ELLEN RINGSTAD

Discontinue Operation!

- THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971)

Dystopian installation built for the exhibition 'FUTURE RUINS' in the disused silo-space that houses the Bergen School of Architecture (BAS). 

Recovered materials (construction materials from demolished house, plastic, fluorescent light tubes, light fittings, staircase constructed for the occasion, armchair, table, lamp), glassbowl with submerged "shipwreck", goldfish (THX 1981), found television with looped videomontage 'Ascend Descend' of two superimposed recordings of an old industrial elevator moving up and down simultaneously). 

FUTURE RUINS, curated by Alison Hugill and Dan Dorocic, was born out of a fascination with the possibilities for exhibition inherent in the silo space at BAS. The theme of ‘Obsolescence and Inoperativity’ invited participants to critically imagine new lives for abandoned spaces and post-industrial architecture, offering alternatives for their original use. Many of the resulting inclusions took a more poetic form, culminating in pieces that provoke the memory of spaces both seen and unseen and the manifold complexities of communicating memory. FUTURE RUINS has multiple connotations: the future possibilities for reimagining ruined spaces, architecture designed with its ruin value already in mind, and the ruinous capacity of time upon memory and recollection.