Hannah Sawtell
Re Petitioner in Zero Time 2
28 February–30 March 2014
Opening: 28 February, 8pm
Bergen Kunsthall
Rasmus Meyers allé 5
5015 Bergen
Norway
T +47 55 55 93 10
bergen [at] kunsthall.no
Curated by Martin Clark
In Re Petitioner in Zero Time 2, Hannah Sawtell reconfigures a work first presented in London last year, adapting it very specifically to its new context in Bergen. Comprising a looped digital video, an electronic soundtrack recorded live in the exhibition space, and a series of sculptural elements which also serve as a “bespoke psychoacoustic apparatus,” it also includes a new publication, Broadsheet #5, produced on the occasion of the exhibition and part of an itinerant, ongoing series begun in 2012.
Hannah Sawtell´s work encompasses sound, video, digital media, performance and sculpture and often centers itself around an investigation and critique of neo-liberal market economies and the possibility of a radical left. Through her works she aims to engender a new engagement with the object, opening it up to contemporary considerations of technology, labour, capital, surplus and excess.
Re Petitioner in Zero Time 2 employs an aesthetic influenced by record covers, war games and “Fly like a Bird,” a free online computer game that takes a bird’s eye view of an all but abandoned scenario. The video comprises a single computer-generated shot, soaring across a wasteland peppered with the pre-fossilised detritus of capitalist culture. This is conjoined with an architectural rendering of a building, the elegant brutalist edifice of Norwegian architect Erling Viksjø’s Y-Block in Oslo, erected as the seat of Government at the height of Norway’s progressive socialist democracy in 1970. The viewer is positioned between a pair of bespoke audio transmitters and a parabolic projection screen, which also functions acoustically. In this way the various elements of the work—virtual, sonic and physical—create both an aural image and a rhythmic spatial environment, described by Sawtell as “Global Grey Viral.”
Operating as a ‘real-time’ collage, Re Petitioner in Zero Time 2 explores the physical and virtual dimensions of surplus capital, pairing the seductive languages of advertising with new technologies of excess and access. In this way Sawtell both reveals and performs the labor held within objects, enabling the digital and the material to transmit together.
Hannah Sawtell was born in London in 1971. Recent solo exhibitions include Osculator, 2012, ICA London; Vendor, 2012, Bloomberg SPACE; and Re Petitioner in Zero Time, 2013, Vilma Gold, London. Recent group shows and projects include Sonic Lumps, a performance in collaboration with Factory Floor, ICA; Entroludes 1–6 at Serpentine Cinema, London; La Chausette, Dependance, Brussels; and Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists Film and Video in Britain, Tate Britain, London. She was shortlisted for the 2013 Jarman Award.
Platform:
Hannah Sawtell in conversation with Martin Clark
28 February, 6:30pm
Platform is Bergen Kunsthall’s series of lectures, presentations and debates. See also our online video archive.
Opening night:
Emptyset (UK)
Accumulator (UK)
+ Nabovarsel Dj´s (NO) & Pandreas (NO)
28 February, 10pm
Live performances by Hannah Sawtell (Accumulator), very special guests Emptyset (UK), Nabovarsel Dj’s and Pandreas on the opening night. Presented in collaboration with Nabovarsel.
Publication:
Repetitioner
Broadsheet #5
Editors: Hannah Sawtell, Martin Clark
Texts by Silvia Federici, Inventory, Kjetil A. Jakobsen, Halfdan Wiberg, Rob Young
Published by Bergen Kunsthall and Foundling Court in association with Klassekampen, 2014
