Imaginalia Revisited – Espen Sommer Eide (Lydgalleriet, 2019)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Documentation from exhibition at Lydgalleriet, Bergen
16.08.19—15.09.19

A composer, disillusioned by the limits and weakness of the human imagination, decides to travel back to the nature where he grew up. He journeys to the rivers and tundras of Northern Norway, hoping to get in touch with other sources of music. The sensory biology of salmon and mosquitoes becomes rhythms and harmonies based on unknown principles. All the while the composer is constantly visited by ghosts of his own past, something that makes it ever more difficult to finish the composition Imaginalia.

Imaginalia revisited (2019) is a poetic and musical work with multiple thematic threads. At the core lies our relationship to nature, and various connections and differences between our way of seeing and listening, compared to other living beings. The work also generates new connections and liminal experiences between image and sound, between the visible and the invisible, and investigates through this how history and memory shapes our sensory experience of a place.

Espen Sommer Eide is a composer and artist based in Bergen, Norway. Using music and sound as both method and medium, his artistic practice involves long-term engagement with specific landscapes, archives, languages and rhythms, with an experimental approach to local and embodied knowledge. In addition to installation and performances, he has been a prominent representative of experimental electronic music from Norway, with main projects Alog and Phonophani, and a string of releases on the labels Rune Grammofon, FatCat and Hubro.

His works has been exhibited and performed at Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen Assembly, Manifesta, Marres, Henie Onstad kunstsenter, Stedelijk Museum, De Halle Haarlem, Dark Ecology, Sonic Acts, Mutek festival, GRM/Presences Électronique, Performa Festival, Museo Reina Sofia and more. Eide is also a member of the theatre/art collective Verdensteatret, with extensive international touring and exhibi­tions.

Lydgalleriet is an exhibition platform for sound art and sound related art practices, situated in Bergen, Norway. We explore today’s plethora of experimental sound-based art practices and auditive cultures through gallery shows, multichannel concerts, discursive work and performativity.

www.lydgalleriet.no

Film by Espen Sommer Eide.