Bergen Kunsthall / Sternberg Press
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Knut Åsdam
The Long Gaze The Short Gaze |
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Essays by Kaja Silverman, Philippe Pirotte,
Simon Sheikh
Foreword by Solveig Øvstebø
Co-published by Bergen Kunsthall and Sternberg
Press
www.kunsthall.no / www.sternberg-press.com
The Long Gaze The Short Gaze
presents a collection of newly commissioned texts that address Norwegian artist
Knut Åsdam's most recent films, Abyss and
Tripoli (both 2010), and places them
in a retrospective context of Åsdam's film production since the 2000s. The
book, a result of Åsdam's 2010 exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, is richly
illustrated with images from Åsdam's films, video, photo, and installations
works.
A central
practitioner of contemporary film and video art, Åsdam has always worked
independently and uncompromisingly on his artistic projects. Åsdam is occupied
with the potential of narrative cinema and the scopic field, and has long
explored the language of film and its constituent components. Consequently the
filmic is a primary theme in this publication.
Transformation and
relocation constitute a thematic framework for most of Åsdam's works, which
engage the psychological, social, or bodily experience of changing urban
environments. The actors in the films respond to economic, linguistic, identity-related,
social, physical, or architectural processes of change, and narrate these
elements as being both internal and external to themselves. Underlying this is
an awareness of the ever-changing meaning, experience, and expression of
architecture and society, particularly when encountered by distinct social
groups. Even more than in previous works, the places portrayed are themselves
fundamental to his new films, not only as generic urban surroundings, but also
with their diverse histories, demographic conditions, and architectures.
Kaja Silverman's
comprehensive text looks at the development of language of desire within
Åsdam's works, from the early hypnotic video performance Come To Your Own (1993) through to the film Abyss (2010). Philippe Pirotte engages Åsdam's films with the idea
of the zombification of subjectivity in the relationships between personality
and society. And in Simon Sheikh's contribution, he discusses the
post-identitarian coupling and ethics of looking in Åsdam's films.
Edited by Knut Åsdam, Solveig Øvstebø, Steinar
Sekkingstad
Design by Blank Blank
2011, English
20.5 x 26.5 cm, 284 pages, 150 color ill.,
hardcover
ISBN 978-1-934105-28-3
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STERNBERG PRESS
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