Marianne Heske: Icebreaker

Marianne Heske: ICEBREAKER

Outdoor sound installation

https://kunstnerneshus.no/utstillinger/marianne-heske-icebreaker

“The piece is inspired from my childhood and native fjord, and was made in 1990. But this landscape was also the landscape Wittgenstein was attracted to. ” (Marianne Heske)

Kunstnernes Hus invited the Norwegian artist Marianne Heske to break the current cultural silence from the global pandemic with the sound installation Icebreaker where the audience can experience the poetic and dramatic sound of ice being broken into ice crystals in calm waters. The sound was recorded with a stereo microphone by the artist himself lying in the bow of an icebreaker that made its way through the ice into the fjord to make noise for other boats. The soundscape alternates between the violent noise from compact, thick ice that breaks, sections with thinner ice and at times the silence in open water, before it rumbles loose again.

About the artist

Marianne Heske is one of Norway’s most renowned contemporary artists, especially known for her doll head sculptures, video paintings and installations that explore the interaction between man and nature reflected in the human mind. She has her art education from Bergen, Paris, London and Maastricht and has an extensive exhibition activity at home and abroad, including at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, as well as the biennials in Venice and Sao Paulo. She is currently working on the graphic exhibition La poupée aux pensées trop dangereuses / The Doll with Too Dangerous Thoughts on Norwegian Graphic Artists (19.11.- 19.12.2020).

Photo: The Arctic ship “Melshorn” by Hareid breaks the ice from Fjørå and into Tafjord, January 1959. From Foreninga Sjøfart og Sjøbruk.