It was fortunate to start showing my work, catching a wave of awareness on photographic artists, in the mid-70’s. In the mid-80’s I began having gallery shows that opened with just empty frames. A new picture would be executed and appear daily until the show ended. A friend suggested calling this practice “deadline-art”. Exhibitions with “daily” deadlines, became a norm for a while. Often with poets or writers who produced their pieces on the same terms.

 

I have often been moved to question the predictable or the foreseeable. Not content with a static product I knew would change and morph into something else the next day, it has always felt right to challenge viewers to look past the mythologies and actively into the artistic practice. To join me on the journey.

In the very beginning of the 90’s I started investigating advances in high tech/low cost technology to mix and match images, text and sounds in timelinebased projects, and around 2000 and the following decade I started performing these live in the new, digitalprojector-equipped cinema halls.

Since January 2010 my main project has been a monthly delivery of large prints to a personal “secret” art club, the LHK, here in Oslo, as well as turning found objects into short poetic film pieces. Prequels, and sometimes sequels to large printed still images. Timeline-based expressions coming to a standstill, handing over the narrative and the timing of events to the viewer.

 

This has complicated the building of a normal artist career, but chance projects always came my way when times seemed the most bleak, and I have been able to continue on this fragile journey. Focusing on the work and a realisation of responsibility to live an intelligent life. It has always been important for me to be “hands-on”. Whether in the producing of film, text, animation, soundscapes or stills photography. Not from a love of craft, but to be able to engineer serendipity. A lack of an “expert touch” sometimes allow me to nurture and follow the lucky mistakes. On some level at least, this practice is also often what I look for in other artists work.

 

The still images are typically remixes of analog negatives. New composites based on quality scans from different sized negatives from the many analog projects over the years. Stripped of time, place and context they become new composites, belonging only to themselves.

The moving images are made with digital still-cameras, sequenced and reworked in different software. They are often presented as loops and meant to run continuously, approximately indefinite, until the hardware breaks down. Some are so slow in revealing themselves that they give the impression of being projected still images.

 

Not waiting for financing or approval, give me opportunity to observe and learn from the gentle fragmentation and de-fragmentation in these intuitive processes. And again ..and always. Hoping to stumble over something I realise is beyond my capacity – Learning something new and something old. – At the same time. 

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