ELSEWHERENESS:CapeTown
Year 2009
00:02:06
Video: Anders Weberg
Sound: Robert Willim
To download the files: right-click on link, or ctrl-click if you use Mac
Mp4 for portable players :13Mb
3GGP for mobile phones :1,5Mb
ELSEWHERENESS.COM
by Anders Weberg and Robert Willim
The Elsewhereness series deals with questions of site specificity, juxtaposing the nomadic with the place-bound. Early site specific artworks in the 1960s – 70s were often massive in form and commented on the commodification of the prevailing artworld. In keeping with artist Richard Serra’s expression” to remove the work is to destroy the work”, most of this work was place-bound. Site specific art has since then been transformed. Often it is about the social, about engagement and relations between people living in a certain place and visiting artists.
Elsewhereness subverts these approaches. It is instead about the ephemeral, about urban alienation and non-presence. It takes the possibilities for digital media in relation to site specific art to its extremes. It is also in a way a parody of the history of site-specific art creating “one place after another”, a dynamic that Miwon Kwon writes about in her discussion of the history of site specific art (2002). Elsewhereness is about the artists NOT being there. The artists are elsewhere, touching from a distance.
The works in the Elsewhereness series are made solely from audio and videomaterial found on the web, material that emanates from a specific place. The audiovisual pieces are manipulated and composed into a surreal journey through an estranged landscape, based entirely on the culturally bound and stereotypical preconceptions of the artists about the actual location.
The finished Elsewhereness work can be downloaded into a media player or mobile phone and enjoyed when walking around the surroundings of the specific place, from which the material emanates.
The first part of the series was Elsewhereness:Yokohama, commissioned by the Dislocate 08 festival in Yokohama/Tokyo.
http://www.dis-locate.net/
A work commissioned for Cape Town just finished production.
As the series expands, a number of places will be joined into a web of surreal associations, saying something about the various places but also about cultural preconceptions.
The Elsewhereness series deals with questions of site specificity, juxtaposing the nomadic with the place-bound. Early site specific artworks in the 1960s – 70s were often massive in form and commented on the commodification of the prevailing artworld. In keeping with artist Richard Serra’s expression” to remove the work is to destroy the work”, most of this work was place-bound. Site specific art has since then been transformed. Often it is about the social, about engagement and relations between people living in a certain place and visiting artists.
Elsewhereness subverts these approaches. It is instead about the ephemeral, about urban alienation and non-presence. It takes the possibilities for digital media in relation to site specific art to its extremes. It is also in a way a parody of the history of site-specific art creating “one place after another”, a dynamic that Miwon Kwon writes about in her discussion of the history of site specific art (2002). Elsewhereness is about the artists NOT being there. The artists are elsewhere, touching from a distance.
The works in the Elsewhereness series are made solely from audio and videomaterial found on the web, material that emanates from a specific place. The audiovisual pieces are manipulated and composed into a surreal journey through an estranged landscape, based entirely on the culturally bound and stereotypical preconceptions of the artists about the actual location.
The finished Elsewhereness work can be downloaded into a media player or mobile phone and enjoyed when walking around the surroundings of the specific place, from which the material emanates.
The first part of the series was Elsewhereness:Yokohama, commissioned by the Dislocate 08 festival in Yokohama/Tokyo.
http://www.dis-locate.net/
A work commissioned for Cape Town just finished production.
As the series expands, a number of places will be joined into a web of surreal associations, saying something about the various places but also about cultural preconceptions.
Mar 10
ELSEWHERENESS:Yokohama
To download the files: right-click on link, or ctrl-click if you use Mac
Windows Media:31Mb
Mp4 for portable players :45Mb
3GGP for mobile phones :4Mb
Year 2008
00:07:00
Video: Anders Weberg
Sound: Robert Willim
The work was created for Dislocate08.
DISLOCATE08 TOKYO and YOKOHAMA 30th August - 21st September
Designed to facilitate international dialogue between artists, researchers and the public, Dislocate encourages exchange and reflection upon our experiences and perceptions of the interplay between these elements.
Dislocate questions our notions of place and location in the face of perpetual motion through multifaceted environments. The velocity of this passage is accelerated through new technologies, but as a result how does this impact upon our encounter with place and our attempt to communicate this to elsewhere?
Through an exhibition, symposium and workshop series Dislocate will examine this encounter and communication, taking a journey through surrounding spaces and exploring our transient connections.
ELSEWHERENESS
ELSEWHERENESS
by Anders Weberg and Robert Willim
The Elsewhereness series deals with questions of site specificity, juxtaposing the nomadic with the place-bound. Early site specific artworks in the 1960s – 70s were often massive in form and commented on the commodification of the prevailing artworld. In keeping with artist Richard Serra’s expression” to remove the work is to destroy the work”, most of this work was place-bound. Site specific art has since then been transformed. Often it is about the social, about engagement and relations between people living in a certain place and visiting artists.
Elsewhereness subverts these approaches. It is instead about the ephemeral, about urban alienation and non-presence. It takes the possibilities for digital media in relation to site specific art to its extremes. It is also in a way a parody of the history of site-specific art creating “one place after another”, a dynamic that Miwon Kwon writes about in her discussion of the history of site specific art (2002). Elsewhereness is about the artists NOT being there. The artists are elsewhere, touching from a distance.
The works in the Elsewhereness series are made solely from audio and videomaterial found on the web, material that emanates from a specific place. The audiovisual pieces are manipulated and composed into a surreal journey through an estranged landscape, based entirely on the culturally bound and stereotypical preconceptions of the artists about the actual location.
The finished Elsewhereness work can be downloaded into a media player or mobile phone and enjoyed when walking around the surroundings of the specific place, from which the material emanates.
Weberg and Willim have been working together on a number of art pieces, drawing on their joint expertise. The works emanate from Willim’s research questions into uses of digital media and questions of spatiatility as a researcher of European Ethnology at Lund University in southern Sweden. Drawing on the theories of anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and media theorist Lev Manovich, he has been using the concept of “the aesthetic of ephemerality” (Willim 1999) to discuss how certain characteristics of digital media have been prevalent during the last decades. He has also discussed how the use of technology has been related to spatiality as well as ideas about a new economy and the experience economy (Willim 2003, Löfgren & Willim 2005).
Webergs unique layered visual language, with its distorted representations of time, has proven to be an intriguing complement to the questions raised by Willim’s research. In a number of works they have developed evocations of imaginary and emotional geographies. One theme that has been a focal point “place marketing” and its variations, practices and examinations of the discourses of urban spatiality. They also deal with new media, like mobile phones, in an innovative way.
Examples can be seen at:
http://www.surrealscania.se (2006)
http://www.beingthere.se (2006)
