THORBJØRN LAUSTEN: DRIFT

– between data and sensory perception

A cooperation between Esbjerg Art Museum and Nikolaj Kunsthal

24 September 2022 – 26 February 2023

How is it possible to experience nature’s phenomena from positions geographically far away from your own? How is it possible to view and sense atmospheric data? And how is it possible for an exhibition to be on display in two places at the same time?

In DRIFT, Thorbjørn Lausten visualizes marine as well as atmospheric data from two vastly different geographical areas: the Denmark Strait and the Fehmarn Belt. In his new total work, Lausten investigates how art may convert scientific data that are otherwise inaccessible for our senses. This time, his focus is natural phenomena of importance for the climate on Earth and our living conditions. With DRIFT, Lausten offers an entirely new perspective on a theme that is currently very important and that affects us all, be it personally or politically.

In the exhibition hall, the visualized data are transformed into large concrete-abstract and versatile filmic projections that change in sync with the downloading of data from the satellites belonging to the European Space Agency. The colour-and-sign system used for developing the pictures was invented by Lausten himself, and pictures are construed on the basis of the continually updated series of information. In the exhibition, the filmic sequences are projected large scale, in such a way that the spectators become completely engulfed in all the natural phenomena that are at once concrete and extremely abstract. In this way it is possible, in Esbjerg and Copenhagen simultaneously, to experience and sense scientific data from phenomena unfolding here and now in the Baltic Sea and in the strait between Iceland and Greenland, respectively.