Yellow Enigma, 2024.
Sculpture, galvanized and painted metal. 500 x 450 x 160 cm.
All pictures: Marie Sjøvold, curtesy of Asker municipality Artwork Assortment.
Situating the Public: From Website-Specificity to Infrastructural Relationality
Viel Bjerkeset Andersen’s decades-long observe reorients the standard notion of public artwork from visible adornment towards the orchestration of encounters inside infrastructural environments. Her works problem passive spectatorship by embedding themselves inside techniques of transit, training, and care, contexts the place the general public isn’t optionally available and the place artwork should carry out inside institutional and logistical constraints. The theoretical backdrop for deciphering her observe should subsequently prolong past object-based aesthetics to contemplate what Claire Bishop calls the “social flip” in artwork, with its demand for crucial reflection on participation, exclusion, and energy. Andersen’s artwork doesn’t merely activate area; it produces a sustained grammar of co-presence via architectural materiality, ambient modulation, and participatory ambiguity.
Her works embody what Miwon Kwon phrases an “itinerary” mannequin of site-specificity. They’re much less about fastened spatial identification and extra about navigating networks of institutional, social, and ecological relations. Initiatives resembling Behind the Breath or Stopover don’t perform as autonomous artworks. They exist as performative nodes inside operational techniques—transport infrastructure, instructional areas, city planning frameworks—the place that means, perform, and relevance unfold incrementally via time. This infrastructural orientation permits Andersen to keep away from the didactic traps of public artwork whereas additionally resisting the abstraction and placelessness of minimalist design. Her consideration to gentle, as an illustration, isn’t merely visible; it indexes psychological states, seasonal rhythms, and ecological implications, providing what Nicolas Bourriaud described as “interstices” for social interplay however adjusted to audiences that don’t choose in voluntarily.
What emerges is a definite theory-in-practice: a type of relational public artwork rooted not within the convivial event-making of early relational aesthetics however within the sustained modulation of shared environments. The place these earlier practices typically relied on voluntary participation and ephemeral hospitality, Andersen’s works function inside frameworks of permanence, upkeep, and institutional governance. They ask not solely who participates and the way, but in addition who funds, who stewards, and who repairs. These are questions that, as Bishop insists, should be central to any ethics of relation. The general public isn’t a homogenous physique; it’s a stratified, plural area of customers, staff, observers, and bystanders. Andersen’s interventions replicate this complexity by avoiding overt instruction and as an alternative fostering gradual, materials resonance over time.
Behind the Breath, 2019.
Two drop formed rock rooms, programmed LED-light. Size 125 meters, hight 12 meters, on the widest 30 meters.
Photograph: Viel Bjerkeset Andersen, curtesy of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.
Viel Bjerkeset Andersen: From Breath Stops to Social Diagrams
Within the context of Norway’s Ryfast tunnels, the world’s longest and deepest subsea street system, Andersen’s undertaking Behind the Breath redefines the position of public artwork inside high-risk, high-efficiency infrastructure. Commissioned by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, the work includes two huge “respiration rooms,” together with sequences of linear LED interventions that perform each aesthetically and operationally. These installations function monotony-reducing options meant to cut back driver fatigue throughout prolonged intervals of underwater transit. Greater than ornamental interruption, the undertaking prompts what may be referred to as choreographic infrastructure, providing perceptual intervals in an in any other case homogenized mobility regime. That is site-specific artwork in Kwon’s expanded sense: not merely tethered to a bodily location, however embedded inside a relational system involving motion, rhythm, and institutional accountability.
Quite than centering the viewer as an remoted observer, Behind the Breath aligns consideration throughout a number of our bodies, together with drivers, upkeep crews, and engineers. It organizes co-presence via gentle and scale, with slow-fading LED sequences that punctuate a twenty-minute journey with sensory reduction. The aesthetic isn’t monumental however infrastructural, marked by restraint and calibration somewhat than spectacle. Importantly, this visible calmness helps a security agenda whereas elevating ecological issues. Andersen herself has publicly critiqued the proliferation of extreme lighting in public areas and stays attentive to the power consumption and environmental disruption that even well-intentioned interventions can create. Gentle in her work isn’t an embellishment however a medium of care, topic to moral consideration for each human and non-human actors.
The undertaking’s reception underscores the complexity of public engagement. The Ryfast tunnels grew to become websites of unplanned participation, together with a pre-opening half-marathon and, later, traffic-interrupting selfies taken within the respiration rooms. These responses illustrate Bishop’s critique of overly harmonious relational aesthetics by revealing how artwork in public area invitations not simply cooperation however friction. The unsanctioned makes use of of the positioning complicate its instrumental objective and prolong the that means of the paintings past authorial management. Andersen doesn’t try to eradicate these contradictions. As an alternative, she levels them as a part of the work’s texture, crafting areas the place relational aesthetics should cope with institutional protocols and logistical issues.
Reflections #14:20 PM, 2006.
Gentle set up of dichroic movie, illuminated by altering solar, tram and daylight. Variable sizes.
Photograph: Viel Bjerkeset Andersen, curtesy of the Ring Line, Oslo municipality.
Time-Primarily based Encounters: Floor, Scale, and the Refined Politics of Consideration
Initiatives resembling Reflections at Sinsen Metro Station and Solaris at Bryne Railway Station proceed Andersen’s inquiry into how notion, gentle, and materials construction have an effect on shared expertise. In Reflections, dichroic movie utilized to glass surfaces interprets daylight, the motion of the solar all through the day and tram lighting right into a play of shifting coloration that unfolds throughout the each day and seasonal rhythms of transit. Right here, Andersen creates what may be referred to as an ambient commons: an area during which co-perception replaces co-action, the place passengers encounter a delicate transformation of area not via deliberate participation however via shared publicity. This ambient register aligns with Jacques Rancière’s notion of the redistribution of the smart, whereby the sphere of notion is reorganized and, in doing so, alters the chances of collective life.
In Swirl, a polycarbonate sample spirals throughout a pedestrian bridge, partaking not solely walkers but in addition motorists and viewers at adjoining gasoline stations. This work serves as a kinesthetic diagram that unifies disparate types of motion right into a coherent visible rhythm. Quite than providing a focus, Swirl disperses consideration throughout a gradient of speeds and scales, creating an ephemeral unity that persists throughout variation. The fabric technique—sturdy, weather-resistant panels embedded with delicate LED-lighting alongside the highest of the panels—underscores Andersen’s dedication to sustainability and longevity. The success of those works doesn’t lie of their visibility alone however in how they combine into the lifetime of a spot, remodeling it with out dominating it.
Extra intimate installations, resembling Visit Refstad Faculty or Yellow Enigma at Risenga Sq., prolong Andersen’s ethics of relation into the micro-geographies of play and relaxation. Stopover is a concrete carpet embedded with coloured industrial byproducts, forming a tactile touchdown zone for kids’s our bodies. Its lack of prescriptive type invitations improvisation, stability, and gathering. Yellow Enigma, then again, features a movable interior part that encourages negotiation and interplay. These moments of minor battle—who turns the circle, who waits, who watches—enact Bishop’s name for relational antagonism, providing situations during which public artwork turns into a website of low-stakes battle and co-authored that means. Andersen’s artwork thrives in these ambiguous registers, the place invitation isn’t command and interplay stays open-ended.
Stopover, 2024.
Carpet of coloured concrete with embedded industrial byproducts, honed floor. 500 x 750 x 60 cm.
Photograph: Finn Ståle Felberg, curtesy of the Metropolis of Oslo Artwork Assortment.
Viel Bjerkeset Andersen: Ethics of Length and Materials Translation
Andersen’s works should be understood not solely as remoted initiatives however as parts inside a bigger concept of infrastructural aesthetics, the place materials, time, and institutional networks co-produce that means. That is notably evident in initiatives resembling Strata, a sculptural panorama at a vocational faculty and dental clinic in Grimstad. Solid in concrete and designed to accommodate each moss and motion, the set up layers geological metaphor with social perform. The stepped design affords seating, gathering, and casual interplay throughout a number of consumer teams. The work’s title and type reference stratification in each pure and human phrases, gesturing towards a politics of encounter that unfolds via materials affordance somewhat than didactic narrative.
In Solaris, a suspended sculpture of assembled fluorescent acrylic discs at Bryne Station, Andersen compresses this expansive strategy right into a singular type. Suspended overhead, the piece captures daylight and synthetic gentle alike, reframing the transit hub as a spot of contemplation and vertical orientation. It features concurrently as sculpture, skylight, and sign. The work avoids the cliches of city branding whereas remaining legible as a civic marker. Its upkeep necessities are minimal, its power calls for practically nonexistent. On this regard, Solaris exemplifies Andersen’s ethics of financial system: doing extra with much less, permitting type and lightweight to generate presence with out overwhelming area. This orientation isn’t merely aesthetic however moral, reflecting a priority for ecological limits and materials humility.
What hyperlinks Andersen’s numerous initiatives isn’t fashion however construction. Her work is all the time already in relation: to commissioners, to customers, to institutional frameworks, and to the ecological techniques inside which they function. She isn’t a solitary writer however a collaborator, typically negotiating with engineers, architects, and bureaucrats to form works that may endure and adapt. Her gentle interventions are calibrated for darkness as a lot as visibility, her varieties designed to withstand put on as a lot as invite use. The politics of her work lie not in overt statements however within the delicate redistribution of consideration, care, and entry. By means of cautious calibration of fabric, notion, and institutional dedication, Andersen proposes a mannequin of public artwork that’s as infrastructural as it’s relational, one which endures not via monumentality however via embeddedness, responsiveness, and co-presence.
