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The North Is Protected
The Nordic Pavillion
49th Venice Biennale
Venice 2001
 
   
 
   
 

The show was curated by Grönlund - Nisunen and realized in collaboration with Leif Elggren, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Anders Tomren.

The starting point for the exhibition was the exhibition space itself, the modernist pavilion building from 1962, designed by Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn. We di not want to construct the exhibition around some formal concept, but wanted the exhibition space and the setting it provided to naturally set the direction for the work of the working group and for th ecarrying out of the project. The exhibition is the outcome of six months' collaboration between five artists. Instead of a traditional joint exhibition, we can talk rather of a collectively made installation.

The Nordic Pavilion is a work, an exhibition and an exhibition space. The exhibition deals with the visible and the invisible, and with the shifting boundary between them. The atmosphere of this unassuming exhibition that blends into the pavilion architecture is formed out of subtle changes in spare visual elements and sounds. The working group wants to stress the collective nature of the project by not naming or crediting the individual works - the parts of the installation made by each artist/artist duo in their own country will remain anonymous and will be interlinked into a single whole in the pavilion. Th especially constructed radio receiver/transmitter receives all radio frequencies simultaneously. The outgoing signal, which is audible in the space and is also relayed via the transmitter on a single frequency, contains all the information travelling on all radio wavelenghts. The space in the pavilion isi divived up by glass partitions, their transparency changing gradually. Hundreds of short pieces of steel wire have been suspended across the longest wall in the space. These move in relation to each other, gradually forming shifting kinetic patterns.

A special catalogue release for the Nordic Pavillion exhibition including a 10" record and a 110-page photography book is available for purchase at www.sahkorecordings.com

> article in Frame News

 

 

 
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