My Trip 2023
Bjarne Melgaard
Oct 16 – Nov 27, 2023
Outernet Arts and BFI London Film Festival 2023 are excited to announce a first-of-it’s-kind partnership, together commissioning and exhibiting a new digital artwork by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, entitled My Trip 2023 that takes the view on a journey to the farthest reaches of the web and explores the apathy that our technological environments produce.
Produced by Acute Art, My Trip 2023 will be presented at Outernet's flagship venue, The Now Building, renowned for its impressive 23,000 square feet of wrap-around 16K screens. The collaboration aims to inspire and engage a wide-ranging general public with free and accessible admission in the heart of London, in a venue currently poised to secure its position as the leading attraction in the UK.
My Trip 2023 features characters that have recurred in the artist’s practice for over 25 years in addition to new mutant personalities created in collaboration with Acute Art. The artwork, presented as a fully immersive multi-screen installation at Outernet Arts, questions how we choose to live and explores the endless information consumed daily through a striking visualisation of a psychedelic experience.
Beginning with the idea of self-destruction as an existential question, new psychedelia, and the loss of the self, this work asks questions regarding life and how we choose to live. My Trip also explores the abyss of the technological underground, the endless information consumed every day and the feeling of apathy and dullness that this technology consequently produces.
The work is accompanied by a soundtrack created specifically for My Trip by Melgaard’s long-time collaborator Romina Cohn.
“What is very interesting about this project is the magnitude of the space and this opportunity to see the piece in such megalomanic circumstances.” – Bjarne Melgaard
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip 2023 at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip 2023 at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip 2023 at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip 2023 at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip 2023 at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts and Acute Art
“We are thrilled to be working in collaboration with Outernet Arts for the first time at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. The 2023 LFF Expanded programme is our most ambitious yet and we can’t wait to showcase the striking world created in My Trip 2023, at one of the most awe-inspiring, large-scale digital venues out there. It's the perfect space to showcase the extraordinary possibilities of immersive storytelling and pioneering screen-based artworks to a wide range of audiences.” – Ulrich Schrauth, XR and Immersive Programme Lead, LFF Expanded
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip, 2019, virtual reality. Courtesy of Bjarne Melgaard and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip, 2019, virtual reality. Courtesy of Bjarne Melgaard and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip, 2019, virtual reality. Courtesy of Bjarne Melgaard and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip, 2019, virtual reality. Courtesy of Bjarne Melgaard and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip, 2019, virtual reality. Courtesy of Bjarne Melgaard and Acute Art
Bjarne Melgaard, My Trip, 2019, virtual reality. Courtesy of Bjarne Melgaard and Acute Art
About Bjarne Melgaard
Born in Sydney to Norwegian parents, Melgaard was raised in Oslo and studied there at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, moving to the Netherlands in 1991 to complete his studies at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. The artist lived and worked in New York for a decade, before returning to Oslo in 2017. He represented Norway at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and has also participated in the Lyon Biennale (2000 and 2013) and the Whitney Biennial (2014). His work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2010), followed by Melgaard + Munch – The End Of It All Has Already Happened at the Munch Museum, Oslo (2015), which placed his work in direct dialogue with that of Edvard Munch. In 2019, he created his first virtual reality work, My Trip, with Acute Art, which was shown at the Julia Stoschek Foundation in Berlin. A major retrospective at the Munch Museum, Oslo in 2023 will be the first comprehensive survey of Melgaard's career at a public institution in his homeland.
