This project is based on the Norwegian author Olav Duuns last book “Flood-tide of fate”

                                                                                                           (Menneske og maktene) 1938

I was Duun-fellow (stipendiat) in 2005. This project was produced between may 05 and june 06.

I took as my outset the dualities of the private man and the prolific author, averaging a new book every year. The inner and the outer. At home, where one believe to have a certain control of an expected run of events, and in the outer where economic, political, man or nature-made forces intrudes and can turn everything into turmoil seemingly outside our sphere or reach.

Images and sounds were sampled inside and outside the house of Olav and Emma Duun in Holmestrand, Norway. Duun’s house is now a museum with a flat installed on the 1. floor for researchers.

Here I could stay and work at intervals during the year of the fellowship. Most of the literature concerning Duun is situated there.

Holmestrand is about 1 hour’s drive from where I live. The work was mainly done at weekends. I usually had the house  with the remains of the Duun family life, to myself in the winter-season.

I show this in, side by side, two image sequences. Sometimes they show explicit relationship with each other and sometimes not. To me, these fragments of a house, of a life, reveals a whole.

The sound of coffee being prepared on a modern percolator that was placed in the kitchen of the house, times the turn of events to 6 minutes and 24 seconds.

I discovered that the machine had a flaw. In the last stage of percolating it gave off a nearly human “sigh”. I thought this significant and very useful.

The time-lapses contain stripes of sunlight passing through the house during the day. Moving over bookcases and kitchen utencils. I also worked on the surroundings and exteriors of the house.

At night I recreated this with a projector presenting old ephemeral black and white footage. Photographing the frame by frame displayed projection.                    .               

I also show this piece as a live event, where I mix and match and play out from software with a MIDI-controller and a head-microphone.

Some impressions :

The work consists of two panoramic digital prints, time-lapsed stills-animations and processed sounds sampled from the house. The digitizing of the sound and images were done by two Neuman microphones and three Canon cameras. Directly to disk and processed later.

Photo by Espen Gleditsch