The book Grand Complications documents a one-year, transdisciplinary research project by visual artist Andrea Bakketun. Together with biologist Peter Roessingh (NL) she transformed the site of an old school building in Rommen, a suburb of Oslo, and the surrounding garden into a research laboratory with the aim of artistically penetrating all facets of the existing ecosystem. Bakketun invited people from her creative circle to contribute with their reactions to the location, its physicality, history, biodiversity and spiritual significance. The resulting video works, texts, performances, and site-specific installations are part of a canon of artistic research that expands scientific methods with the help of artistic means, recalling Paul Klee's appeal that the goal of art is not to reproduce the visible, rather to make the invisible visible.
Understood as a collective whole, Grand Complications observes and translates the activities of all those participating at the Rommen site – from the plant to the artist.
PUBLISHED BY:
Andrea Bakketun
Andrea Bakketun is a visual artist working in video, installation, publications, guided tours and sculpture. Her works are located in the borderland between science and poetry, and are often ephemeral, kinetic and site specific. Research projects and collaborations are also important parts of her practice and she is currently part of the artistic research projects Simularr (AU) and Paviljong (NO). Bakketun obtained her MFA from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo (2013). Previous solo shows include «A Guide for the Giant Body» at Centralbanken (Oslo), «Establishment and Maintenance…», Volt (Bergen), «Puck» at Kunstnerforbundet (Oslo), «Anthropology, Archeology, Apology» at Oslo Kunstforening and «Baklengs inn i okularet» at TSSK, (Trondheim).
