Camille Norment: Untitled (red flame)

Logan Center Exhibitions is pleased to present Untitled (red flame), a newly commissioned, immersive sound-based installation by the acclaimed multimedia artist Camille Norment, which is on view November 15, 2019–January 5, 2020.

Norment’s practice has long utilized both harmony and dissonance as a lens to investigate social and political histories. The U.S.-born, Oslo-based artist has coined the term “cultural psychoacoustics” to describe the way in which she activates and explores various soundscapes in relationship to their cultural contexts and dimensions of public life. Her most recent work is an expansive, ongoing project entitled Untitled (Flame) that takes shape across the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and the Renaissance Society, envisioned respectively as red flame and blue heat.

Developed in a series of workshops in which the artist engaged Chicago residents, Norment’s work at the Logan Center Gallery connects the history of sonic agency in Chicago (a city long renowned for its music scene) with political agency, manifesting, through abstraction and amplification, an immersive soundscape reminiscent of fire. For Untitled (red flame), the darkened gallery is draped in fabric, creating an intimate and immersive space for the experience of Norment’s sonic landscape. The sound is anchored in the gallery by several freestanding megaphones, acting not only as speakers but the pivot point on which the metaphor Norment has constructed rests.

Using recordings derived from the sounds of bodies, of skin and flesh and voice, Norment’s composition crackles and roars, sometimes evoking the gentle warmth of a candle flame, sometimes the ferocity of a wildfire. That potential for explosivity, resonating in Chicago’s history with the Great Fire of 1871 on the one hand and the riots that swept the city during the 1960s on the other, is a reflection of the power inherent in the people Norment has recorded: like the flame of a candle, the strength of an idea, or the outrage against an injustice, once given voice, can spread into a roaring conflagration.

Weaving together fire and speech in this way, the megaphone and the match, the body and the body politic, Untitled (red flame) captures on an elemental level the ability of the human voice to engender solidarity, agency, and resistance.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a performance at the Renaissance Society on December 14, 2019 with staging for the performance open to the public during the preceding week.

Camille Norment: Untitled (red flame) is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and curated by Yesomi Umolu, Director & Curator with Katja Rivera, Assistant Curator and Alyssa Brubaker, Exhibitions Manager. This exhibition is made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Office of Contemporary Art in Norway, The Reva and David Logan Foundation, and friends of the Logan Center. Untitled (Flame) is co-presented with The Renaissance Society.

Related Programming

Opening Reception & Artist Tour 
Friday, November 15, 2019, 6–8pm, Logan Center Gallery 
Please join us for a reception to celebrate the opening of Untitled (red flame). The artist will give a tour of the exhibition at 6:30pm.

In Response: Sampada Aranke
Thursday, November 21, 2019, 6pm, Logan Center Terrace Seminar Room 
Assistant Professor in the Art History, Theory and Criticism Department at the School of the Art Institute, Sampada Aranke, responds to Camille Norment’s project at the Logan Center.

Gallery Talk with Anna Martine Whitehead
Thursday, December 5, 2019, 6pm, Logan Center Gallery
Join artist Anna Martine Whitehead for a gallery talk for the exhibition Camille Norment: Untitled (red flame).

All events are free and open to the public.

About the artist
Camille Norment’s work ranges from live performance and recorded sound to installation and drawing. Her psychoacoustic investigations integrate specific symbols into her soundscapes in allusion to their typical cultural contexts but also in defiance of them, shedding light on the inter-contextual dynamism underlying the formation of potent political images. The Camille Norment Trio comprises the Norwegian hardingfele, electric guitar, and glass armonica—instruments historically believed to have social, psychological, or sexual power over the listener, whose body’s relationship with form and space figure into Norment’s work. She has represented Norway in the 56th Venice Biennial of Art (2015), performed with pianist Craig Taborn at the Armory in New York (2016) and Ryuichi Sakamoto in Japan (2017), and been broadcast on NPR in the U.S., Norway’s NRK radio, and the UK’s BBC. 

About Logan Center Exhibitions
Logan Center Exhibitions presents international contemporary art programming at the Logan Center Gallery and throughout the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Reflecting the spirit of inquiry at the university, Logan Center Exhibitions focuses on open, collaborative and process-based approaches to cultural production. Working closely with artists, students, scholars and community members, Logan Center Exhibitions presents innovative exhibitions by emerging and established artists; supports ambitious new commissions and research projects; disseminates knowledge through publications; and facilitates connections through talks and other public programs.