ÆTER
Christian Skjødt
Æter, the new creation of Christian Skjødt’s, is inspired by the life and inventions of Leon Theremin.The aim of his residency at Avatar is to carry out in-depth research into the detection and monitoring of electromagnetic waves.
In residency at Avatar, from February 13 to March 2, 2017, as part of the ENCAC partnership. The Danish artist and composer, Christian Skjødt is working on his new project Æter.
Among current trends within sound art is a growing interest in artistic strategies that reveal generally imperceptible phenomena, for the purpose of expressing a material reality that is infinitely more complex than it appears. Along these lines, Christian Skjødt’s installations evoke a fascination for the ways in which they make variations in the intensity of light or the vibration of matter audible.
Christian Skjødt is a Danish artist who explores the material and aesthetic interrelations between sound, bodies and memory. His installation works deal with the imperceptible. Working site-specific Skjødt sets up autonomous systems out of which immersive and often performative environments emerge. He compiles installations with a laboratory approach in which technical and physical experiments play a central role. Working with sound as primary materiality Skjødts art in many ways bypasses the intellect and ‘speaks’ directly to the body, reminding us of the direct link between the body, thinking and reality. The visuals are often minimalist, investigating individual audio-technical principles that ‘investigate themselves’ and the space they are in. His work is based on the physicist’s approach of allowing objects and materials to be what they are. But at the same time Skjødt creates spaces where it is impossible to stand at a distance as a viewer – many of the works function interactively and reactively forcing us to relate to place and time. His works can be seen as witnesses to what we are unable to perceive and the boundary between our sensory apparatus and the materiality of the world.
Besides his solo career he has taken part in numerous collaborations, working interdisciplinary in the fields of composition, installation, theatre, dance and performance. He is also the founder and curator of the vinyl imprint Tonometer, objectifying exploratory sounds and music.
Christian Skjødt currently lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark, and holds a Master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark, 2009. He has done exhibitions at Overgaden – Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2015); A plus A Gallery, Venice (2015); Műcsarnok Kunsthalle Budapest (2014); Cruce Contemporáneo, Madrid (2014); 68 Square Metres, Copenhagen (2013), and participated in sound art festivals like Spor, Aarhus (2016), Üle Heli, Tallinn (2015); Sound Reasons, New Delhi (2015); Skan II / Skanu Mežs, Riga (2014); Verona Risuona (2012); GAS, Göteborg (2012); Ostrava Days, Czech Republic (2011).
The Mois Multi is an event produced and organized by the Productions Recto-Verso in February each year. The festival’s program gathers innovative works in the field of multidisciplinary and electronic arts. The Mois Multi is intended as an expression of the conceptual and technological mutations that shake up the unexpected forms and practices of multidisciplinary art. Its uniqueness stems from its interactive shows, installations, immersive environments and works merging artistic languages, materials, techniques, forms and processes of all kinds.
