Siri Austeen (b. 1961, NO)
Siri Austeen has a degree in visual arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim. Her artistic practice often revolves around investigative field recordings and long-term projects involving the interplay between individual, collective and ecological structures. She explores these connections through sound installations, text, performance and public art commissions.
She has presented works both nationally and internationally at venues such as the National Museum, Henie Onstad Art Center, Ultima Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Gallery Rudolfinum in Prague and Kurt-Kurt in Berlin.
Among her art commissions are: Civil Defense Signal for Fredrikstad Fortress, National Fortifications 2009, Ears of the Field #1-#2 at Falstad Senter 2009-2020 and South North Sound Exchange at Sørumsand High School, 2021.
In 2024, Austeen will have a solo exhibition at Lydgalleriet in Bergen, release the cassette Tides and Wanderings on Breton Cassette and participate in the Arctic Auditory project at the Polar Museum, UIT, Tromsø.
Siri Austeen participated in SANDSKOLEN at Velferden in 2024.
Siri Austeen is concerned with relationships between sound, place and reality; how different listening strategies affect our experience of reality and ourselves, as a sensitive part of this. A consistent theme in her artistic practice is the interplay of individual, collective and ecological structures. The work is often expressed through investigative field recordings, participant-based projects, installations, performances and public art commissions.
Siri has been working with us in September and October 2023. During this period, she has worked with sound recordings in the field, including up at Titania, collected materials for a studio table with sound and objects, and worked with text, with words from the process industry and her own practice. She herself writes about her stay:
"While field recording at Sandbekk one day, I noticed that ferrous fly sand (tailings) attached itself to the geophone's magnet. This inspired a working model in which ideas, phenomena, discoveries and artistic material constituted a field of self-organized elements - attracted - accumulated - slipped into - fell into, or re-emerged in, the work's constantly varying force field of energy. The artistic work assumed the contours of a changing landscape."
Photos from SANDSKOLEN © Hans Edward Hammonds