Rhythm is everywhere. It is breath and heartbeat; it is the sound of a drum and the repetitive flint carved lines in stone done by a prehistoric human being in Fontainebleau. It is the flickering screen and a million digital processes too small to see. It is engraved in the depth of our minds and bodies. It is how we remember. It is in how we walk, how we talk, how we write and we act together.
Rhythm in Mysteries – Mysteries of Rhythms
In the beginning, was rhythm….
We find rhythms everywhere: in the body, in dance, in the day-and-night cycle, in music, in patterns, in seasons, in annual rings in trees and clams, and many, many more places.
– But can pictures have rhythms? – I was surprised when I discovered a clear rhythm in the Dionysiac wall-painting in Villa dei Misteri (Villa of the Mysteries) close to Pompeii!
– I will show you the wall-painting, and tell you about the mysteries in, and connected to, the more than 2000 years old, large Roman painting-cycle.
– I will demonstrate the rhythm, and speculate on what they may mean.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements, and according to Roland Barthes both painting and writing started with the same gesture, one which was neither figurative nor semantic, but simply rhythmic.
In this seminar and exhibition we will approach rhythm through contemporary artistic and archaeological imagination starting with some engraved and painted lines drawn by our stone age ancestors in France and South Africa.
Participating artists: Dragos Gheorghiu, Eamon O’Kane, Elin Tanding Sørensen, Geir Harald Samuelsen, Maarten Vanden Eynde, Petro Cecilia Keene, Theodor Barth, Åsil Bøthun
Eamon O'Kane (Irland), Visual Artist and Professor of Visual Art, The Art Academy, Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University in Bergen.
Geir Harald Samuelsen (Norway), creator and leader of the project. Visual Artist Ph.D., Associate Professor and Researcher at The Art Academy, Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University in Bergen.
Åsil Bøthun (Norway), Visual Artist and Professor of Sculpture and Installation at The Art Academy, Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University in Bergen.
Maarten Vanden Eynde (Belgium), Visual Artist and Ph.D. candidate in the MGS-project at The Art Academy, Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University in Bergen.
Dragos Gheorghiu (Romania), Ph.D. Professor of cultural anthropology, Doctoral School, National University of Arts in Bucharest and Instituto Terra e Memória - Mação, Centro de Geociências da Universidade de Coimbra
Elin Tanding Sørensen (Norway),Visual Artist and Landscape Architect Ph.D. from The School of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Landscape and Society, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
Petro Cecilia Keene (South Africa), Archaeologist. Independent Researcher and Exhibition design consultant.
Theodor Barth (Norway) is a professor of theory and writing at KHIO in Oslo. He is an anthropologist [dr. philos., 2010] educated at the University of Oslo, with fellowships at the University of Bologna [Institute of Communication/Semiotics], La maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris [École des hautes études en sciences sociales/Semantics].