Research Reviews: Catharsis

 

 Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Catharsis from the Serpentine is an online gallery display featuring both still and moving images of natural landscapes.

This exhibition was produced primarily in collaboration with Matt McCorkle, and the work’s virtual ecosystem and synchronised audio consisted of 3D textures and sounds sampled from North American forests. Steensen uses his concept of ‘slow media’ to support Catharsis’ message. The idea of ‘slow media’ relays the concept that digital technologies and results of it can ‘foster attention to the natural world and create new narratives about our ecological futures.’ (Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Catharsis - Serpentine Galleries, 2021) This theory is seen throughout much of the contemporary art seen more recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic. And is a theme this work explores, that since we are much less able to be in nature, it tends to be presented in a much more romanticised way. In a sense, people are much more aware of the things they miss in the natural world because of the time they have spent away from it. 

Steensen’s work also leans heavily on a unique almost photomontage-esk form of presentation, in which a photorealistic recreation of a natural space is explored by the viewer. As a recreation, though, it is composed of images gathered from real world forests, and fosters a sort of meta that this fake scene looks like a real one, but is not in fact a real forest, though all the pieces comprising it are made with images from real places. A line could easily be drawn between this and college due to both formats relaying on recontextualization of image in order to convey their message. 

Furthermore, the artist’s use of space in some of the still images of his artwork made from this simulated environment, in our real environment are striking, and the appeal of this size of presentation largely comes from a feeling that you could step into the image. As though it is more of an extension of the space rather than a piece of art work in it. An aspect that is added by the subject of the image matching its surrounding. In addition, the artwork is actually blocking out the building behind it in the figure above, which is a quality about the work that is ripe with commentary about the context of the work, with a depiction of nature blocking out a piece of man made architecture. Which fits wonderfully as a metaphor of the effect of ‘slow media’. 

Serpentine Galleries. 2021. Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Catharsis - Serpentine Galleries. [online] Available at: <https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/jakob-kudsk-steensen-catharsis/>.