‘Rivers of Emotion, Bodies of Ore’: Professor Lise Autogena exhibiting and discussing ‘Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld’ at Kunsthall Trondheim
On Tuesday 11 December 2018 Professor Lise Autogena will discuss her work Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld currently exhibited in Rivers of Emotion, Bodies of Ore, at Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway.
Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld – the title refers to the name of a mountain in Greenland, which brings together different voices from a country divided on the issue of uranium mining. The Kvanefjeld mountain is one of the richest rare earth mineral resources sites in the world, and one of the largest sources of uranium. Greenland has been divided on the issue of uranium mining since 2013 – the year when the national prohibition against extraction of uranium was abolished. The Danish artist Lise Autogena and the British artist Joshua Portway spent the summer of 2016 in southern Greenland – talking with local inhabitants: politicians, sheep farmers, teachers and state representatives. The artists’ conversations with the people of Narsaq reveal the tensions and contradictions in the discussion about whether or not uranium should be extracted from the mountain.
Following the screening of the work, a discussion will take place with Ulla Ankjær Jørgensen, Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Media Studies, at NTNU.
Rivers of Emotion, Bodies of Ore
Kunsthall Trondeim, Norway
Thursday 13 September 2018 – Friday 21 December 2018
Artist talk with Lise Autogena and Ulla Ankjær Jørgensen – Tuesday 11 December 2018 (6.30 PM screening, 7PM talk)
This fall’s major exhibition at Kunsthall Trondheim, Rivers of Emotion, Bodies of Ore, deals with the notion of extractivism – from the foundations in the 17th century of Trondheim’s prosperity through copper mining, until today’s many ways of extracting information, knowledge and emotions through social media and other digital communication. The exhibition, which has been curated by Lisa Rosendahl, presents works by Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway, David Blandy, Liv Bugge, Sean Dockray, Bodil Furu, Marianne Heier, Louis Henderson, Lawrence Lek, Hanna Ljungh, Rikke Luther, Ignas Krunglevičius, Eline McGeorge, Karianne Stensland and Anja Örn, Tomas Örn & Fanny Carinasdotter.
Extraction is a phenomenon commonly associated with fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, or with the mining of metals and minerals. In the digital era, the notion of extraction has expanded even further, to also include data- and virtual currency mining as well as the commodification of human emotions and behaviours through social media. In the 21st century, the extractive paradigm seems to be without bounds: the mining of previously unreachable territories such as the deep-sea floor and celestial bodies is fast becoming a reality, all the while the streams of data we leave behind while conducting our everyday lives are being captured, mapped and profited from, commodifying even the most intimate aspects of our minds and bodies.
The exhibition in Trondheim places contemporary artworks and historical materials in dialogue with each other, making the Kunsthall into a site of intersectional exploration of the paradigm of extraction. Trondheim’s history of copper mining is used as a starting point for tracing a wider web of actual connections and speculative associations spanning different geographical, digital and emotional realms. Through conflating the exploitation of the Earth with that of the human mind and body, or comparing the actual materiality of digital hardware with the promise of the immaterial experience it seduces us with, the art works offer multiple entry points into the phenomena of extraction and its far-reaching consequences.
The exhibition also prompts its audiences to consider a future scenario: in a thousand years from now, when both Earth and human consciousness might have been depleted of their resources, will today’s artworks be the only remaining fossils bearing witness to the emotional landscapes once inhabited by humans?
Professor Lise Autogena is an artist and a Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Art at the Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University. Find out more about her work here.