The Other Wild [Exhibition]

Abstract

The Other Wild interrogates how systems of control and internalized normative structures harness and govern life as well as non-life. The artistic work is part of Liv Bugge’s PhD project at Oslo National Academy of te Arts. Bugge uses the term ”structural magic” as a tool to look at the paranormal (beyond normal) and inter-normal activity performed in structures like state institutions, as well as the individual and collective bod. The research is structured around two type of institutions: museums and prisons. Bugge sees both institutions as sites for disappearances. The prison is a place into which those who dwell in the majority’s margins are removed, and therefore temporarily disappear from society’s surfaces. While in The Natural History Museum, fossils disappear into an unfathomable past through dating processes and placements in linear time and narratives. In this way, people and objects become victims of a part of a structural magical disappearing act. Large parts of this projects artistic work are now integrated in Ullersmo and Eidsberg prisons, and are therefore unavailable for the non-incarcerated public. In her PhD, Bugge thus contrasts the museum’s formative and democratic mandates with the prison where the art only is available for the few who are placed outside of the majority society. In both institutions Bugge takes a starting point in touch, inscription, and a surface or membrane that equals skin. Material, body or skin meets another, and makes an imprint on each other. But rather than looking at the economies of healing, the project looks upon touch as confrontation, and as sensibility to such.