The Locker Plant Projections screening - Paris, November 6th 2013

TEARS ON A COFFIN - Conveying the Invisible

Conveying the Invisible - No Longer Empty

Curated by Sarah Crown

Nov 4-14th 2013 

Sunnyside, Queens, NY

TEARS ON A COFFIN by Anne Katrine Senstad

Neon Sentence, funeral car, Mariachi funeral band

A Performative site specific installation piece

For One Night, a City Lights Up with Art - Hyperallergic Oct 25 2013

STREET

For One Night, a City Lights Up with Art

by Sarah Walko on October 25, 2013

Ingo Maurer’s oversize lightbulb “Lucellino” 

(all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless 

otherwise noted)

DALLAS — Aurora illuminated the Dallas Arts District last Friday, featuring 90 site-specific light and sound installations covering 19 blocks of downtown from 7 pm until midnight. An estimated 30,000 people gathered and wandered through the city, taking in the transformation that molded buildings, illuminated cathedrals, lit hidden spaces, and made concrete, glass, and steel pulse.

Upon entering the city of Dallas two days earlier, one of the first things I had noticed was the intensity of the birdsong. It was louder than the cars passing by as I walked down a four-lane street during sunset, in rush-hour traffic. Later that night, walking back to my hotel after dinner, I looked up to see an incredibly bright, full moon. These moments of magic set the stage for my experience of Aurora.

The block party, live music, food trucks, pop-up bars, lounges, and 1,050 lanterns all opened and lit up at 6 pm, but the real transformation of the city began an hour later. In a very theatrical display, Mayor Mike Rawlings plugged in the chord of an oversize lightbulb with wings, part of sculpture by Ingo Maurer that was placed directly between the Wyly Theatre and the Dallas Opera House. Each artist or team of artists had walkie-talkies and had been poised for the signal, so at that moment, they activated their pieces. Suddenly,  the Dallas Arts District was converted into a brilliantly expansive light and sound exhibition.

Anne Katrine Senstad, “Colour Synesthesia, Variation IV” (click to enlarge)

The theme of this year’s Aurora was “Light of Convergence,” which, according to the press release, “illuminates the dichotomy between awareness of the individual and the greater whole.” The theme revolved around ideas of how technology can enable communal consciousness and increase creativity and social awareness, but also have a darker side. I was able to catch up briefly with one of the cofounders, Joshua King (the others are Veletta Forsythe Lill and Shane Pennington). He explained, “It’s about bringing people together under creative circumstances, artists supporting other artists, the contrast of new media and technology-based art within city centers and an immersive experience of ideas.”

The evening showcased contemporary artists from North Texas alongside others from all over the world. One of the featured works was a piece by Max Deancalled “The Robotic Chair,” in which Dean’s generic wooden chair falls apart and then magically reassembles itself, facilitated by a custom-made robot. I was very excited to see the work, but apparently so was a lot of the crowd. I visited the site three times throughout the night, and the lines were so long, I never made it in.

Norwegian artist Anne Katrine Senstad (whom I recently wrote about for Hyperallergic) showed her piece “Colour Synesthesia, Variation IV,” a 60-minute, abstract, color-based loop projected that transformed the altar of the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Senstad’s work focuses on perception, space, and the sensorial, and her projections bring a new narrative to their locations’ histories, memories, and identities. Senstad told me, “There’s a dialogue that goes beyond words yet is a space of ‘the word,’ bringing light and ambience into a space charged with faith and human belief.”

Aurora cofounder Shane Pennington exhibited a massive LED light installation called “Points of Life,” a specially designed stage curtain created for the Dallas City Performance Hall. Jazz singer Kally Price performed live behind the curtain, along with accordionist Dan Cantrell and bassist Daniel Fabricant. The curtain combined with the tones of the jazz created a shifting feeling, from calm and light to haunting.

3_search, “Blueprints and Perspectives” 

(courtesy Martin Gabor)

3_Search, a collaboration between curator Leo Kuelbs, artist John Ensor Parker, and animation and mapping collective Glowing Bulbs, brought the exterior of the Wyly Theater alive through a massive projection mapping piece called “Blueprints and Perspectives.”

Having seen similar work of theirs before, I found this piece much more experiential and less narrative. The concept seemed driven by the interior structure of the stage and the mechanics of the theater, as well as the exterior form. “Beginning with an exploration of the physical architecture of the Wyly,” Parker explained, “we then delve into the psychology of the individual and their connectivities through social structures and the fabric of the universe.”

Aurora is a young festival, only its third year. But not many cities in the US are taking on a project of this size for one night only of pure light and sound installations. The temporary nature of the art added a theatrical and magical feeling to the experience. I look forward to seeing how the event will flourish in the next few years.

Aurora 2013 took place on Friday, October 18, from 7 pm to midnight, throughout the Dallas Arts District.

Anne Senstad Video installation - Cathedral Shrine of The Virgin of Guadalupe - Dallas Aurora Schedule Oct 18th

Installation - documentation video of Colour Synesthesia IV  

DALLAS  AURORA 2013Anne Katrine Senstad - 8:30pm – Midnight
Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe
2215 Ross Ave.Dallas, Texas 75201-2707


Projecting the piece: Colour Synesthesia, Variation IV, Silent Version, 2013 - 60 mins loop. 

The installati0on is a video projection at Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Additionally the Bell Tower Ringing of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies will take place at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Funded in part by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General Houston 

Visit: www.dallasaurora.com

Diaspora USA Chapter at The Lab for Performance and Installation Art, NY

Senstad's installation Diaspora USA Chapter is based on the remains of a hurricane Katrina-damaged shotgun cottage in New Orleans. The still derelict cottage was the site of her installation The Light House at KK Projects (2007/08), curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, and the source for the video piece,Light Writes Always in Plural, Light Displacement Section Three (2009). This current installation refers back to the original on several levels, and the video trilogy Light Writes Always in Plural Section One, Two and Three will be projected onto cardboard boxes and rubble within the space. The items used to closely recreate the New Orleans installation are taken from memory and photo-documentation. Senstads collected objects and paraphernalia, reflect the vacated domicile and its displaced inhabitants. The gallery walls, serving as the exterior of the cottage, are covered with the still-evident flood waterline and spray painted inspection signage, TFW (Task Force Wildcat) used to indicate date of inspection, number of dead people found in the house, number of dead people removed from the house, and the name of the agency that performed the inspection.

As the world teeters from one crisis to another economic, environmental, viral. etc. Diaspora USA Chapter assaults the viewer with a stark visual reminder of our species ephemeral existence.

A Room Without Walls - A documentary from Anne Senstad's installation during the 55th Venice Biennale

Documentary and Interview on the occasion of Anne Katrine Senstad's installation UNIVERSALS at Officina delle Zattere during the 55th Venice biennale.

A video by Andrea Liuzza and Marco Agostinelli Art Projects

HYPERALLERGIC article September 19 2013

Sight-sound-and-the-colors-of-perception by Sarah Walko

ARTICLES

Sight, Sound, and the Colors of Perception

• by Sarah Walko on September 19, 2013
• 0

Anne Senstad, “UNIVERSALS,” installation view in 

“Metamorphoses of the Virtual – 100 Years of Art and 

Freedom” at Officina delle Zattere 

(all photos courtesy the artist)

“The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch would listen to the radio tuned in between two radio stations. I see this image as the space artists work in.” —Anne Katrine Senstad, in conversation with the author

*   *   *

Many viewers are coming across the work of Norwegian-born, New York–based artist Anne Katrine Senstad at the 55th Venice Bienniale. Senstad’s work is on view in the Officina delle Zattere, as part of the group exhibition Metamorphoses of the Virtual – 100 Years of Art and Freedom. Her installation consists of a projection of the video “Colour Synesthesia,” as well as a handful of other pieces and photographic works from the series UNIVERSALS Foldouts. 

When you walk into the installation, a large screen with constantly changing colors and abstract forms confronts you. In front of the video is a sculptural structure based on Senstad’s ideas of solidifying the space that light and color inhabit. This is done by isolating a set area that has had the original video projected onto it and recreating it as perceived form — a cross between a Buckminister Fuller machine and an oversized model for an architectural building. The object is symptomatic of the origin, becoming a replacement for the source itself.

Anne Senstad, “UNIVERSALS,” installation view in “Metamorphoses of the Virtual – 100 Years of Art and Freedom” at Officina delle Zattere, Venice (click to enlarge)

Moving around the sculpture, you experience it in relation to the video projection. The changing hues of “Colour Synesthesia” create variations in the structure’s surface, light, edges, and angles. Senstad says it’s also meant to exist as a solid, transparent Plexiglas piece, with the video projected directly onto it. This would demonstrate a more direct perception of transparency and continuous transformation.

In addition to showing in Venice, Senstad recently had a solo exhibition in Oslo, at SALT (Saltarelli Salong), a gallery in a former World War II bunker where Norwegian politician and war traitor Vidkun Quislingonce hid. The exhibition, curated by Bjørn Hatterud, was a take on the Venice project, including a V-shaped transparent thread installation through which Senstad projected her video in order to take her exploration of perception further. It also included six photographs from her color foldout series and two sculptures. The show was titled State of Space. “‘State of Space’ refers to perception of space, a dialogue with light, color, and the architectural psychological space and changing the perception of space sensorially and phenomenologically,” she explained to Hyperallergic. All of these pieces, however, make up only one end of the spectrum of Senstad’s intriguing explorations of light.

Senstad has a series of video pieces based on Surrealism’s subconscious investigations into art, psychology, nature, and magic. Last year, she did a residency in Mexico at Fondo Xilitla, a surreal sculpture garden created by eccentric English poet and artist Edward James in the 1960s. While there, she realized a film project involving large-scale, site-specific projections on the gardens’ structures and statues. Through her orchestrated array of light, she transformed the stone deities with color. (Edward James originally wanted all the structures to have colors, which she didn’t know when she began; she unintentionally brought back his original idea.) The event was filmed for the video piece “Projections of the Surreal.”

For “Projections of the Surreal,” Senstad worked with actor Paco Gallego Amigo and composer J.G. Thirlwell. “I directed Paco Gallego Amigo in the style of free theatre/expressive physical theatre,” she said. “I directed him to physically express ‘solitude,’ ‘post-colonialism,’ ‘the Mexican soul,’ and so on. For the composer, I gave him my synopsis and explained to him the content and meaning of the video piece. Being pretty abstract, we went over the finished edited video, and I explained my intentions, emotional inner states reproduced, with the various scenes and images. I like to give people the freedom to use their own creativity and bring their inner resources to the piece.”

The film is also infused with Senstad’s relationship with landscape. Moving beyond the historic architectural structures, she added both a psychedelic and a poetic element, creating a world that envelops the subconscious and subliminal.

“I mentally pre-edit and pre-visualize the video pieces,” she said, “so I actually don’t write out scenes. I work from an inner organized mental platform.” These comments reminded me of when I went to hear the author A.S. Byatt speak a few years ago, about a book she had just written. Explaining her working process, Byatt said she sometimes doesn’t write a word for weeks while working on a new book. She goes on long walks, thinking everything through, working out the characters and the story in her mind. Then she sits down and writes the entire thing all at once.

Senstad is in the process of doing research for “Projections of the Surreal, Part 2,” which will be based on Surrealism in Scandinavia and the psychological ideas floating around at the time of Munch. The project will incorporate ideas from Wilhelm Reich, the controversial German psychologist who promoted sexuality as a means to address societal and psychological problems. Reich, it turns out, spent a lot of time in Norway prior to moving to Maine. He was a student and collaborator of Freud, but Freud distanced himself when Reich developed his controversial theories and practices.

Senstad is also fascinated by synesthesia, a neurological condition in which one sensation involuntarily conjures up another, often an association of a letter or a number with a color or sound. She explores it in works like the one currently on view in Venice. The first medical reference to synesthesia appeared in 1710, written by an ophthalmologist named Thomas Woolhouse; he was researching a blind man who experienced colored visions when he heard specific sounds. Scientists became further interested in the 19th century, when it was determined that the phenomenon was not a product of imagination but rather of the brain. Isaac Newton was also fascinated by synesthesia: he experimented with different mathematical formulas in an attempt to connect wavelengths of light to their analogous sound-wave frequencies. It didn’t work out but inspired scientists, philosophers, and artists to study color. Ongoing studies of what is actually happening in the brain when synesthesia occurs show similarities to the brain’s activity during hallucinations.

Senstad is delving deeply into the relationship between the senses, especially between color vision and sound. All of her work deals with perception — how what we see, including the colors around us, shapes how we feel. The stimuli are objective but the experiences are subjective, mirroring ourselves, our brains, and our psyches. Senstad’s work follows this complex investigation of what is physical versus what is psychological, and where these lines get blurry. It does so generously, seeing truth on both ends of the spectrum and at many points in between.

Anne Senstad, “Spatial Projection: Colour Synethesia, 

Variation IV, Silent Version, DV” (2013), installation 

view in “State of Space” at SALT (Saltarelli Salong)

“There is a fearlessness of death in Mexican culture,” Senstad said. “Life and death are two sides of the same coin; there is no separation. You find this in the old Nordic Viking culture, sagas and mythology, as well as in our Lapland culture and belief system. We also have an old belief system that entails the power and symbolism of nature as a whole but especially in mountains, brooks, rivers, and forests.  Art has a similar function in bridging the worlds of the seen and the unseen. The language and function of art is to express what is inexpressible — it is in that sense transcendental. Why is some art so legendary, immortal, beyond time and space or simply damn good? It lives in that shared realm of consciousness and the exquisite that taps into the immortal, the eternal human questions. In a sense it is ‘being inside the tone,’ as Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim said.”

I went to see James Turrell lecture years ago. He opened by saying, “I never thought of myself as an artist. I’m only interested in perception.” Senstad’s work is in conversation with Turell’s, focusing on perceptions of landscape and dreamscape, the physical reactions of the body to light and color, and the emotional and psychological aspects of the brain. Both artists’ work point my mind to its own landscape of vastness, like looking out at a tremendous sunset and finding yourself dissolving into all of the in-between states as you navigate the color, light, and dark.

Metamorphoses of the Virtual – 100 Years of Art and Freedom continues at the Officina delle Zattere (Fondamenta Nani, Dorsoduro 947, Venice), through October 31.

Anne Senstad: State of Space ran at SALT (Saltarelli Salong, Møllergata 37, Oslo) from August 30 to September 9.