Io Sivertsen
Internship: Molly Matalon
instagram.com/io_io_io_i, iosivertsen@gmail.com
I am a photographer, filmmaker and writer based between Norway and the Netherlands. For a long time photography has been in a state of change; merging with other visual techniques. From being a medium meant to tell the truth, to be a deceiving and sometimes dangerous tool to warp reality. Among my main concerns are investigating the boundary between truth and fiction, especially in relation to technology and internet culture. Although taking reality as a starting point, my narratives tend to be established from a very personal and subjective point a view, sometimes even merging the divide between reality an fiction and between art and documentary. Regardless my work strives to be rich in visual language and simultaneously address contemporary issues regarding identity, technological developments and sexuality.
Alongside my artistic practice I have initiated and developed short-films, exhibitions and filmfestivals. I am the co-founder of the independent filmfestival Cinema Underexposed - a The Hague based platform aimed for new voices and perspectives.
GRADUATION PROJECT
When I was 15 my doctor told me that it would be difficult for me to have children. She said there was something wrong with my eggs. All I could think about then, was the chickens in my moms garden. How they carefully covered their eggs, wanting that someday they would hatch. I usually had to stroke their feathers, to remove the egg from their shelter, to bring it back inside, to the frying pan.
The first objects we learn are domestic. Plate, cup, fruit and eggs. You learn their shape and colour, traits and qualities. Water is in the cup, and fruit is on the plate. But they can both break if you throw them on the floor. But the fruit will only bruise, while the egg shatters. As a woman you are often confronted with your own ability to reproduce. That the clock is ticking, eggs are disappearing and you are becoming obsolete. The duality of the meaning of objects is exhilarating, that an egg is both totally conventional, yet also exceptional.
I am trying to make you look closely at something, To examine an egg.
THESIS
Eggsistence
Photography is sight. A blurred and halting vision. A medium changing both rapidly and radically. Eggsistence is exploring how language and vision generate our perception of reality. Using a chicken egg as a visual tool to examine the world. I thought why not approach the thesis as if I would photograph it? By looking closely at the egg I am not just addressing a familiar and everyday commodity, but use it to challenge the ambivalent position between the real world and the abstract ideas of what is not physically there.
I attempt to look at one object, but to see another.