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Resurfacing

November 18, 2006

I have not been blogging much lately mainly for three reasons.

First and foremost the last three or four weeks have been very busy. The process of installing Cubic Second was hectic and the two last nights before the opening I slept for 1 1/2 and 3 hours respectively. I often end up skipping sleep for a night when doing projects but this was the first time I did it for two nights in a row. And I had a few the last two weeks before moving into the space as well. During the ten days that it was up and running I did several presentations of the work and the art-based research project I have been working on for the last three years. Deinstalling was also time consuming and had to be done in a very short amount of time. I had painted all walls black and we had to apply four layers of white to bring them back to normal. We finished Tuesday morning at 03:00. The next two days I had to arrange with transporting everything back to my studio. Only now things starts to slow down and this will be the first normal weekend with some time off in several months. But I am not complaining I have had a lot of fun along the way and I was very happy about the end result.

Painting the gallery space white again might sound really dull but it was actually satisfying. There were no compromises or shortcuts in terms of how the installation was done. In addition I have had a fantastic team to help me on the installation: Are Hauffen Hilde Hauan Johnsen Kristian Skjold Matthias Marieke Verbiesen and Elin Solvang. When it comes to practical planning of the installation the one thing I have been the most satisfied about is the team I managed to pull together. Without their help I would not have been able to pull this off.

The second reason not to blog was that while working on the Cubic Second installation and in particular so after moving into the gallery space I decided that I did not want to reveal to much of what could be expected by posting images at the blog. The space was completely transformed for the installation and I wanted that to be a surprise as the audience entered the space at the opening.

Finally one of the things I have been using the blog for is reflecting on books that I am reading. Currently I am reading Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art by Brandon LaBelle. I have been fortunate to have Brandon LaBelle as member of the
comittee currently assessing my research. It might well be that he is currently reading this blog (in that case: Hi!) and it felt a bit awkward writing about the book prior to the meeting of the comittee in Bergen for assessing the installation a week ago.

Suffice to say: I believe this will become a (maybe the) standard text on sound art. I am reading it slowly on the 45 min. buss ride in and out of town every day.

In a way I regret that this book was not available three years ago as it could have saved me quite a bit of time. On the other hand I have myself tried to track down the emergence of sound art and how it relates to both contemporary music and fine arts. I guess that if I had read this book three years ago I would have lost out on a lot of the points he is discussing. Now I find that it confirms many of my own findings and vastly elaborates on them. His discussion of the work and writings of John Cage is one of the most lucid I have ever read.