Lindsay Seers

Vanishing Twin (Tetragametic Chimerism) | Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway

23rd January - 2nd March 2019

Oslo, Norway

Materials: 23 framed photographs, 4 monitor works and a projection with stereo sound

In the morass of general political/social ideas about the world and its current state, each one of us has to navigate this excess of divergent information with our fleshy ageing bodies and our own specific and local perceptions. How do we conceive of a “race” or of  a “nation”? These are categories that can not be easily accounted for except in generalisations that do not fit the detail. Consciousness itself is what underpins any semantic human thought and through this ‘content’ of heterochromia (tetragramatic chimerism) my intention was to investigate what technologies (specifically the iphone here) do to our consciousness. This fracturing and speed of thought encountered with the iphone is potentially closer to how the mind works – scoping and moving through a huge diversity of fact/fiction, embodiment, disembodiment and affect, seeking coherence that is perhaps in reality not out there.

The work takes a rare aberration,  heterochromia, which is a condition that can arise from a non-identical twin being absorbed into its sibling in the womb. This trope of eyes of differing colours formed from two people is a physical embodiment of a divided self that goes beyond psychology to biology, from a question of mind to one of matter. The subjects in this work (all with heterochromia) often refer to their alienation and also how others relate to their biological difference.

My editing method was to use the swipe/dissolves, phone sounds and turning in orientation that appears on the phone as bringing a consciousness to the nature of the form of the smart phone and how it does and does not relate to historic photographic and filmic/televisual forms, and how it seems closer to the mind.
The fact that consciousness itself is not singular but is fragmentary brings into question how reliable we are as narrators – peopled by a constantly oscillating selves that adjust to each given situation. The traditional form of narrative, of clear causes and effects is currently widely considered (in neuroscience) as a necessary fiction that creates an illusion of stability in the mind that does not exist.

The exhibited projection/monitor work takes the frame of an iphone as the harbinger of the enormous escalation of current image and sound capturing (now often used to convict people of criminal acts that I they have recorded themselves, of their own actions).

The time-space of the gallery differs extensively from the time space of the phone, the phone’s fast temporality and agitated collage of differing platforms are often moved through at speed, making the fragmentation across multiple  platforms from porn to train timetables is like a mind adrift on a random setting. The larger format and the edit of the work creates a hybrid of forms.

Gallery Statement

Developing from their 2017 residency collaboration with British artist Lindsay Seers, Fotogalleriet and PRAKSIS are excited to announce the first solo exhibition in Norway by this widely acclaimed practitioner.
Throughout her career, Lindsay Seers has expressed a problematic relation to photography in terms of what it does through its imperial gaze onto the body of the other, in particular towards women. This prompted her to rethink the relationship between the subject and the object in photography; a process she developed by, for instance, turning herself into a camera, by pursuing a more performative approaches into the event of picture-taking, as well as by addressing how colonisation of peoples’ minds happens by means of scientific and technological exploitation.

For Fotogalleriet’s exhibition, Seers centres on a randomly appearing trait, the medical condition “heterochromia iridum” (a difference in eye colouration), where she brings together a range of people with diverse backgrounds from around the world, to ask what would a better understanding of these histories mean for the ways in which we define ourselves and how we would relate to each other if we were looking beyond scientific tropes? How does individual experience relate to that of the many? And who decides which voice is loudest and what should we hear?

People with two differently coloured eyes have been drawn together by Modern science to create categories no different from those applied through race, gender and sexuality. Meeting individuals from around the world, Seers creates a counter-community whose narration demounts dominant and hegemonic tropes in an emancipatory act to rebalance power relations otherwise negated.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lindsay Seers holds a long-standing relationship with Norway by having returned to these lands, whose jurisdiction as a nation-state reaches the Arctic, at several points in time during her career. While reviewing the 2011 international Biennale LIAF, in the Lofoten archipelago for Aftenposten, art critic Kjetil Røed described Seers’ piece as “By far the best work of the exhibition.” Seers lives on the Isle of Sheppey and works in London. She has exhibited at some of the most prestigious international venues for the presentation of contemporary art practices including Tate, London; MONA, Tasmania; Hayward Gallery, London; SMK (National Gallery of Denmark), Copenhagen; the Venice Biennale 2015; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; KIASMA, Helsinki; Turner Contemporary; Tate Triennial; Gallery TPW, Toronto; the Sami Centre for Contemporary Art, Kárášjohka, among many others. Grants and awards include the Sharjah Art Foundation Production Award; Le Jeu de Paume production award for the Toulouse Festival; the Paul Hamlyn Award; and the Derek Jarman Award. Her work is held in private and public collections, and Tate recently acquired one of her large scale installations titled Extramission 6.

ABOUT FOTOGALLERIET AND PRAKSIS COLLABORATION
In 2017 Fotogalleriet and PRAKSIS invited artist Lindsay Seers to lead the four-week residency programme titled «A Global State Of Pareidolia», during which she worked alongside fellow Norwegian and international practioners (more information about the residency is available at www.praksisoslo.org). While in Oslo, Seers engaged in cross-disciplinary dialogue with local scientists, researchers and others, and filmed part of the work which will be on view at Fotogalleriet. This Oslo presentation brings together other research the artist carried out over the past decade.