sandvika Kulturhus / Culture House 2005

Exhibition in Sandvika Kulturhus 2005

bibi

bilder

elin

erik

filt

hel-vegg

helvegg-folk

pål

Exhibition opening 2005
Sandvika Kulturhus, Bærum (ca 15 km from downtown Oslo)
All photos: Connie Ursin

 

The title of my second book AUDITION FOR FENOMENER UTEN BETEGNELSE may be translated as ‘Audition for Phenomena without a Name’. Like in my first book, het still, the square 18 cm format remained, but this time, the selected font makes four letters constitute a square. I selected the order of the letters based on a system in which the only vocal is the second letter. The chosen first letter was either L, R, S, or T, and the last two were selected to give a fair chance for some semantic words in Norwegian to turn up, and also to create the end-rhyme. For instance, if I wanted to give a priority to the English language, I might have selected “SH” as one of all the possible combinations of two consonants. Each double-page consists of thirty-two combinations. The system continues on the first twenty-four pages and thus generates seven hundred and sixty-eight variations. On the consecutive pages, patterns are created out of these variations.

What turns up in this system may be seen as a challenge for semantic structures. Some combinations appear as words that are known for many of us in different Latin languages. Others are probably not in use in any language. Some may exist in a dialect or have a different meaning in various languages. LYMS, the title of my second work of electronic literature, was created by accident in this system. All letter-combinations in the book are composed in the same structure, some are semantic and some are not (yet).

At the same time, the book resembles a research in the potentials of Latin languages: many combinations of letters are not in use yet, but may be picked out by phenomena that may exist without our knowledge. By our way of thinking here and now, we use language for making categories. In other times and in other places people may think differently, and may need other words. My hope was that the reader would appreciate this way of creating a mixture of seriousness and humour in the construction of new words.

The exhibition in the Culture House in Sandvika (outside of Oslo), ‘Sandvika Kulturhus’ took place on an eleven meters long wall in the entrance area. I picked out pages from the book, and produced the large-scale prints in the same way as I did when exhibiting ‘het still’ two years earlier (see photo).

The exhibition was opened by the leader of the department of culture in Bærum kommune Trine Bendixen, together with Pål Ivar Bergesen, responsible for the exhibition, and artist and lecturer Erik Wessel.