Jorunn Øgstad is a first year student at the National Art Academy in Oslo, she has just arrived back from Iceland where she was on an exchange to Reykjavik Art Academy for some months. Her video installation is inspired by the dramatic Icelandic nature and footage from the local Television. For this Rakett event she will combine her images with the live sound of Aurora Plastic Monster.
Aurora Plastic Monster is a two-headed monster: Lill J. Halbakken (vocals, bass) and Thomas Støyva (drums, vocal, mouth organ) based in Oslo. They started up in 2002 and have played live concerts all around Norway. Rakett has invited this duo for our first event, the Rakettstart!, to give a live concert and hopefully make a similar blast that occures when Rockets take off! www.auroraplasticmonster.com
As the title for sure leads you to think, this was our first Rakett event ever. By arranging a garage rock live concert with video screenings, we wanted to take over and turn the former white cube of the Art Academy in Bergen into it’s original space, a garage in the basement of the school building. Outside on the parking lot you could get hold of some beverages from the back of a VW minibus (APM’s touring bus). The same vehicle occupied the exhibition space, as a garage, when the night was over. The Rocket had now taken off.
Aurora Plastic Monster, concert at Kunstrom September 26th 2003
Jorunn Hancke Øgstad: video projection
Jorunn Hancke Øgstad: video projection
Aurora Plastic Monster, concert at Kunstrom September 26th 2003
Volkswagen tour bus and bar
Volkswagen tour bus and bar
Aurora Plastic Monster: Landing. Live recording from Kunstrom, September 26th , 2003
Some words about the beginning of Rakett
We started up our collaboration while still studying at the Bergen National Academy of Arts. Our common starting point and idea was to make a closer contact and interaction between students of the three art academies in Norway.
During our studies in Bergen there was a space connected to the art Academy, approx 35sqm, situated on the sea level in the harbor area of Bergen. This space was not in so much in use any more. Formerly the space was known as White Cube – a project that started up much thanks to artist Stephan Dillemuth who was professor in Bergen at the time. After a while some activity started up and the space got re-named to Kunst_rom.
By using this space as a platform for our activities, we started a series of events called “Rakett presents” approximately once a month. The initial idea was to invite different artists or cultural producers to collaborate in the space. These were artists that we found interesting, that didn’t already know each other that we wanted to introduce to each other and to the audience in Bergen. Usually they were invited to work in the space for one week, and during this time they were accessible to people interested and curious on their process. We supported the artists with the travel costs and accommodation, unfortunately not any of the production costs.
At the end of the week we always had an opening night where the work was displayed. Sometimes we also combined or incorporated live music/performative elements at the event. The show was open one night only, which was important to us, because we wanted to encourage a social context and a discussion. People had to come this one night or they would miss out on it. The following day we arranged an artist talk, where the artists presented their projects and a following discussion with the attending audience.
Even though Rakett used Kunst_rom as a base for the activities in the beginning, the project has always been a mobile platform. We didn’t have any interest in running a gallery or art space because this would actually restrict the freedom that we had within the concept of Rakett, and would also give us a lot of extra administrational work. We wanted to rather use our time and energy on the process of developing the events, projects and exhibitions together with the invited agents. We were interested in the situations that occurred and how the events could create new meetings between people, thoughts and ideas. One of our aims was also to introduce different projects that could be further developed by the people that we involved.
The “Rakett presents” events of 03-04 were kindly supported by Bergen National Academy of Arts.
