Underskog

The Invisible Seminar
January 18th and 19th, 2012

Bergen National Academy of the Arts
C. Sundtsgate 53 – 6th floor
Bergen

Wednesday, January 18th, 5pm:
Exhibition opening
with Introduction lecture, Brandon LaBelle
and Presentation: Jennifer Gabrys, on “electronics and energy”

Thursday, January 19th, 10am – 4pm:
Seminar: presentations and discussions
followed by film screening: “Echoes of Forgotten Places” introduced by Jeremy Welsh (8pm – 8th floor)

Seminar Participants:
Faculty of Invisibility (Sönke Hallmann, Inga Zimprich)
Jennifer Gabrys
Brandon LaBelle
Katrine Meisfjord
Robert Sember
Michelle Teran
Jeremy Welsh

Free and Open to the public.

The seminar seeks to investigate the operations of visibility by highlighting the unseen, the camouflaged, the immaterial and the erased as particular aesthetic strategies. If the visual arts historically have relied upon the seeing subject as its partner, functioning to give representation to the imagination or world events, what forms of critique, protest and poetics have been developed by occupying the space of the invisible? How has media culture, and what Camiel van Winkel terms the “regime of visibility”, contributed to the contemporary imperative to visualize and expose? Can notions of the invisible be used to deepen perspectives on the power dynamics of the gaze and image production? And importantly, how might invisibility contribute to rethinking modes of collectivity and politics?

Through this two day seminar, questions around looking and the overlooked will be addressed, pointing toward acts of sonic intervention, secret projects, smuggling operations, covert criticality and other methodologies of the hidden or erased to enliven debate on contemporary cultural practices.

The seminar will consist of presentations by visiting artists and theorists as well as academy staff. It is the aim of the seminar to open up dialogue and round-table discussion, and to investigate the theme from a multiplicity of perspectives. An exhibition of works by related artists and participating students will also be on display, enlivening the discursive exchange with diverse material expressions on representing the unrepresentable.

Organized by Brandon LaBelle.

Exhibition Participants:
Ingrid Eikhaugen
Moa Franzén
Helene Førde
Johnny Hebert
Cecilia Jonsson
Christina Kubisch
Jarle Kvamme
Brandon LaBelle
Susi Law
Sandra de la Loza
Signe Líden
Maria Miranda / Norie Neumark
Eamon O’Kane
Annette Stahmer
Hedvig Sønstabø Thorkildsen