Foto: Adriana Alves
The Magic of Seven, 2016
A 7 channel video installation by Gitte Sætre
Kunsthall 3.14, Norway
Duration: 12 min loop
(7 x 32-inch Flat screens mounted at eye-level, placed in a circle with a diameter of about 5 meters. In addition an interactive salt sculpture re-acting to the sound in the video-installation)
Magic of Seven encouraging us to find alternative solutions to solve conflicts. It looks at the potential of thinking together and wanting us to find alternative solutions to armed war. Because armed conflicts challenge sustainable living and the use of warfare effect our physical and mental health, as well as damage nature for future generations. Magic of Seven thrives to facilitate dialogue and play a role in challenging social order and dogmas. Talking about creativity and imagination as important ingredients for coping with common challenges. The work explores the potential and possibilities for a more participatory creativity to help go beyond our challenges.
The project explores the interplay between collective patterns and individual human actions. An understanding of causality is necessary to understand war and other major challenges that we are faced with. In Magic of Seven, the causalities of war are met with an emerging synchronicity. In synch seven women create a peace ritual to counteract the dominant logic of violence.
We meet the seven women in their respective kitchens. They carry out their daily routines, doing the dishes, cooking, cleaning.
At a certain point, in unison, they all leave the house. Outside they are confronted with harsh scenes of war. It is a world we all recognize: Where war has been and continuously is the norm - to gain resources, power, and position. Together, the seven women search for the strength to cast war onto history’s scrapheap. During their journey, they gather at a lake in the woods, doing a collaborative action. They sing and perform a strange ritual of voices and movements. In contrast to the visions of war, the women seek an internal revolution or cultural purification.
As the camera zooms up and away from the lake an albino moose appears. In a final speech, the white moose highlights the dimensions of reality and nuances of possibility, encouraging change in both concrete realities and in dreams.
The second part of the installation is a salt sculpture; a glowing pink lamp in which the light is intensifying with the volume of the voices of the women in the film. The salt sculpture symbolizes the way that women’s common space generates strength: the possibility to stand united in common language and experience, to feel a collective presence.
One of the intentions for Magic of Seven is to offer processes of ‘re-enchantment’, as a way to restore what has been lost in our otherwise disenchanted and rationalized western world. The work depicts an inner consciousness, where intrinsic values and dreams are brought to the fore. The term ‘disenchantment’, according to the German sociologist Max Weber, can be attributed to a process that has made the world more prosaic and predictable, thus less poetic and mysterious.
A 7 channel video installation by Gitte Sætre
Kunsthall 3.14, Norway
Duration: 12 min loop
(7 x 32-inch Flat screens mounted at eye-level, placed in a circle with a diameter of about 5 meters. In addition an interactive salt sculpture re-acting to the sound in the video-installation)
Magic of Seven encouraging us to find alternative solutions to solve conflicts. It looks at the potential of thinking together and wanting us to find alternative solutions to armed war. Because armed conflicts challenge sustainable living and the use of warfare effect our physical and mental health, as well as damage nature for future generations. Magic of Seven thrives to facilitate dialogue and play a role in challenging social order and dogmas. Talking about creativity and imagination as important ingredients for coping with common challenges. The work explores the potential and possibilities for a more participatory creativity to help go beyond our challenges.
The project explores the interplay between collective patterns and individual human actions. An understanding of causality is necessary to understand war and other major challenges that we are faced with. In Magic of Seven, the causalities of war are met with an emerging synchronicity. In synch seven women create a peace ritual to counteract the dominant logic of violence.
We meet the seven women in their respective kitchens. They carry out their daily routines, doing the dishes, cooking, cleaning.
At a certain point, in unison, they all leave the house. Outside they are confronted with harsh scenes of war. It is a world we all recognize: Where war has been and continuously is the norm - to gain resources, power, and position. Together, the seven women search for the strength to cast war onto history’s scrapheap. During their journey, they gather at a lake in the woods, doing a collaborative action. They sing and perform a strange ritual of voices and movements. In contrast to the visions of war, the women seek an internal revolution or cultural purification.
As the camera zooms up and away from the lake an albino moose appears. In a final speech, the white moose highlights the dimensions of reality and nuances of possibility, encouraging change in both concrete realities and in dreams.
The second part of the installation is a salt sculpture; a glowing pink lamp in which the light is intensifying with the volume of the voices of the women in the film. The salt sculpture symbolizes the way that women’s common space generates strength: the possibility to stand united in common language and experience, to feel a collective presence.
One of the intentions for Magic of Seven is to offer processes of ‘re-enchantment’, as a way to restore what has been lost in our otherwise disenchanted and rationalized western world. The work depicts an inner consciousness, where intrinsic values and dreams are brought to the fore. The term ‘disenchantment’, according to the German sociologist Max Weber, can be attributed to a process that has made the world more prosaic and predictable, thus less poetic and mysterious.
I know you are out there.
I can feel you now.
Let me tell you why you are here.
You are here because you know something.
What you know you can’t explain.
You feel it, you felt it your entire life.
There is something wrong with the world.
You don’t know what it is, but it is there and it has splintered your mind.
It is this feeling that brought you to me.
When you stab the enemy, you’ve got to twist and slash, to cut open his guts.
Otherwise, he’ll do it to you. That is the way the world is out there.
That´s not all there is, though. I am only talking about the dark side of things.
Victims of destruction have gone over to the world of the dead, you and I are still in the land of the living. There is a gap between us, but somehow we are connected.
War is, on one hand, a flimsy illusion, a cheap echo swirling around like fragments of millions of souls becoming a system unto itself. On the other hand, it is the uttermost real thing that will tell you who you are. I am looking at everything that is going on, entirely without prejudice, like history or the weather. You are full of psychological contradictions and culture.
What are you humans suppose to do?
Something is devastating wrong with the world, alienated humans everywhere, guilty of not using their intelligence. A brain full of loneliness is no good. Here it’s different.
It’s a communal lifestyle here in the woods, the women before you are exercising for a new order. When you’re in the rain, you’re a part of the rain. When you are in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. Now you are a part of us. One more thing, once you leave here, do not look back until you reach your destination. Synchronicity can happen at any time, so it’s a question of time, so when the times comes, you’ll already be used to it. There are seven fundamental types of catastrophes and seven wise masters. I didn’t come here to tell you, how this is going to end. I came here to tell you, how it is going to begin...
(this monologue was part of the 7 channel movie 'Magic of Seven' and was performed by an albino Moose, read by Kiyoshi Yamamoto)
VR presentation of the video-installation. Duration: 12 minutts
Produced by Victor Pardinho
A critique of the work on Norwegian radio: