Hard Body Dyspraxia
Part of the Artica Listens 2021 programme by Ignas Krunglevičius
For Artica Listens 2021 Ignas Krunglevičius created HARD BODY DYSPRAXIA, a sonic installation inside a disused coal power plant in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The power plant was built in 1920 and after WWII saw various extensions and reconstructions. Finally closing down in 1983 when the new larger energy plant took over. Since then the doors have remained closed and the building untouched, until now.
Interview with artist Ignas Krunglevičius
Krunglevičius brought into play his response to the architecture of the power plant, the sounds already present in the building and the wider context of its industrial history. Working with his own versions of rhythms and markers, Krunglevičius used 24 audio channels to create an immersive installation, which manipulates the ambience and acoustic reverberation of the space. As you move through the rooms, muffled voices intermix with the loud echoing sounds of machinery, metal and feedback. However these sounds are not there to recreate a nostalgic or ghostly glimpse into the past, they are new, they come from current technology and they pull you into the present. The building’s contents may be slowly decaying, paint peels from the ceiling, decades of dust dulls the sound of your footsteps. But from the dust a new future is coming, what that future is, a community can decide.
Event trailer
Longyearbyen is not just a place of Northern Lights and polar bears, it is home to a community of people experiencing the daily effects of climate change. A community that is changing from industrial commerce to pioneering research, eco-tourism and culture. By hosting this audio and physical experience inside the old power plant, repurposing its use as an open, creative space we hope to begin a new story for this historical building and Longyearbyen.
The work premiered on September 18th 2021 as part of Art Night Longyearbyen and ran until September 25th 2021.
Ignas Krunglevičius
(b. 1979, Kaunas, Lithuania) is known for his highly innovative and experimental approach to art-making, often combining sound, text and imagery to create installations and sculpture which explore the intermix between the agency of power, economy, nature and existential realities generated by global technological development.
Krunglevičius currently lives and works in Oslo. He received his MA in music composition from Norwegian Academy of Music in 2010. From 2011 is co-directing the artist-run exhibition space Podium Oslo.
Krunglevičius’ works have been exhibited at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai, China; Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Russia; Kunsthall Oslo, Norway; Ultima, Oslo, Norway; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA; Transmediale, HKW, Berlin, Germany; La Biennale di Venezia, Nordic pavilion, Italy and The 19th Sydney Biennial, Australia, amongst others.