Still Liflessnes

 The Art of Germination


This exhibition was held in conjunction with the events to mark the 75th anniversary of the Institute of Art and Design at the Telemark University College in Norway.

Definisjon of nature from Webster Encyclopedia

Nourishing with Language


One of the works I presented in the installation, The Art of Germination, was a Webster Encyclopedia Unabridged Dictionary that I had transformed.


Paradoxically, the definition of Nature in the encyclopaedia takes a microscopic portion of the space in the book, considering how big Nature is actually.  Additionally, this definition begins with the explanation of human nature – “1. the particular combination of qualities belonging to a person, animal, thing, or class by birth, origin, or constitution; native or inherent character: the nature of man…” . In itself, this evidences our anthropocentric perspective on Nature as concept. Point nr 7 scarcely mentions NATURE, by which I mean this big organic world we grow out of. This upside down formulation of the hierarchy of explanations of the term provoked this particular work.


I carved a hole in the book and “planted” an island of moss. The island is watered by the drip labelled with a definition of Nature taken from the encyclopaedia. This work performs a visual experiment where Nature is nourished with its own definition. Nature is being kept in an artificial life by the “linguistic straitjacket”. I wish we had one and only one word for this “Thing” we call NATURE, so that it’s not mixed with culture. I wish this word would be protected and not allowed to be applied to other things. 

 


Bible transformed 01 - book


The  Bible Transformed. Photos of the Bible you can see here.

In my version of the Bible I placed a drawing of God, created by my son, then 4 years old. To the question: Where do we come from? He answered:


"God has got something to hide the knife inside. He has a remote controller and put different things on it. Then he is pressing a button. All things merge together and we jump out of the controller."


To see pages of the Transformed Bible clisk here

The Art of Germination - photo documentation