Elusive Habitat

Elusive habitat is a project that explores parallels between the digital and the physical world, with focus on nature's vulnerability and the technological future. The publication is built from fragments of an extensive process of collecting visual references and associations, and assembled into an abstract narrative related to climate change, destruction of natural habitats, mass extinction of biological diversity and technological development. The process has moved between digital and analogue methods and tools to produce the images, ending with the risograph process where I experimented with different color separations and combinations on both black and white paper. The title points to an important aspect of the research that deals with camouflage of information, and a future where it's becoming increasingly difficult to hide and protect oneself, both for humans and nature.

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Text from release and exhibition in Joy Forum 2020:

Today, our vast and complex machine is slowly letting us know how much we are—and have been—disrupting its fragile and concealed mechanisms. Our news feeds are continuously showing us signs of a system in distress, and it’s getting harder and harder for all living things to hide from the ramifications. We see a mass extinction of animal and plant species, water and food shortages, increasing natural disasters and extreme weather, habitat loss and collapsing ecosystems. We have developed a never ending stream of content and information, fake clouds that lets us continuously experience, archive and forget, while hunted by invisible spiders that is indexing our every footstep in the shadows of the endless network. For everything that is visible, something is camouflaged.

«Elusive Habitat» shows a series of works that explore the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, the digital and the physical, and the chaos in between. Through the use of visual imagery linked to science, biology, archeology, history, geology, ecology and technology, the work hints to the changing nature of our environment and existence. The material is obtained from a variety of both digital and physical sources (e.g. old magazines and journals, picturebooks, textbooks, digital archives, YouTube, Wikipedia, disassembled computers and TVs and other physical objects) in an extensive collection process. By experimenting with the most basic of digital and analogue tools and techniques, the material have been manipulated, fragmented, abstracted and connected to form new images. Central to the exhibition is a series of silkscreen prints on the material Twisted Nematic Liquid Crystal, retrieved from the inside of obsolete TV, computer and tablet screens. A material that is a hidden but essential part of the components that makes our screens come to life.

As a part of the exhibition a book under the same title is released. The book consists of original collages that build on largely the same source material as the exhibition, but assembled into a fragmented and abstract narrative of clues and associations connected to the theme. By experimenting with three and four color separations and at times unusual color combinations on the risograph machine, the printing process has become an essential part of both the development and execution of the visual imagery.