Caroline Bergvall (FR/NO)
Photo: Tom Martin
Caroline Bergvall (FR/NO), writer and artist of French-Norwegian background, based in London.
Works across artforms, media and languages. A strong exponent of writing methods adapted to contemporary audiovisual and multilingual and other contextual concerns. Starting-points and source materials readily emerge from both ancient cultural detail and contemporary cultural artifacts or political events. Projects alternate between textual pieces, audioworks, visual textworks, installations, and live performances, often in collaboration.
Her most recent output Drift (Nightboat, 2014) was awarded a Judith E. Wilson Fellowship in Poetry and Drama, University of Cambridge. The performance version for live voice, percussion (Ingar Zach) and electronic text (Thomas Köppel) toured the UK in 2014 and was presented at Olavsfestdagene, July 2015. Other publications: Meddle English and Fig as well as a DVD of earlier installations Ghost Pieces (2010). Has recently presented work at: Tate Modern (London), Khoj Centre (New Delhi), Fondation Vuitton (Paris), Mamco Museum (Geneva). Current project in development commissioned bty Mamco Museum, Geneva: Raga Dawn, an outdoors sunrise performance for vocal text and electronic bass being composed for Summer 2016. Has been awarded a Mellon Collaborative Fellow, Gray Center for Art and Enquiry, University of Chicago, 2016.
Participates in:
UNSOUND GTMO: recording the State of Exception
In April 2015, poet Jordan Scott (CA) visited the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Detention Centre, where he was able to collect a variety of ambient sound recordings. Scott will present these recordings of GTMO environments in order to ask whether they might comprise a way navigating government redaction, and/or to question the presumptive values of dysfluency and the (im) possibility of listening in spaces of trauma. Scott worked in collaboration with composer and critic Jason Starnes who curated and produced the sounds for this event. We will read some of the detainees poems and screen Caroline Bergvall's (UK) film Ghost Cargo (2011) before the sound work.