lines of Flight, at Hunter College, NYC, 2007; Afterglow (featuring Ghada Amer, Alfredo Jaar and Bill Viola, among others) in Lacoste, France, 2007; Wangechi Mutu: The Cinderella Curseat the ACA Gallery, Georgia, USA,; and Hold On, co-curated with Avantika Bawa at Gallery Maskara, Mumbai. Her research interests include globalization, navigation and cartographies, the ‘spiritual’ experience in art, and the history and practice of curating. She is currently compiling the edited anthology The Artist as Curator, to be published by Intellect.

Kinesthesia in Kvinesdal

Kinesthesia in Kvinesdal - an exhibition and installation at Utsikten Kunstsenter


Exhibition title: Kinesthesia in Kvinesdal 
Location: Utsikten Kunstsenter, Kvinesdal - Norway
Organised by Torill Haugen, Director Utsikten Kunstsenter
Music for installation video by J G Thirlwell
Music for video works in the exhibition composed, produced and performed by J G Thirlwell and St Cecilie

Kinesthesia in Kvinesdal exhibition documentation video: 8.53 min

Exhibition dates: October 9th - December 10th 2011

The video shows the exhibition installation consisting of multi projections, fabric and 4 channel surround sound. The first installation of this exhibition entitled The Infinity of Colour, took place at Thisisnotagallery in Buenos Aires, Sept 2011 - however the installation at Utsikten Kunstsenter is unique to the location and site specificity.


Special thanks to:
Torill Haugen - Director Utsikten Kunstsenter
Utsikten Kunstsenter
Utsikten Hotell
Kvinesdal kommune
PNEK

Interview on Ohio TV for installation of Public Art at BGSU The Wolfe Center for the Arts

Interview on WBGU- TV from the completion of the Public Art Mural at The Wolfe Center for the Arts , Bowling Green State University in collaboration with Snøhetta Architechts, BSGU and Ohio State Arts Council.

The Infinity of Colour - a projection installation at THISISNOTAGALLERY

The Infinity of Colour is a documentation of the multiple projection and surround sound installation at THISISNOTAGALLERY in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the same title. The exhibition opened September 16th 2011 with a performance by Norwegian artist St Cecilie who is responisble for the composition for the video work The Venus Chapter. The soundtrack for this piece is by J G Thirlwell and is the soundtrack for the main video works in the exhibition.

THISISNOTAGALLERY
Cabrera 5849, Palermo
Buenos Aires - Argentina
thisisnotagallery.com 


The Infinity of Colour Anne Katrine Senstad
Sept 16- Oct 03 2011

The exhibition The Infinity of Colour represents Anne Katrine Senstad’s new body of work focused on light, color and sound. She has created a labyrinthian space of projections and sound that examine the phenomenology and the notions of sensorial aesthetics and experiences of light, color, sound, ocular perceptions, spatial relations and awareness of the process of perception through multi channel projections and the dimensional properties of 5:1 surround sound. The piece is meditative, pulsating and hypnotic in its simplicity of light, color and sound environments.

The exhibition presents the video works: Colour Kinesthesia (2010), Colour Synesthesia Variation I and II (2010-11), KInesthesia for Saint Brigid (2011), The Locker Plant Projections (2011) and The Venus Chapter (2011).

Juanele Ar - Art Critic Blog Buenos Aires

Link to :  The Venus Chapter, featured on Juanele Ar 
.
Link to:  Review in English or Spanish

Hues of time and space 

by Gabriela Schevach

Criss-crossing beams of light in Anne Katrine Senstad’s newest installation transform This is Not a Gallery into an alternate experience of space — turning the old industrial warehouse into a theatre of lights, colors and music, housing a troupe of fantastic and transparent images that appear and multiply in the big room, which nevertheless stays strangely empty. 

Anne Katrine Senstad, The Infinity of Colour, Installation View

There are no reflected objects or persons in the room. In the huge warehouse, three video projectors stand almost at floor level and four transparent cloths hang in parallel to the walls. The cloths are tied to the girders of the tall ceiling and fall vertically towards the floor, without touching it. They form an ethereal square that floats in the middle of the gallery. Each video projector, located in a corner of the hall, projects its light onto the transparent fabric diagonally in front of it. It beams the same image, which multiplies, appearing seven times on different surfaces, on the fabric and the walls, at different sizes, and passes through the transparent material to reach the parallel wall, where it projects the same image, only bigger.

Senstad’s installation art in this old warehouse creates an atmosphere of immersion, where the soft and constant movements of light, color, and music encourage a different perception of time and space.

Cecile Richard performing in Senstad's installation The Infinity of Colour

The video piece Color Variations II creates differently colored beams that range from diffuse sparkles that spread and flood the room to abstract geometric images, looking like flags of imaginary nations. The outline of a modernist construction suddenly appears in different colors and shades in The Locker Plant Projections, another of the video works. In another piece, The Venus Chapter, a woman walks along the shore at night as if the wind doesn’t exist. The space of the gallery has been turned into an enchanted stage — a site for the abstract coexistence of historical and imaginary periods of time, inhabited by a mix of ghosts and shadows of visitors and characters.

Anne Katrine Senstad, The Infinity of Colour, Installation View with guests

At the show’s opening, the sense of the spectral intensified during the performance of St. Cecile, a.k.a. Cecile Richards. The singer, who collaborates and composes the music for many of Senstad’s video pieces, moved among the cloths and videos in a long, white, flowing dress. Her slow movements recalled the image of the birth of Venus, just out of the sea. It invested her figure with a voice, a sound coming from the depths of her body. While the tone varied from low to high, it flooded the room with sound and echoes. Her voice articulated no recognizable word — it remained as abstract as the music and the pure color of light. The empty space housed this solid, snow-white character transmitting this mysterious, floating voice, powerful enough to transport us to a nocturnal scene outside of time where wind is only an image and music is a liquid in which to swim and dance.

http://svae.as/

ANNE KATRINE SENSTAD

17. september - 9. oktober 2011 

Kinesthesia for Saint Brigid, 2011 
Single channel video, 8,21 min 
Edition: 6 
Musikk: JG Thirlwell 


KURATOR CHRISTINE ISTAD

Videoverket Kinesthesia for Saint Brigid tar for seg de perseptuelle og sensoriske erfaringer man opplever gjennom farger, lys og lyd. Som retinale visjoner i fenomenet The Prisoner’s Cinema, beveger fargene seg i pulserende og hypnotiske strukturer og former, hvor lyd og farger forenes i en koloristisk og artifisiell sfære. Kinesthesia for Saint Brigid er videoverk nummer fire i serien Colour Kinesthesia og Colour Synesthesia, Version I & II, 2010-11 - hvor serien ble vist for første gang i Norge ved Stiftelsen 3,14 i Bergen, sommeren 2011.
Senstad har samarbeidet med musiker, produsent og komponist JG Thirlwell, kjent som mannen bak Foetus, Wiseblood og Manorexia prosjektene. Thrilwell har komponert et dimensjonalt og cinematiskt lydbilde til Senstad’s video arbeider. 


Fra kunstkritiker Tommy Olssons anmeldelse av Senstad’s utstilling Is Her Name Red? på Stiftelsen 3,14 i Bergen - Morgenbladet 8/7 2011.

En blå stemme?

Farger finnes ikke, vi lever våre fattige liv i mørke. 


På puten. Det er selvfølgelig ikke det som skjer her, der flatene legger seg tett opp mot den mer stille grenen av abstrakt ekspresjonisme som best representeres av Mark Rothko. Dette dreier seg overhodet ikke bare om rødt, eller rosa, men hele malerskrinet – selv om det fremst er primærfargene som blir observert. I videoprojeksjonene Colour Kinesthesia og Colour Synesthesia, plassert i 45 graders vinkel fra hverandre i et hjørne, med sitteputer på gulvet for publikum (selvfølgelig bare meg, og ingen annen, en solsenkt tidlig ettermiddag i Bergen) skifter disse fargene i ultrarapid og gir ikke noen unødvendig informasjon fra seg, siden den uansett ikke finnes. Der jeg sitter på puten og funderer over hvordan jeg i alle dager skal klare å reise meg opp igjen noensinne legger jeg spesielt merke til lydbildet. Det er, selvfølgelig, monotont og brummende, og ville fort fått meg til å grine og mislike i håpløs fortvilelse hadde det ikke vært for at det er nok komplekst og gjennomført til at det skal løfte seg over den gjengse standardlyden til nær sagt hvert eneste meditativt videoarbeid som er produsert noensinne. Det viser seg at en gammel helt står bak denne lyden; JG Thirlwell, for noen bedre kjent som Foetus, mannen som under 1980 tallet ga desperat industriell kakofoni en struktur få av hans samtidige var i nærheten av. Selvfølgelig måtte det til noen av det kaliberet for å ikke ødelegge hva som i utgangspunktet faktisk bare er litt gult, blått og rødt i poetisk bevegelse.

Anne Katrine Senstad er en Norsk kunstner basert i New York og har hatt et langt og internasjonalt kunstnerskap. Hun er representert i internasjonale samlinger, bl.a. Zendai Moma i Shanghai, Gary Snyder Fine Art i New York og private samlinger i USA, Norge, Seoul, Brasil og Frankrike.