Lektor, video
e-post: micael.norberg@umu.se
Tel: +46 90 786 80 55
There is magic at play when you realize that mixing the colors
yellow and blue it becomes green or when standing in the darkroom
watching an image appearing in the developer fluid. The same magic
you find when drifting through a urban landscape or a deep forest,
with your mind having a playful-constructive behavior and awareness
and understanding of the "exact laws and specific effects" that the
geographic environment has consciously organized or not. Or taking
two words and placing them after each other and by that creating a
new sentence, a new meaning that you hadn't seen or realized
before. Experiments and artistic methods on different levels and
from different perspectives. Artist question reality and emotions
are at play in different forms. Satisfaction, pleasure, happiness
when you get the right nuance of green or anger and irritation when
you realized that you have overexposed your film or encountered an
injustice. Emotions are a foundation of the artistic process.
Emotions are a transformation of the world and they are deeply
connected to our own intellectual capacities for making sense of
the world. But for me art is not illustrations of emotions.
It is not either illustrations of theories or science, as art has
the capacity to be knowledge by it self. Art has a
possibility to be a visual rhizomic thinking. Knowledge, both in
process, methodology and result. There is magic at play and it is
more then just an aesthetic experience.
"An emotion is a transformation of the world. When the paths
before us become too difficult, or when we cannot see our way, we
can no longer put up with such an exacting and difficult world. All
ways are barred and nevertheless we must act. So then we try to
change the world; that is, to live it as though the relation
between things and their potentialities were not governed by
deterministic processes but by magic". - Jean-Paul Sartre,
Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions
After all these years I've worked with art I have come to
understand that what I'm doing is documentation. I depict,
communicate situations, personal reactions, experiences and
thoughts through these documentations. The "I" is a starting point
when I'm trying to make sense of the world. It is tentative steps
among all the mess I see and experience with a hope that others
also can recognize themselves in this mess. It's bubbles of
thoughts that meet and interact. Bubbles that open up to each
other, open up to what the other bubbles can offer. One thought
lead to another. It is bread crumbs to follow. A kind of visual
rhizomic thinking and a form of autoethnography.
In the same way I understand that I document, I realise that
words and languages are always present in my artistic work.
Language, words, text and the hierarchies between the image and the
word. To understand and not understand, function, meaning,
insecurity and the questions of dependence and independence. It is
all interconnected, conflict, relationship and trust. Knowledge,
both in process, methodology and result. There is magic at play and
it is more than just an aesthetic experience.
Micael Norberg is in his artistic work exploring his close
surrounding and subjects close to his person. His work and methods
could be seen as documentary and his artistic work is often limited
within a specific time, space and place. His artistic work has its
based in time-based media, text and photography. Educated at at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim, Norway, Koninklijke Academie van
Beeldende Kunst in Den Haag, Holland and the Academy of Fine Arts
in Umeå, Sweden in the early 90's and exhibiting his art through
the years both on a national and international level. Micael
Norberg has been teaching art at an academic level since 1996. He
is an experienced teacher at both basic- and advanced level with a
broad knowledge within the fields of contemporary art. Micael
Norberg is based in Umeå in the North of Sweden.
Recent exhibition and
screenings
2020 "I will not tell you it will be okay" - Galleri
Verkligheten, Umeå, Sweden
2019 "And kept as a reminder" - FILMFORM RE:VIEW ,
Stockholm, Sweden
2019 "Magritte, Foucault and I or the house of Magrittes",
Micael Norberg and Katja Aglert, Flexhallen, Umeå University,
Sweden
2017 "Comment penser librement à l'ombre d'une chapelle?"
- Galleria Valo, Arktikum, Rovaniemi, Finland
2017 "In societies dominated by modern conditions of production,
life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles.
Everything that was directly lived has receded into a
representation." - PLAN Z , El Espacio, Palau Altea, Spain
2016 "Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness" -
Humlab-X, Umeå University, Sweden
Recent
Publications
2020 "On New Proposals from Art in Teaching and Research, SIPADI
Altea" (eds. Juan Fco. Martínez Gómez de Albacete, Universitas
Miguel Hernández, Altea)
2018 "The Death Book" (eds. Micael Norberg and Carl-Erik
Engqvist, Umeå University)
2017 "Plan Z" (eds. José Vicente Martin Martinez, Universitas
Miguel Hernández, Altea)
2017 "Artists Teaching Art, Teaching Art in the north" (eds.
Jaana Erkkilää-Hill, University of Lapland)
More at: www.micaelnorberg.com
