Artist Statement

The essential ‘otherness’ of frozen landscapes permeates this multi-channel video work. Based in part on writer Arthur Koestler’s press reports filed from the 1931 airship flight to the high Arctic, it explores “the polar imaginary” through material gathered on the sea and in remote locations around the Svalbard archipelago. No recordings survive of Koestler’s radio transmissions from this journey, noted for his vivid and entrancing account of what is essentially a largely invariant terrain of ice and snow; however, his newspaper dispatches are part of the public record. The polar territories have now been extensively explored and mapped, and are far better understood than they were in Koestler’s time, yet their qualities of spatial and geographic disorientation remain as essential characteristics. This work re-imagines the spaces of these reports, presenting them in a contemplative framework to allow “a long view of long views”.  roving.net/videoworks/albedoprospect.html  

• Ed Osborn (US) utilises many forms of electronic media in his installation, video, sound, and performance works, which demonstrate a tactile sense of space, movement, image and aurality combined with a precise economy of materials. He has been awarded a number of grants and residencies internationally, and has exhibited internationally, including at the singuhr-hörgalerie and the Sonambiente Festival (Berlin), the Berkeley Art Museum (California), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Artspace (Sydney), the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), the Kiasma Museum (Helsinki), MassMOCA (North Adams, MA), the Auckland Art Gallery (Auckland) and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Belfast, Northern Ireland). He has lectured and taught in numerous institutions, and is currently Assistant Professor in the Visual Art Department at Brown University (US). roving.net

Production of Albedo Prospect was supported by the Arctic Circle residency program, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Faculty Development Fund at Brown University.