Maren Bang (1995, Norway) holds a BA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts and a MA in Contextual Design and Fine Arts from Design Academy Eindhoven. Currently based in Rotterdam, she works interdisciplinary with a combination of objects, text, film and performance, oftentimes using the mechanisms of the field to say something about the field itself. Experimenting with elements from theatre, she explores performance not only as means for presentation, but for production - embodying various narratives while crafting through different mediums and techniques. Her practice address topics like control, systems, narratives and the idea of constructing and reconstructing identities.
UNCONTROLLABILITY OR PARANOID PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OR YOU’RE SO PARANOID YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS PROJECT IS ABOUT ME - What does it take to succeed? And how does one survive evaluation and critique? The project looks at the paranoia which I perceive as present in the field, the relationship between work and parawork, my own inferiority complex(es), and criticality vs. criticism.
In an attempt to gain control over the exam situation, I made an analysis of previous projects from the department and used the insight I gained to construct three projects (see the following pages) under false narratives. To be prepared for all scenarios, I created projects aimed at both success and failure. Statements about the projects were written according to the common lingo, referring to graduation catalogs from previous years, and assessment forms were written in the voice of the institution. Finally, all three projects were presented as the works of someone else entirely, giving me the role as both creator, presenter, evaluator, and spectator simultaneously.
But why did it feel safer to take on the strenuous endeavor of producing three projects under false narratives rather than to take an honest stand and manifest an opinion? In an attempt to break the circle of critique and critical projects, challenge the ideas of an evaluation process and save my own skin, the project reproduces the systems of which it aims to critique. But is that my fault? Or am I simply a (damaged) product
of the systems I address?
INTERSPECIES SAGA - How can we know what nature is, if we interpret the natural world through the human narratives we project onto it? Through a tendency to anthropomorphize the world around us, humans have over-designed nature using story-telling and age-old narratives that have become deeply embedded in western culture. Interspecies Saga is a fictional documentary examining human-animal relations. Extracting from historical, religious, mythological, psychological, and fandom perspectives, it depicts humans ways of internalizing and externalizing the natural world. The movie suggests the need for new subjective interpretations, that break with the ideological hierarchies that have placed humans outside of or above nature. Collaboration with Pauline Rip and Ramon Jimenez Cardenas
BACK TO SCRATCH - The act of alteration and reduction refers to both asceticism and the search for a virgin state, an aim for a new beginning, a tabula rasa, a sense of innocence and a feeling of control.
Throughout the project, I aimed to carve a shape which fitted my embrace perfectly - and then carve past it. Starting to measure the areas where I would reduce, I intuitively used my own body-parts.
These measurements would rationalize something entirely irrational and subjective - but which to me enhanched a feeling of control, system and order. As if they became an objective subjective objectiveness.
HOW TO DESIGN THE DESIGNER THROUGH REBIRTH RITUALS – A SEEKERS GUIDE - Inspired by DIY-culture and self-improvement
books, the guidebook combines the best of
both the Bauhaus Method and the Wiccan
movement in order to make a 7-day plan,
which ends in a ritual whereafter you will be
reborn as a designer. Each day is assigned to a
different material, and an object crucial to the
end-cermony (like an altar or a candle-holder).
The project questions what determines
whether something is deemed as rational or
irrational due to their context or narrative, and
to which extent one is willing to go in order to
cultivate a role or an identity.
PRINTING OBJECTS - “Printing Object” continues the idea from the stack of cards, and poses questions about the role of the object versus it’s parawork. A large, glossy sculpture flirts with the beholder through it’s naive, almost childish appearance. Once the spectator approaches the object, it starts printing out the explanation for the work itself and the topics which it aims to address - leaving no room for personal interpretations. Thus the object becomes bait for further intellectualization rather than a valued entity on its own.
52 REASONS - Once lacking a rational explanation for a project, I found that it might be more likely to be acknowledged if I just lied. This resulted in a stack of cards containing 52 different explanations for my work, most of them being pompous lies and phrases of International Art English. I left the stack of cards next to my project and observed as the audience read and nodded appreciatively. In retrospect, it remains a question of which element ended up playing the lead in the end - the actual work itself or the stack of cards accompanying it.
