Eli Maria Lundgaard, Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse, Bianca Hisse, Sigbjørn Bratlie & Daniel Slåttnes

Language derives not from logic, but passion, Rousseau writes in his Essai sur l’origine des languages [Essay On the Origin of Language]. Why did we make languages? And, what are they really? Communication is essential to our existence. It makes the premise for all interaction; how we express our needs, emotions, thoughts, and ideas. In accordance with the Zeitgeist of his time, Rousseau sees the rational language as the last step in a linear development that places man in a unique position compared to other species. From a contemporary stance it may strike as archaic; animals, plants, fungi – everything communicates, and hence one could argue they have their own languages, however inaccessible they are to human decoding. All the same, there is also something particular to human language, both in its complexity and expansion, not to forget its multilayered existence – orally, bodily, written and visually.

The exhibition Lorem Ipsum was put together through BO’s open call in 2023. In parallel to the jurying, I was deep into the ideas presented by Bruno Latour in his Nous n’avons jamais été modernes [We have never been modern], where he in essence breaks with the construct of progress; according to Latour there is no turning point where man transcends from the premodern, or primitive, to becoming modern. Criticizing the imagined dichotomies of nature and culture, human and animal, subjects and objects, Latour expands the understanding of human and non-human interaction. My thoughts wandered on to language, how we communicate with one another and our surroundings, but also the paradoxical nature of language, with its ability to both include and exclude dependent on its fostering of understanding. As we went through the submitted applications, five projects immediately related to these thoughts, and together they came to make the point of departure for this exhibition.

First to meet the audience upon entry to the venue is the text installation Et sted å gå seg vill by Eli Maria Lundgaard. Composed of 13 parts mounted on the floor, the work stretches throughout the space and further connects the other works of the exhibition. With sentences that guide, as much as they confuse, Lundgaard explores landscape in time and space. They appear as labyrinths, manifesting mentally and spatially, before becoming subject to change by biological crossings, movements and descriptions. The work invites the audience on a journey through unknown spaces, altering landscapes, and linguistic shapes. Interweaving the comprehensible, the changing and the disorienting, the work presents as a poetic reflection on our perception and movement in the world, and how language in this context can be a source to information and revelation, and equally one to confusion and complication.

Shifting the gaze upwards in the first exhibition space, audiences are met by Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse’s sculpture of a dog jumping over an obstacle. A corresponding soundtrack offers further insight, presenting a conversation between the dog and obstacle that immediately appears as comically abstract. The obstacle, which by the sound of it seem to find itself in some kind of existential crisis, meets the dog, who to the contrary has only one thing on its mind – mastering the task, motivated by the subsequent reward for its trouble: «Treat, jump, treat, jump, jump!». The two monologues develop into a dialogue that in turn reveals the interdependence of the dog and the obstacle; the dog cannot jump over something non-existent. Beyond the actual monologues and dialogue of the work, it associates further to the understanding of language as a distinguishing factor between humans and animals. However, language cannot be limited to humans, nor animals. As pointed out by Peter Wohlleben in The Hidden Life of Trees; all living things communicate – even trees “talk” to one another.

Movement and concepts of borders takes center stage in Sigbjørn Bratlie’s video works Safarkayga and Gávččáldat. Both are characteristic of Bratlie, who for more than a decade, has produced a vast number of video works; all departing from him learning a new language, that he later places in an instantly absurd setting. Safarkayga follows the artist on a road trip through Finnmark, where he in more or less fluent Somali presents the complex history of the county as a melting pot between Sámi, Kven/Finnish, Norwegian and Russian culture. In his newest work, Gávččáldat, the language presented is Irish, but in Sámi. The two video works both move through borderlands, between languages, cultures, landscapes and stories. With connections that at first glance might strike the audience as odd, Bratlie is expanding our understanding through the suggestion of other potential connections – what at first seemed illogic, increasingly comes to make sense.

Inspired by the Bolivian poet and writer Adela Zamudio’s poetry, Bianca Hisse displays Loca de Hierro / Iron Madwoman, a textile work and an installation that makes part of a larger series exploring connections between language, borders, and movement, especially emphasizing the choreographed movements of migrant workers. In this context translation becomes a corporeal practice. The textile work is developed in collaboration with the Bolivian seamstress Stephany Quispe, who together with Hisse, has been translating the words of Zamudio to stitches, colors and patterns – gestures that follow incomplete maps and imagined geographies. Composed of elements in copper, steel, and iron, the sculptural installation materially associates with the infrastructures of industrial labor in its most malleable form. Drawings in dust on the floor extend the work in the creation of a fragmented language; it appears as a tactile terrain, a cryptic, territorial script. The two physical works, are accompanied by a poem where Zamudio’s text has been intersected with contemporary histories of the exploitation and loneliness of migrant workers.

In the innermost room of the exhibition, Daniel Slåttnes presents the installation Konferansen for Ting-i-seg-selv. A group of sculptures are placed on the floor, through a set of connected speakers, they discuss the experience of their existence, with arguments constructed by software that translates the quality of the individual sculptures to speech, intersected with arguments from speculative theory. Every sculpture has its own linguistic model, which is trained in perceiving the world from the point of view of the given sculpture, thus the sculptures come to imitate the inevitable, human subjectivity in our perception of and interaction with the world. That we are faced with objects rather than subjects, is the root to further confusion. For, as Slåttnes describes his role, he is solely an assistant to the sculptures – they derive from found objects and the conversation is generated by AI, with this in mind one might argue that the sculptures have been enabled to communicate on their own? In such a scenario, language is no longer reserved for humans, nor the living, but has become accessible to everything. If this is true, what is left to make us special?

Lorem Ipsum is an invitation to reflect on language; what it means to us, how we understand it, use it, and what it really is. The presented works offer multiple perspectives on the above listed questions, as well as expand and challenge our ideas on who and what speaks. In her essay Silken, rummet, sproget, hjertet [Silk, the Universe, Language, the Heart], Inger Christensen delves on the origin of language and art departing from the Chinese author Lu Chi’s (206-303) book Ars Poetica. Central to the essay is the relationship between language and reality, where she describes a «threshold condition»: «…language and the world express themselves with the help of each other. The world, with its natural extension in language, comes to a consciousness of itself; and language, with its background in the world, becomes a world in itself, a world steadily unfolding further.» With Lorem Ipsum we hope to create a similar condition, where the included works propose expanded conceptions of the multifaceted nature of language.

The exhibition essay is written by BO’s director and the curator of the exhibition, Una Mathiesen Gjerde.

Literature list

Beyond the exhibited works, the artists of the exhibition have contributed to the curatorial framework through the suggestion of one book each. All of which have challenged my concept of language and communication; who and/or what speaks, and how and why they do so. The books are all available in BO’s office.

Berger, John, Why look at animals? (Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse)

Christensen, Inger, Hemmelighetstilstanden (Eli Maria Lundgaard)

Gombrowicz, Witold, Kosmos (Sigbjørn Bratlie)

Wohlleben, Peter, The Hidden Life of Trees – What They Feel, How They Communicate (Daniel Slåttnes)

Zamudio, Adela, Selected Poetry & Prose (red. Lynette Yetter) (Bianca Hisse)

Acknowledgements

The exhibition has been realized with generous support from Arts and Culture Norway.

Eli Maria Lundgaard’s contribution to the exhibition has been funded by the Norwegian Visual Artist’s Fund.

Jo Mikkel Sjaastad Huse wants to thank Eli Maria Huang Nesse for assistance in the process leading up to the exhibition, and Ole-Petter Arneberg for invaluable support and rapid copy edits. Sjaastad Huse’s work has been realized with the support of the Audio and Visual Fund. 

Bianca Hisse’s works have been realized with the support of Oslo Municipality. The textile work Loca de Hierro / Iron Madwoman was created in collaboration with the Brazil-based Bolivian seamstress Stephany Quispe. The poem Unfeeling Machine has been written together with Patricia Carolina. Hisse wants to extend sincere gratitude to the NGO Tecendo Sonhos for facilitating the dialogue with migrant textile workers in São Paulo.

Sigbjørn Bratlie’s video works have been realized with the support Arts and Culture Norway.