ELLEN RINGSTAD

Everything began and ended with an imitation of shapes leading nowhere

- Solaris (Stanislaw Lem)

Site-specific and interactive video installation for the group show pOTSYd, located in a bomb shelter beneath the city of Bergen. pOTSYd (dystopia spelled in reverse) was planned and curated as a parasitical happening, clinging to its mastodontic host body - the Bergen Triennial 2013 (Bergen Assembly) - sharing its general vicinity and opening hours with the triennial. Although pOTSYd was curated and produced by myself and Rasmus Hungnes, we both participated as artists also. 'Everything Began And Ended' is my artistic contribution.
 

Materials: re-appropriated materials (various objects, wood, windows, UV-lights, fluorescent spray paint on soil, plastic stencils, text (quote from Solaris by Stanislaw Lem: “Everything began and ended with an imitation of shapes leading nowhere,”) HD projector and video projection ('Inhale Exhale' (2013), 3'56'' loop).

pOTSYd, incorporating the works of eleven artists, was set in a mysterious 'cave' in 'the bowels of Bergen', the literal underground, in an attempt to create an intense energetic mythical and magical arena outside of the traditional, local 'white cubes' (all of which were occupied by Bergen Assembly).

pOTSYd drew upon one of the first science fiction novels ever written: Niels Klim's Underground Travels (1741) by exile-Norwegian Ludvig Holberg. The novel chronicled a young scientist's return to Bergen and his subsequent attempt at establishing himself as a player in the local scientific community, during which endeavour he stumbled into a hole in a cave on top of Mount Fløien, thus discovering a microcosmos within the crust of the earth – he visited, among other wondrous places, the utopian state of Potu (≈utopia spelled backwards).

You are cordially invited to explore more of the mythology of pOTSYd here.