selected curatorial projects

An Evening in the Dark with Diego Marcon (in conversation with Mike Sperlinger), Black Box, KhiO, Oslo, NO, 2021 Devised in collaboration with Nicole Ward (under the platform of Open Forum). An informal conversation between Italian artist Diego Marcon and Mike Sperlinger, which included an opportunity for the audience to watch a few of Diego’s short films. Working mainly across film and video, Diego explores the relationship between reality and its representation, in relationship to various film genres, such as slapstick comedy, horror, the musical, and the cartoon. His interest in the more sombre realms of the human psyche is represented by the recurrent motif of childhood to evoke a primary, vulnerable human condition. Programme: Ludwig, 2018 Video, CGI animation, color, sound, loop of 8’14’’ Monelle, 2017 35mm film, CGI animation, color, sound, 16’07’’ The Parent's Room, 2021 35mm film, CGI animation, color, sound, loop of 9’52’’ Biographies: Diego Marcon (b. 1985, IT) is a visual artist working mostly with film + video. His works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in spaces such as Museo MADRE, Naples; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore/LASALLE, Singapore; La Triennale di Milano, Milan; MAXXI + MACRO, Rome; Museion, Bozen; Centre international d’art et du paysage, Vassivière; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris. His films have been screened in film festivals worldwide, including the International Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam; Viennale, Vienna; Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montréal; Cinéma du Réel, Paris; Courtisane, Ghent; BFI, London; FID Marseille, Marseille + doclisboa, Lisbon. In 2021, his last film "The Parents' Room" premiered at 74th Cannes Film Festival, as part of the official selection of the Directors' Fortnight. Mike Sperlinger (he/him) is Head of Programme at OCA (Office for Contemporary Art, Norway), responsible for OCA’s public programmes, publications and for overseeing OCAs participation at the Venice Biennale. Prior to joining OCA, Sperlinger was Professor of Writing and Theory at the Oslo Academy of Fine Art (2013-2024). Before moving to Norway, he was co-founder and assistant director of LUX (www.lux.org.uk), a London-based organisation for artists working with the moving image. Working variously as a writer, editor and curator, his interests are centered around the collective aspects of art experience. Open Forum is a student-run initiative from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo that facilitates lectures, talks and other live events within fluid settings.

lip-flap Laura Phillips, Greg Pope, Vicky Smith, Deichman Grünerløkka, Oslo, NO, 2022 Devised in collaboration with Nicole Ward (under the platform Open Forum). A special 16mm screening event showcasing three photochemical artist filmmakers. Laura, Greg, and Vicky each performed a selection of their film works live, highlighting their individual relationships to sound and their methods for incorporating it into their 16mm film work either via listening, collaborating, or dissonance. Finding a way to synchronise visual and audio tracks was essential to traditional filmmaking because film stock reacts to light, not sound. lip-flap refers to a failure in audio-visual synchronisation. Taking this idea of dissonance and extending this to serendipitous surprises, we speculate spaces of vulnerabilities, disquieting and bodily matter of the films on show. This programme demonstrates works that are made in collaboration with a plethora of sound artists, poets and noise makers (Sam Illingworth, Mark Vernon, Matt Davies, Shirley Pegna and Melanie Clifford). Programme: Greg Pope It Goes Without Saying, 2021 25 min performance with sound + moving image Laura Phillips Chapter One: Visualising Nature: Phylum Porifera, 2022 HD film 1min 39 sec and sound - Premier screening! Phantom Secure, 2022 11min performance with 16mm film + HD projector His and Hers and the Sun, 2022 4min HD digital with sound Vicky Smith Not (a) part (2019) 16mm hand-processed B+W, animation / live action, 6 min. Supported by The Brigstow Institute. Re:exposure (2020) 16mm hand processed B+W, animation / live action, 10 mins. Part-funded by Arnolfini. Biographies: Greg Pope: After dabbling in punk rock bands and absurdist performance, Greg Pope founded film collective ‘Situation Cinema’ (Brighton 1986) and ‘Loophole Cinema’ (London, 1989). Working collaboratively and individually, Pope has made installations, live art and single screen film works since 1996. These works include live cinema performance pieces as well as 35mm film productions, text-based percussion and slide projection performances. He has collaborated with numerous film and sound artists as well as presenting solo and screening retrospectives at festivals and events in Europe, North and South America and Australia. Laura Phillips: Laura Phillips, b.1986 Bristol, is a Sagittarius, non-smoking artist who lives and works between Bedminster, South Bristol and Southmead, North Bristol. Her work explores obsolescence and collective histories using a mixture of photochemical processes, sounds and digital imagery. Working at the intersection of visual-music, expanded film and performance she is interested in the ideas of the commons, ecology and information infrastructures. Her work has been acquired by the Arts Council England Collection, and previously screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020); Supernormal Festival (2019) Oxfordshire; NAWR at BBC Studios Swansea (2019); and Arnolfini (2019/20), Bristol. She makes films and plays waterphone in the audio-visual project Viridian Ensemble, who perform live improvised music and images. Their recent releases include The Prelude commission for The Quietus and Aerial Festival 2020. Vicky Smith: Vicky Smith’s work in experimental animation explores the vulnerable and vital body. Her work screens internationally, in galleries and festivals including in 2021: ‘A Picture of Health’ at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; ‘Raw Vision’ in Splash, Scratch, Dunk! Films Made by Hand at London Barbican and ‘Bodies and Boundaries’, Cinenova UK. She runs workshops in experimental film practice including at UWE, Arnolfini, BEEF and Lux, and has curated many film screenings, including recently Go, Go, Go! Women in Experimental Animation (2019). Publications include: Hand Drawn and Non-Natural Colour in Films by Barbara Hammer and Sandra Lahire in Animation Studies Online (2021); Experimental and Expanded Animation: Current Perspectives and Practices, co-edited with Nicky Hamlyn (2018) and in Animation Practice, Production and Process issue 7 (2019).

Backyard KHUS with performances by Belladonna Paloma, Silje Iversen Kristiansen, and Robert Carter, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, NO, 2024 Devised in collaboration with Anna Clawson. Biographies: Silje Iversen Kristiansen (born Norway) deals with human experiences and time, from a subjective point of view. She focuses on what’s asking for her attention from day to day, and takes it from there. Her work primarily take shape as drawings, installations, soundworks and performance. Belladonna Paloma (born UK) is an artist, poet and trans witch living on a remote croft in the Shetland Isles. She paints, tattoos, writes poetry, and makes computer games. Her work is into listening to faeries, how divination disturbs linear time, grief rituals, toilet gods and necromancy. Bella makes art as acts of devotion. This devotion has most recently centred on Shetland’s boglands, and wetlands more generally, continuing her interest in the politics and mysticism of what we choose to call ‘waste’. Some places her work has been published and exhibited by: Glasgow International Festival (June 2024), Glasgow Zine Fair (2024), Almanac Journal of Trans Poetics (upcoming), The Overkill Festival, Netherlands, in collaboration with Uma Breakdown (2023), IMT Gallery, London (2023), Collective, Edinburgh, in collaboration with Rabindranath X Bhose and Oren Shoesmith (2023), Vital Capacities (2023), Sluice Magazine (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art, London (2023), TISSUEPAPER Magazine (2023), Gropius Bau, Berlin, in collaboration with Daniella Valz Gen (2023), Gaada, Shetland (2023), Sticky Fingers Publishing (2023), Art Licks (2022), Two Queens, Leicester (2022), Abingdon Studios Project Space, Blackpool (2022), Cariboo Projects, Bristol (2021), and Supernormal Festival, Oxfordshire (2019). Her book-length poem about Bigfoot, There’s always things falling out the sky, was published by Pink Sands Studio Press, 2021. Robert Carter (born UK) is an artist and writer from Manchester living in Oslo. He graduated from the Bergen Art Academy in 2020 with Notes on Dad, a short film which depicted the artist with his sister cleaning their dad’s apartment together. In 2022 he self-published the Dental Advice Bureau, a ‘lock down’ journal made up of creative non-fiction from seven artists. Recent solo exhibitions includeHappy Man(Isotop, Bergen) and Baked Painting(home alonE, Clermont-Ferrand). Photography: Johan Andrén