MIKEY LAUNDRY
ART GARDEN





Sara Larsen Stiansen


Whiskers Værhår Vol. 1 
MLAG
26th April - May 12 2024

Sara Larsen Stiansen’s lens captures hidden moments of young men finding themselves caught up in the chaotic world of group mentalities and mimetic desire. Whiskers/Værhår (Vol.1) is an art project that contributes to artistic research on Bergen’s Buekorps and the space between affection and discipline.
MLAG is proud to exhibit the artist’s ongoing research project looking at Bergen’s Buekorps – a unique phenomenon in the country. Larsen Stiansen’s original work for the new space at MLAG harnesses an audiovisual vocabulary that is rich within a Gothic logic.
Larsen Stiansen’s authentic and stylized understanding of the situatedness of her subject pitch us into a parallel city which exists within our city. In Italo Calvino’s short story The Garden of Stubborn Cats (1963), we are presented with “a kind of countercity, a negative city”. Within this countercity, Larsen Stiansen’s takes us on an evocative journey. The artist’s subtle observation of architecture, and our human, and non-human responses to it, evoke the uncanny, a new way of seeing and hearing the streets. The artist asks us to go beyond an anthropological architectural paradigm towards a sombre photographic street poetry.
Larsen Stiansen has acquired the trust of the local Battalions through early mornings and rainy days over two years. Whiskers Vol 1 seamlessly weaves local histories, aesthetics and material culture studies.
The artist uses video shot on DV, archival photography and performance. It is less a documentary than a project that catches glimpses, and bears witness to the artist’s immersion into the military sub-culture of children in soldierly play. The artist offers up remarkable moments through her access to not just rehearsals but also the entire ecosystem of parents, neighbors and peers. Larsen Stiansen is an artist who takes the time needed to be accepted. Her artistic practice creates new ways to see complex nuances of accepted behaviour in an often overlooked subject matter. Like earlier pioneers working with film, for example, Nan Goldin, any easy anthropological associations are instantly overturned so that new narratives can be found without prejudice.
The titular significance of the work playfully asks the public to make associations with Calvino and a posthumanist phenomenological perspectives. Sometimes the Buekorps are like street cats. Left alone in the rain in dark alleyways to play. Whiskers help cats with hunting, socializing and making sense of their word. The role of ally cats in Bergen and the role of young men in military practice are two interrelated perspectives. The artist frames the phenomenological position of both through affect theory. The artist takes up Laurent Berlant’s early work with affect theory. Sometimes things are felt before they are known. Affect theory can be considered a sociology of accidental encounters, and it is here that Larsen Stiansen’s intuitive approach to the cinematic encourages new thinking about the small haptic moments of being within a group. It’s about capturing what is felt before it is known.
Whisker’s is an important contribution to artistic research on localized tradition in Bergen. The art project itself stands as a statement about the kind of dedication to tradition we still find ourselves in regardless of association.
Mikey Laundry Art Garden kindly thanks the Bergen Buekorps Museum (Buekorpsmuseet), and Norsk Fotografisk Fond (Nofofo)for their generous support of the project.
MLAG is supported by the City of Bergen.









Mikey Laundry Art Garden
from 2.02.2024 Halfdan Kjerulfs Gate 4 and Kong Oscars Gate,  
Bergen (since 2019 until April 28, 2024)
5017
Norway

+47 95 47 71 84

mwmklaundry@gmail.com




 
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MLAG is curated by Michael Laundry and supported by the City of Bergen, Norway. ‬