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Exhibition opening and seminar at Norway’s National Museum of Photography

© Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen

We are proud to have produced two new works for Preus Museum’s permanent collection! You can see them as part of an exhibition opening tomorrow, 16th February in Horten. ‘Av Natur’ / ‘From Nature’ investigates the ongoing nature- and the climate crisis through camera based art.

Fellow artists: Terje Abusdal, Åsne Eldøy, Azar Alsharif, Carll Goodpasture, Christine Hansen, Gjert Rognli, Kirsti van Hoegee, Line Anda Dalmar, Line Bøhmer Løkken, Morten Torgersrud, Siggen Stinessen, Skade Henriksen, Ulla Schildt, Verena Winkelmann, Willibald Storn. Curated by Hege Oulie and Christine Hansen. 

Our first collaborator, Ragnhild, took us to woods which are under threat from development and her portrait goes with a callout for anyone with mushroom enthusiasm to map the fungi of this biodiverse patch of forest in Eikestrandskogen. (Email hege.oulie@preusmuseum.no if you are the one for the funga job!) Ragnhild’s wish was to feature her project instead of her, so we would like to thank this load of birch polypores for taking the centre stage in her picture. The portrait was shot in November 2022. 

Arne Johan is a philosopher who has been writing about eco anxiety and ecological mourning for two decades. We transcribed 13 pages of solid chit chat from the first meeting in November and headed to the snowy Vestskogen, where he used to go to ‘be’ in nature and where he has two hawk acquaintances. Exposed film rolls from this day are still in the camera bag, stay tuned for more on this expedition. Below are little snippets from conversations we had with both people and you can read the full text of our conversations at the exhibition.

We’ll make a stage appearance at the all day Seminar this Thursday, talk about some newbie images and share details of our next week’s collaboration at a UNESCO biosphere reserve in North Karelia, Finland. 

‘Av Natur’ is open at the Preus Museum 16.2 – 31.12.2023

Getting hold of Ragnhild took a bit of detective work, as this woman is practically never indoors, and her phone number is not public. We thought perhaps the latter might have to do with the death threats she has received during her life-long environmental campaigning, but it turned out she had no idea her number was not listed; “Oh, really? I’ll certainly get that fixed, as I want these phone calls, haha!” Ragnhild’s labour of love has been known to raise blood pressure. “I just heard a dark voice over the phone groaning “we know where you liiiiive….” and I was like; “great, I’ll have the coffee ready for you.” 

Arne Johan’s philosophy studies specialised in evil; “ethics, political philosophy, genocide and things like that” and he wrote his doctoral dissertation on empathy. “But what about hope?” Arne Johan says this question comes up with all sorts of audiences. “When a 16-year-old pupil, clearly worried, asks me: ‘Should young people like me be hopeful?’ I can’t simply throw it in their face, ‘no, forget about hope, no way’. But I can say “you have a need for hope that I acknowledge and I respect you for that. There is good reason to be hopeful only when it plays out in actual change we are part of. If that part is lacking, then there is no point in talking about hope. Drive, or energy as a word, would be much better.”

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