Push on. Shuffle up. Hang Tough.
2023
multi-channel video installation with sound
installation view Bærum Kunsthall
Solo exhibition at Bærum Kunsthall, containing the works Mortal Combat and Support Team.
This exhibition looks at inner speech and the culture of speedreading. The speedreading application Spreeder produces a constant sea of language flowing at the viewer at absurdly fast speeds in a panopticon of screens. Vocal exercises rhythmically repeat to help repress subvocalization, a form of silent inner speech that is experienced in micro movements of the vocal system. The emancipation of the bodily constraint of inner speech allows the speedreader to read faster, consume more, keep going. In morphing text videos and disembodied voices, language constantly attacks itself, strikes over, moves forward.
Support Team is an accompanying three channel video installation piece to Mortal Combat. On two screens are stylised versions of visual tracking exercises that speedreaders use to warm up their eyes. On the third screen motivational statements and affirmations sourced from social media platforms warp and morph into each other in a form of active mantra to keep the reader grinding. These all act and appear in rhythmic synchrony to a soundtrack made from sonic vocal exercises established for
speedreaders to use in order to avoid the act of subvocalisation (sounding out words in the mind) in order to be able to read faster.
Supported by Kulturrådet, KiN, Bergen senter for elektronisk kunst and with technical assistance from Kjetil Smedal / Aldea Centre for Art and Technology.
Photos: Tor S Ulstein / KUNSTDOK