ARTIST TALK AND VIDEO SCREENING BY JASON HAVNERAAS
INCA: Institute for Neo Connotative Action750 Delaware St. Detroit, MI, 48202
20 APRIL 2013
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INCA presents an artist talk by INCA’s new resident, Jason Havneraas.—
Jason Havneraas:
In my artist talk I will give a presentation of my work in relation to my background and family history, followed by a screening of my video, Paul & I & I (2011), with a discussion to follow. The video I am showing gives a good idea of the way I plan to work during my stay in Detroit and I look forward to discussing the possibility of this with guests at INCA.
About my work:
The starting point for all my work is my background growing up in Anthroposophical Camphill communities in Scotland and England and since then, further contact with the same organization in Norway since moving there in 2004.
Camphill is a worldwide network of inclusive communities inspired by the Anthroposophical philosophy of Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), where mentally handicapped people live together with their ‘co-workers’, in shared households.
Starting with simple large format portraits of people living in the communities, I have slowly moved towards a more constructed view of my past where I recreate my childhood memories of plays and festivals by working together with those performing the same rituals in the present including my own family, and creating large format photographic tableaux and video with the results of this relationship. Memories of pomp and ceremony blend with those of the theatricality of everyday life to create a space where it is no longer clear what is real and what is staged.
Life in the many Camphill communities’ often-isolated locations finds its own slow pace, the same things happen in cycles whether they be intentional spiritual rituals or the idiosyncratic actions of particular individuals; my practice winds its way between this simultaneously inclusive and exclusive existence.
My video works are made by filming the camera obscura image projected on the ground glass of my 8x10inch large format still camera, fostering a dialogue between the two mediums and creating a singular light that allows my photographs to speak.
In most recent work I have been taking elements of my past life, such as the defining figure of the angel, that was in most the plays I saw as a child, and blending them with my current life circumstances and disparate family background (my mother is Jewish American and my father was Norwegian), as well as increasingly using performance as a part of my practice.
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