The Nordic Pavilion for the Venice Bienniale

Norway is the sole commissioner of the Nordic Pavillon in the Giardini for 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, for the first time in its history. For this unprecedented occasion, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) has selected artist Camille Norment.

For the Nordic Pavilion Camille Norment has developed ´Rapture´, a site-specific multi-sensory space structured in three parts; a set of performances by musicians and vocalists unfolding during the opening days and at specific times during the Biennale, and a series of three publications, which explore the relationship between the human body and sound, through the visual, the sonic and the architectural body. Included is a composition by a chorus of 12 voices, and a new performance by the artist’s ensemble activating the rare glass armonica. This 18th century instrument creates music from the seductive touch of fingers on glass and water that has mesmerized the listener, as well as been feared and even banned.

The excitation of the body in our times is a site of contestation, as much a space of misuse, military and other, as it is of affirmation, as in the performative utterance of free speech, and the power of the body to assert its very existence. The artist comments, “I am interested in how music has long been used to facilitate both the forging and transgressing of cultural norms. Sound permeates all borders. Throughout history, fear has been associated with the paradoxical effects music has on the body and mind, and its power as a reward-giving de-centralizer of control. Recognized as capable of inducing states akin to sex and drugs, music is still seen by many in the world as an experience to be controlled – especially in relation to the female body – and yet it is also increasingly used as a tool for control under the justification of war”. The body can be defined and potentiated by sound, and as such, the pavilion becomes and reflects the tensions between harmony and dissonance. If, as the Norwegian experimental composer Arne Nordheim commented, “Music lives in the span between poetry and catastrophe” the visitor to the Nordic Pavilion will walk into such a sculptural and sonic installation of conflicting forces, a place torn between poetry and catastrophe, a space between a body in trauma and a body in rapture.

Spanning performance, installation, drawing and sound, her work explores how the body is connected through sound with our environment, and reflects upon the power of dissonance to carve out a space for new, affirmative thinking. “Camille Norment is one of the most exciting artists working in Norway today, creating work to be experienced viscerally and poetically. Her practice is unusual in that it crosses the fields of art and music, mining historical and sonic dichotomies to trace unresolved social dialogues that continue today”, says Katya García-Antón, curator of the project.

OCA Press Release

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