Ottar Ormstad

Artists’ Statement:
The performance is a collaboration between the Russian musician and composer Taras Mashtalir and the Norwegian poet and artist Ottar Ormstad. Based on some of Ormstad’s earlier works of concrete poetry, the videos are made by Russian video-artist Alexander Vojjov. Projected on a grid of particles that at times seem ordered, while sometimes chaotic and always in flux, Ormstad’s constructed language poetry is exposed and read by the author while performing to Mashtalirs pulsating music. Is everything connected to one another in the sphere that is shaping before the viewer’s eyes? How does language relate to the atmospheric scapes Vojjov creates of numbers, geometric forms and abstract shapes?

LONG RONG SONG conveys Ormstad’s language research project that is based on AUDITION FOR FENOMENER UTEN BETEGNELSE (Audition for Phenomena without a Name), his second book of concrete poetry (2004). In the video, Ormstad reads through a cycle of 5 poems that present combinations of four letters made of an artifical language system that he has created and which may, or may not result in words commonly used in latin languages.

NAVN NOME NAME is based on Ormstad’s ’telefonkatalogdiktet’ (the phonebookpoem) published 2006, containing family names only, from Oslo in 2004, selected and ordered by the author. Some names may be connected to Norwegian landscapes, other may have been chosen mostly because of the sound.

KAKAOASE is based on a single poem originally made as a digital print in a solo exhibition where Ormstad presented pictures made by letters only (Galleri Briskeby, Oslo 2007). The poem consists of a lot of mostly constructed ’words’, which may be seen as impossible to read at all. But because every fifth syllable are identical, the text turns out as a kind of end-rhyme. Even for Norwegians, any meaning is difficult to catch, one just has to taste on the sound of the poem.

Raising awareness of electronic poetry and sonic ecology, attracting new audience to a potent yet to come genre is the inspiration for this collaboration.

Artist Bio:
Ottar Ormstad (Norway) has presented concrete poetry in books and exhibitions of digital prints. Additionally he’s made web poetry and directed his poetry films that have been screened on film festivals and conferences of electronic literature in more than 20 countries. The artist’s website is located at yellowpoetry.com.

Taras Mashtalir (Russia) is musician, composer, producer and artist who’s worked many years in New York. He’s made films and animations, participated in several art exhibitions and given a lot of performances and lectures. The artist’s website is located at sonicartist.me.

Alexander Vojjov (Russia) is video artist living in Moscow.