Y (59 ° 54′54.76 ″ N 10 ° 44′46.03 ″ Ø)
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For his project, Y(59 ° 54'54.76 ″ N 10° 44′46.03 ″ Ø), Norwegian artist Alexander Rishaug has conducted sound recordings in the Norwegian government quarter. The recordings were made over two nights in October 2017. The work can be seen as a sonic portrait of the abandoned building’s current state of haunted emptiness, an emptiness which connects to the events of July 22, 2011.
For osloBIENNALEN, the recordings are now released on a double LP, distributed by Motto Books. The project was carried out in collaboration with Hagelund / Christensen and with the support of KORO / URO. The double LP can be bought at Tronsmo Bokhandel, Filter and Baklengs in Oslo, and at Mondo Books in Tromsø.
To take a closer look at oB1's 2020 spring program Public Sounds, or read the projects dedicated essay together with links to digital streaming of the album, click here.
Y(59 ° 54'54.76 ″ N 10 ° 44′46.03 ″ Ø)
How does the silence sound after a bomb? This is just what Alexander Rishaug investigates in his work for osloBIENNALEN with sound recordings captured in different spaces in the high-rise building ‘Høyblokka’ in the Oslo Government Quarter. When Norway suffered a gruesome terror attack on 22 July 2011, it began with a bomb in the Government Quarter. Naturally enough, it is the subsequent massacre on the island of Utøya that has been the focus of attention for most people ever since. The Utøya massacre claimed more lives, the victims were young, the killings bestial. But the material destruction in the Government Quarter was devastating. From one moment to the next, buildings were laid waste, and the two blocks were evacuated. What fills Høyblokka now is a silence that surpasses its spatial dimensions, a silence that speaks of a before and an after. We can only imagine the number of different sounds that filled the Brutalist office buildings in its life before the bomb exploded: the murmur of voices, the rustle of clothing, the tap of shoes, the snap of document files, fingers tapping on typewriters and keyboards. Decades of sounds accumulated and imprinted on its fabric. Rishaug’s audio recordings, released as eight tracks on vinyl LP, are the sound of a silence, a reminder of both earlier human activity and how it ceased.