ELECTRONIC FLORA: in dialogue
ELECTRONIC FLORA
by Simon Lerin & Bettina Hystad
ELECTRONIC FLORA: in dialogue
Talk & Q&A • Sun 19 July • 14:00 • Brockway Room
Swedish/Norwegian artist duo Lerin/Hystad have an established practice between visual art and experimental music often focused on countering plant blindness. Their book Electronic Flora documents over 100 plants through drawings, text, and music; capturing plants’ electrical currents and communicational networks in their own contextual environment.
In this talk, the artists meet KONTEKST's Emelie Victoria, who has worked with their sound pieces in an experimental ethnographic film on Swedish forests, for a discussion on their practice and what interdisciplinary artistic collaboration on ecologically engaged topics can look like. The dialogue centres space for interaction with the audience.
Book Installation • Sat 18 July • All day • Library
Electronic Flora documents Lerin/Hystad’s meetings with more than a hundred different plants through drawings, text, and music. Lerin connects sensors to the plants that Hystad has carefully drawn in their environment. The sensors register electrical currents that plants produce through their biological rhythms and that form a communicational network with animals, bacteria, and fungi. The book Electronic Flora also includes texts by scholars such as Giovanni Aloi, Emanuele Coccia, Michael Marder and Timothy Morton. It will be available for reading in the library throughout the festival weekend.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Artist duo Lerin/Hystad comprises Simon Torssell Lerin (he/him) and Bettina Hvidevold Hystad (she/her). They have been working together since 2010, in the borderlands between visual art and experimental music. Through their artistic practice, the duo tries to counteract their own plant blindness by going out and meeting plants in their own environments. Lerin/Hystad studied at the University of Arts, Craft and Design and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm as well as at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Norway.
Website: Lerin/Hystad
