Jana Winderen
OUT OF NORTH!

Curator: Nina Thorstensen
Bačva Gallery
January 14 – 24 and 29, 2016

Exhibition opening – January 14, 7pm

 

Surface Interuption is a site-specific acoustic installation by the Norwegian artist Jana Winderen. With the aid of specialized technology she studies and records the hidden and unseen world beneath us. By bringing the audio topography of the oceans and the ice crevasses to the surface the artists wants to draws the attention to the complexity and fragility of our marine ecosystems. Travelling to remote corners of the Earth to make her field recordings, Winderen uses hydrophones – sensitive underwater microphones – to collect sounds inaudible or inaccessible to unassisted human ears. This scattered sound material is then edited and layered into powerful descriptive soundscapes. For the last ten years Winderen has travelled to both cold and warm climates, from the seas of Greenland to the Caribbean, and from the rivers in Thailand to France and Russia.

For Surface Interruption the artist has made hydrophone recordings from inside the 10000-year-old ice in Greenland, one-year-old ice in Iceland, and from the shallow waters where the surface melts and drifts into waves. Right under the water you can hear the underwater insects, crustaceans and shrimps while a bit deeper you can hear toadfish, cod and Pollock among many other species of fish. They use sound to communicate, hunt and protect their habitat. Cod makes the sound with six drum muscles on its swim bladder while the toadfish is almost invisible, but very audible. These sound environments are quite alien to us and in order to access them the artist attaches hydrophones to the long cables or to the remotely operated vehicles. By giving the audience one more sense, the sense of listening, in order to learn about the ocean, she hopes to evoke curiosity, humility and respect, but also to try establishing a closer relationship to this environment which is so near, right under the surface.

Artist statement

 “I like the immateriality of a sound work and the openness it can have for both associative and direct experience and sensory perception.  I have been busy searching for sounds from hidden sources and for frequencies that are not possible for us to perceive, as well as from places and creatures that are hard to access. In the depths of the oceans there are invisible but audible soundscapes, about which we are largely ignorant, even if the oceans cover 70% of our planet. I am also experimenting with different types of microphones to collect sounds which are not obviously recognizable, but give room for broader, more imaginative readings or sounds that are unreachable for the human senses, such as ultrasound, I use these sounds as source material for composition in a live environment or to create installations, also for film, radio, CD, cassette and vinyl productions.”

Artist Biography

Jana Winderen is an artist educated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology from the University in Oslo. She had an installation in Park Avenue Tunnel, New York City in the summer of 2014 and exhibited at MoMA, NYC in 2013. Jana was recently an artist-in-residence at the TBA21 Academy and releases her audio-visual works on Touch. In 2011 she won the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica, for Digital Musics & Sound Art. With her immersive multi-channel installations and concerts she has performed all over the world. She currently lives and works in Oslo.

Recent sounds works include “The Wanderer” (2015) for the Lorch Schive  Art prize exhibition in Trondheim, “Pasvikdalen” (2015), a commission for the Sonic Act festival in Amsterdam, “Dive” (2014), commissioned by New York Department of transportation for an immersive sound installation in the Park Avenue Tunnel, Manhattan, “Out of Range” commissioned by Deutschlandradio, Kultur, Germany, (2014), “Ultrafield” commissioned by MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, (2013), “Water Signal”, commissioned by The Guggenheim Museum and the Unsound festival in New York for the Stillspotting project, “ultraworld”, a commission by Sound and Music for the listening room at BEOPEN, Trafalgar Square, London (2012).

Recent releases include the Limited edition USB stick release “The Wanderer” (2015) on Ash International, The digital download “Out of Range” (2014), the 12” Vinyl, “Debris” (2012), the album “Energy Field” (2010), “Heated: Live in Japan” (2009), all on Touch (UK); the audio cassette “The Noisiest Guys on the Planet” (2009) on Ash International (UK); the USB stick, “Ants”; the digital download “Submerged” (2009), also on Touch, and the 7” vinyl “Surface Runoff” (2008) on Autofact (USA). 
 She is currently working on a new full-length release for Touch (UK), a commission for the Water and Art Laboratory in Cean, Normandy and she is in the process of realizing the commissioned permanent outdoor sound installation “Raft of Ice” for the new American Embassy in Oslo.

The exhibition supported by the City Office for Culture, Education and Sports Zagreb, Norwegian ambassy Zagreb, Production Network for Electronic Art, Norway, Office for Contempory Art Norway.

WORKING HOURS

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Saturday and Sunday 10am – 6pm
Mondays and holidays – closed

Dom hrvatskih likovnih umjetnika
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10000 Zagreb