Melanie Windl: past sense

In February this year, german artist, Melanie Windl, had a one month residency at Bygda 2.0 on Stokkøya in Åfjord as a part of her residency at LKV. She got intrigued by the islands history and began to research its present remains. Her research accumulated into an interactive audio-visual installation which reveals the artist‘s idiosyncratic view on the limitations and possibilities of memory and preservation. The installation titled past sense approaches the tragic incident of September 8th 1943 in Linesfjorden, Sør-Trøndelag, when the two german ships DS Signal and MS Reuenthaler chrashed. MS Reuenthaler sank and 19 soldiers lost their lives. In 2011 the NTNU research ship Gunnerus located MS Rauenthaler after decades without knowing the exact location of the ship, at the depth of 154 meters.

Melanie Windl works in the transdisciplinary field of new media art. She often works with multi-sensory large scale installations which show a strong fascination for the inherent poetic quality of nature and technology. Windl recently exhibited at the Regionale 2016 NRW in Germany, the Tokyo Experimental Festival in Japan, at Madlab 0 in Matsudo, Japan, and the Sapporo Tenjinyama Art Studio in Japan. Windl has exhibited internationally, and often holds workshops, talks and lectures. Her residency at Stokkøya have been kindly supported by the municipality of Åfjord and the county of Sør-Trøndelag fylkeskommune.

Simo Saarikoski: Abandoned Land

Abandoned Land is an experimental video that documents abandoned places in Finland, made by finnish artist Simo Saarikoski. The video uses Finland as an allegory to approach recent changes of the European infrastructure and society with visually effective images, prosaic narration and music. Before the depicted environment was abandoned it had grown to meet the demands of its society. Now useless, the video observes and documents the changes in our time from the reconstruction after world war II to present time.The material for the video was shot from 2015 until the late 2016.

Simo Saarikoski (b.1980 in Finland) works extensively in different fields of visual art. In his work he explores time and it’s phenomena, as well as human impact on the environment and how to find mercy for yourself in the era of social media. Saarikoski uses video, sound and watercolor painting separately or in the form of installations. He has performed with the group – Messianic Research Centre for Visual Ethics (MRCVE, funded i 2002) around Europe and US, and he has also worked as a performance art event organizer and curator in Pori, Finland. His residency period at LKV and the exhibition has kindly been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Nordic Culture Point Mobility Funding.