ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHIES

HØVIKODDEN LIVE 2009

Anna Sigmond GudmundsdottirANNA GUDMUNDSDOTTIR BOKMAT (b. 1974, Iceland) is an artist living and working in Oslo and Berlin. She graduated from Vestlandets Kunstakademi in 2000, and from the Iceland Academy of Arts, Reykavik in 1996. She combines wall painting with video, performance and sculpture. Gudmundsdottir’s work is often a mixture of historical motives, found footage from the Internet, media critique and fictional elements. In 2002 she participated in Manifesta4. She has exhibited extensively in Scandinavia, Germany and Austria. Exhibitions include solo shows at the OK Center for Contemporary art in Linz, Austria in 2003, Living Art Museum, Reykjavik in 2007, and Brandstrup Gallery in 2008. All together, Gudmundsdottir has had 11 solo exhibitions within 9 years. Gudmundsdottir has also participated in a long list of international group shows, such as at Wiener Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Austria in 2008, the UKS Biennial, Norway, American Fine Art, New York. She also participated at Lights On, Norwegian Contemporary Art in 2008 at the Astrup Fearnley Museum for Contemporary Art, Oslo. Her drawings are presented in the Phaidon book Vitamin D. Gudmundsdottir has received different State grants and has conducted several public art projects for various private and state institutions. From 2004 to 2009 she worked as assistant professor at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She received the Royal Caribbean Arts Grant in 2009.

Aeron Bergman (Detroit, USA, 1971) and Alejandra Salinas (La Rioja, Spain, 1977) are an artist duo currently living and working in Oslo. Bergman received an MA in art history from the University of Toronto and an MA in fine art from New York University. Salinas studied her undergraduate at The School of Visual Arts in New York and her MA at Valand School of Fine Arts in Sweden. The pair have had solo exhibitions in art centers such as the Centre d´Arte Santa Monica in Barcelona, the Serralves Museum in Porto, Röda Sten Art Center in Gothenburg and Centre D´Art Contemporaine in Geneva. They have taken part in group shows in art centers such as the ICC Tokyo, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo and the CCCB in Barcelona. The pair have also done performances in venues around the world, such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Knitting Factory in New York, and the MUDAM in Luxembourg; as well as directing Lucky Kitchen Editions for artists’ multiples and expanded sound. They have published 15 solo audio works on labels such as Kning Disk, Orthlorng Musork, Softl Music, Tomlab, and Onomatopee. Bergman is currently a professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

CAMILLE NORMENT Triplight, 2008Camille Norment was born in 1970 in Silver Spring, Maryland. She lived and worked in New York City for 12 years before relocating to Europe in 2004, and now has a permanent residency in Norway. Camille holds Masters Degrees in both Fine Arts and in Interactive Telecommunications, a technology arts discipline, and has held the title of Professor of Art and Technology at Malmö University’s School of Art, Culture, and Communication in Sweden. Camille Norment’s multi-media work is concerned with the way the body is inscribed with meaning through its negotiation with its surroundings, and employs a narrative logic that likens itself to magical-realism and science fiction while maintaining a minimalist formal aesthetic. Exhibition credits include the ListeYoung Art Fair (2009), the Thessaloniki Biennial, Greece (2007), Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; the Charlottenborg Fonden, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.; the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; UKS Gallery, Oslo, Norway; the Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden, and radio broadcast in the Venice Biennial, Italy. Norment’s work has been written about in periodicals such as Art Forum, Art in America, The New York Times, a feature in The Wire Magazine, and numerous other international texts.


Joachim Dyrdahl (born 1979 in Norway), otherwise known as diskJokke, is a Norwegian DJ, producer and recording artist. He is a leading exponent of Norwegian new disco and the new wave of electronica, along with names such as Lindstrøm, Rune Lindbæk and Prins Thomas. After producing four EPs, he released his debut album Staying In on Smalltown Supresound in 2007 – an album that was nominated for the Norwegian “Spellemannsprisen” (Norwegian Musician’s Prize). As a result, he has rapidly become one of Norway’s most sought-after DJs and remixers. In 2009, diskJokke entered the world of contemporary music when he collaborated with The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and arranged string accompaniments to his own pieces. This link to contemporary music has not come about by chance, because diskJokke is himself a qualified violinist and in his music, there are mixes of Giorgio Moroder, Terry Riley, Brian Eno and Arthur Russell.

diskJokke: Sunday 30th of August at 5pm on the Outdoor Stage

Famlende Forsøk from Arendal/Eydehavn in Norway started up in 1981 and made a name for themselves with a long series of cassette releases during the 1980s and the cult record Ars Transmutatoria in 1990, an album that is often cited as a major source of inspiration for the 1990s generation of Norwegian noise and experimental music. The band consists of the vocalist Brt and the musicians Lumpy Davy and ChrispH. Accompanied by long drawn-out electronic and acoustic sounds, Brt chants his distinctive lyrics in his Arendal dialect, reflecting Burrough’s cut-up literary techniques and sound poetry aesthetics. Following Ars Transmutatoria, Famlende Forsøk (lit.: Fumbling Attempts) spent 16 years completing their project based on the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s One Night I Had A Frightful Dream. The concert at Høvikodden will be their first in the Oslo area for many years.

Famlende Forsøk: Sunday 25th of October at 4pm in the Studio

Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Holland) is an auto-didactic composer, musician and poet. For over 25 years, he has used his voice as a prime means of discovering and developing new sounds, and his unceasing activity with different projects has won him a reputation as one of the leading names and innovators in the field of experimental vocal technique. As a vocal artist, Blonk has made a name for himself due to his strong stage presence and an almost childlike freedom of expression in his improvisations, which he nevertheless subjects to a stringent structural form. In recent years, Blonk has held concerts all over the world and has collaborated with artists such as Maja Ratk je, Mats Gustafsson, Nicolas Collins, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, The Ebony Band, Carola Bauckholt and Golan Levin. Jaap Blonk has also distinguished himself as the leading interpreter of Schwitters’ voice and works of audio poetry. As early as 1986, he released Ursonate on record and more recently he has produced, in collaboration with Golan Levin, the work Ursonography, which is an audiovisual version of Ursonate.

Jaap Blonk performs Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters on Sunday 4th of October at 2pm in the Main Hall

Katarina Zdjelar (1979, Belgrade) is an artist based in Rotterdam. She completed her MFA at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and graduated with a BA (Hons) from the University of Arts in Belgrade. Her work investigates what happens to subjectivity and to communication in a foreign language, when a mental and physical struggle with language occurs. Recent solo exhibitions include But if you take my voice what will be left to me? The 53rd Venice Biennial, Serbian Pavilion, Venice; Shoum, LOOP 09, Barcelona; The Precarious State #3: Taking Place, De Inkijk/SKOR, Amsterdam (2009); Katarina Zdjelar: Speaking through Each Other’s Mouth, Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Belgrade (2009); Katarina Zdjelar-Everything is Gonna Be, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2008);The Perfect Sound, Vivid, Birmingham(2008); Everything Is Gonna Be, Anne de Villepoix Gallery, Paris (2008); Bez prevoda, Gallery for Contemporary Art, Pancevo(2007).

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (born 1973 in Norway) is a composer and performer, who both as a solo artist and with projects such as Spunk, Fe-Mail and Trinacria has challenged Norwegian and international listeners over the last 15 years. She is equally at home with written music as with improvised and noise music. Her works have been performed by ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, the orchestra of the Norwegian Broadcasting Company and the electronica band Cicada. In 2001 she was the first Norwegian to be awarded the Arne Nordheim Composer Prize and two years later, she won the Award of Distinction during the Prix Ars Electronica for her vocals record Voice. In 2008, the record River Mouth Echos, featuring written works by Ratkje, was released by John Zorn’s record company Tzadik.

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje: Sunday 27th of September at 2pm in the Studio

Masami Akita (born 1956 in Japan) started his Merzbow project in 1979. Inspired by Kurt Schwitters, Vienna Actionism, Dadaism, psychedelia and prog-rock, Akita decided to create a new, sonic expression that broke with all musical norms. His aim was to combine Schwitter’s idea of refuse as artistic material with the most ecstatic highlights of rock music. The result was modern noise music, and Merzbow is currently easily the greatest and best known artist of this genre. Akita is also the most active, with over 300 releases to his name (including Merzbox – a collection of 50 cds), and he shows no sign of slowing the pace. In recent years, Akita, who is a vegan, has spoken out on behalf of animal rights and used his name as the leader of noise music to promote this cause.

Merzbow: Sunday 11th of October at 3.30pm in the Studio

The instrumental avant-rock band Noxagt was founded by bass player Kjetil D. Brandsdal in Stavanger in 1999. In the beginning it was a one-man band, with Bransdal playing solo or with various guest musicians. In 2001, Noxagt became a permanent trio, with Lars Christian Kyvik on drums and Nils Erga on the viola. The band made its international breakthrough with the album Tuning It Down Since 2001 and toured continually in Europe and the USA from then on. In 2005, Erga left the band and Anders Hana took his place on the guitar until 2008, when he, in turn, was replaced by the noise musician John Hegre. But whoever was playing, Noxagt has always had a unique sound that has won them a great many fans over the years. This concert at Høvikodden will be their first in Oslo in over a year.

Noxagt: Sunday 6th of September at 3pm on the Outdoor Stage.

Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962, Paris) attended the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques from 1981 to 1982 and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs from 1982 to 1985. Huyghe has been creating a variety of artworks and collaborative projects since the early 1990s. He is interested in the exhibition as a location where potential new realities can emerge, in the freedom of non-productive actions, in the layering of interpretations, both real and fictional, and in experience as a territory of infinite possible narratives. Evident in his works is a recurring desire to introduce pleasure, play and childhood fantasy into art. Recent selected solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany (1999); Museo Serralves, Oporto (1999); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2001); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2002); Dia Art Foundation, New York (2003); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, (2003);Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Boston (2004, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2004) and ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Tate Modern, London (2006); Reykjavik Art Museum (2007); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León(2007). In 2001, Huyghe was awarded a Golden Lion for the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and also received the Hugo Boss Award at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in 2003. He has also participated in Documenta 11, Kassel (2002); the Venice Biennale, (2007, 2003, 1999, 1997); Whitney Biennial, New York (2006) and the Biennale of Sydney (2008) and many other international exhibitions.

Serena Maneesh is one of the most respected bands in Norway, regardless of genre, and the Henie Onstad Art Centre is proud to present the band’s first concert in Oslo in two years. Serena Maneesh is one of the few bands that seems equally at home in an art centre as in a club, since their sound, lyrics, performance styles and vocals contain just as many references to visual arts, performance and films as to music. In 2005, the band released its eponymous debut-album with a record, featuring eleven distorted, noisy and beautiful songs that attract fans of rock, noise and electronica alike. Serena Maneesh is Emil Nicolaysen’s baby: “I love melodies, bedecked in a magnificent cape, or in the form of gaping intestines. I love rhythm that gets me hooked. That’s the way it will always be. Melody and rhythm must have many wings to fly with, and that can hopefully be called music in the end!”

Serena Maneesh: Sunday 30th of August at 6pm on the Outdoor Stage

Sidsel Endresen (born 1952 in Norway) has made her own distinctive mark on the Norwegian and international music scene for nearly 30 years, as a singer, composer, teacher and music group leader. She is regarded as one of Norway’s leading performers in vocal improvisation and specialist vocal techniques and through her unique voice and artistic integrity she has more or less created a genre all of her own. Endresen’s career has developed from fusion with Chipahua and the Jon Ebersen Group in the 1980’s, to chamber jazz. From the middle of the 1990’s onwards, she has primarily worked with improvisation and new music. She has produced 16 records, collaborated with innumerable Norwegian and international musicians and performed as a soloist with international big bands, choirs and orchestras in the field of contemporary music. In addition, she has composed music for dance and theatre productions as well as several works commissioned by jazz festivals. At the Henie Onstad Art Centre, Sidsel Endresen will perform solo, which focuses on experimental vocal techniques, improvisation and highly intensive sound research.

Sidsel Endresen: Sunday 6th of September at 2pm on the Outdoor Stage

SIMONA BARBERASimona Barbera (born in Genoa, Italy, 1971) is an artist based in Genoa and Oslo. She started studying classical piano and composition before entering the Academy of Fine Art in Milan. In 2007, she graduated with an MA in Fine Art at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts, with a project work focused on sound art. She is currently pursuing electronic music studies, with emphasis on sound installation, at the Music Technology Department at the Music Conservatory in Italy. Her work is based on the integration of sonic art and electronic music, in the form of sound/visual installations and live performance, emphasizing the matter of sound in relation to the space. In her previous installations she has been incorporating various visual/light elements in order to achieve a complex immersing ambience. Most of her sound works stem from a detailed process of elaboration of a sound source, made up of different distinct components. The sound is about growth and continuous development, with strained feedbacks turning into scrape. Barbera has realized projects in art residencies, gallery shows, multimedia and electronic music festivals in Norway, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Pakistan, Brazil, Ireland, Bosnia Herzegovina, Finland and Switzerland.

The Swedish autodidactic composer Sten Hanson was the leader of the Fylkingen language group from 1968 and in charge of the Text-Sound Festivals which were held for many years. In Sweden, he was chairman of the ISCM (1975-1981), member of the Royal Academy of Music of Sweden and President of the Swedish Composers’ Union (1985-1994), member of the Executive Committee of International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music (ICEM) (1981-1982) and Chairman of this organization from 1997 to 2002. Sten Hanson has realized a large number of works in various styles: works for television, ballet music, performances, audiovisual performances assisted by computer, pieces for instruments and tape and/or electronics, works for orchestras and computer music. Many of his early compositions were short, hard hitting collages of text and sound with a socially and politically committed content: Che (1968), Western Europe (1969), Revolution (1970). In other works the emphasis was on humorous burlesque: Coucher et souffler (1968), How are You (1969).  Compositions like Fnarp(e) (1970) and L’Inferno de Strindberg (1971) have passed through more extensive electro-acoustic processing, as is also the case in the humorous but cautionary The Flight of the Bumblebee (1982).

Sten Hanson: Sunday 25th of October at 4pm in the Main Hall

STEPHEN O'MALLEYThe composer and performer Stephen O’Malley (born 1974 in USA) is best known as one of the main players in the drone metal band Sunn0))), whose theatrical concerts have pushed back the boundaries of metal music (started by Black Sabbath in the early 1970s) and brought the genre to new heights and extremes. O’Malley has worked with projects and musicians such as Merzbow, Z’ev, Peter Rehberg, John Wiese, Oren Ambarchi and the Norwegian experimental band Ulver. He has also composed music for theatre productions for the stage director Gisèle Vienne. O’Malley’s idiom can be described as a sensual perception of music: low sub-frequencies that are physically experienced, and visual elements such as smoke and atmospheric lighting. Not surprisingly, O’Malley is also a well known illustrator and graphic designer. After living and working at the Art Centre for three weeks, he will perform the world première of the commissioned work Petite Géante at Høvikodden.

Stephen O’Malley: World première of Petite Géante on Sunday 30th of August at 3pm in the Studio

The vocalist Stine Janvin Motland (born 1985 in Norway) is from Stavanger. She has been active in several different musical genres, but in recent years has built up a particular reputation in the field of improvisational music. As Motland herself puts it: “Body awareness is important: working physically with the music. One example is breathing. You can only hold a note for a certain length of time and I’m curious about what happens when you run out of breath: how the body will react and what the natural reaction is.” Motland performs with projects and musicians such as Motsol, Kitchen Orchestra and Frode Gjerstad’s Circulasion Totale Orchestra, but these days increasingly on her own, as on this occasion at the Henie Onstad Art Centre.

Stine Janvin Motland: Sunday 4th of October at 2pm in the Main Hall

Susanna consists of Susanna K. Wallumrød (born 1979 in Norway) on vocals and piano, Helge Sten on guitar, and Pål Hausken on drums. The trio debuted on Susanna’s solo album Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos in 2007, a record of Wallumrød’s own compositions. The album Flower of Evil was released the following year, featuring the trio’s interpretations of numbers by Prince, Lou Reed, Agnetha Fältskog and Sandy Denny. Susanna’s music moves between folk, ambient, minimalism and jazz, with vocals as its leitmotif. Their live concert will include a combination of cover-songs and their own compositions, focusing on Susanna’s raw and stirring voice, mixed with Sten’s somber sound idioms and Hausken’s minimalist accompaniment on the drums.

Susanna: Sunday 27th of September at 3pm in the Studio

Tori Wrånes (born 1978) has just completed her master degree at the Oslo Academy of the Arts. Wrånes creates performances/installations combining theatre, visual art and sound, with voice and sculpture as her point of departure. Her works vary in form and are reminiscent of a kind of contemporary tragedy, bordering on comedy. Wrånes’ projects and exhibitions include: Pattedyret (The Mammal), a performance for the 2009 graduate exhibition held at the Stenersen Museum, Zombie Atlantic at Rekord 09, Kullfløyel (Coal Velvet) at the Kunstraum Kreutzberg/Bethanien Gallery in Berlin in November 2008, Hello Glossalolia at The Young Artists’ Association (UKS)/UTKANTEN festival in October 2008, Performance-polaire (Polar Performance) at Palais de la Découverte, Paris in September 2008, Under Himmelrota (Under Skyroot) in connection with Horizons and Fragments, Stavanger Capital of Culture 08, Inni Pattedyret/Tvilende Rovdyr (Into the Mammal/Doubting Carnivore) at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Rekord 08, Glefsende sovende utenfor tiden med en kake i munnen (Gulping sleeping out of time with a cake in the mouth), in collaboration with Olav Benestvedt at UKS/Black Box Theatre, Perform 07, Paris 07, Jordet Organ (Earthed Organ) at the 2007 bachelor degree exhibition at the Stenersen Museum.

Tori Wrånes: Sunday 30th of August at 1pm in the Main Hall, and with her band Rollo in the Studio on Sunday the 4th of October at 2pm

Attila Csihar (born 1971 in Hungary) is already a legend of black metal music. His unique style of singing combines metal music’s vocal techniques with contemporary music’s extended use of the voice. During the last half of the 1980’s, he was the leader of the Hungarian band Tormentor, which is now recognized as the founders of the black metal genre. When the Norwegian black metal scene emerged in the early 1990’s, Csihar was invited to sing on the now legendary Mayhem record De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Subsequently, Csihar worked with the more experimental band Plasma Pool, before rejoining Mayhem in 2004, after Maniac, the band’s vocalist for 10 years, left. Over the last few years, he has also been a vocalist in the drone cult metal band Sunn0))). Void Ov Voices is Csihar’s new solo project, in which he concentrates exclusively on voice and samplers.

Void Ov Voices: Sunday 11th of October at 2pm in the Studio

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