Mats Jørgen Sivertsen, Norway,
Born in 1974, Sivertsen has been working in Oslo, Norway, as a designer and animator for 10 years. Alongside commercial work he has written and illustrated two “underground” children’s books and one yet unpublished graphic novel. In 2006 he received a Fulbright scholarship and went to Baltimore to study for an MA in Digital Art.

 

 

Artist statement: iCyborg Manifested

Inherent in every object, space and ritual around us is an ideology fundamental to our culture and sense of identity. The object, ritual or space – what I like to call the manifestation of the ideology – does not, however, appear to be laden with this epistemological baggage because it appears neutral and natural to us. This kind of naturality might appear as a sense of simplicity, as common sense or even truth. This is nevertheless a construct that relies on such foundational dichotomies as man/woman, nature/culture, human/animal and human/machine and is made possible by the structure of our language itself. Manifestations that do not adhere to such notions of naturality, on the other hand, appear to us as unclean or polluted.

In my photo series, “iCyborg Manifested”, using computer generated imagery, I visualize a set of “ruptures” in our ideological space-time continuum; a kind of Freudian slip that is neither unclean nor natural, but somewhere in-between, in a limbo state, unclassifiable, and therefore deeply troubling. The site of rupture in these photographs is an ideologically saturated place, such as a bathroom, a bedroom, a living room or a kitchen. The visualization of the rupture is a manifestation of an object that transcends the dichotomy of man and machine: a cyborg.

My cyborgs attract us because they engage our scopophilila. The clean, white simplicity of the product design makes it into a mechanical “pin-up” for hungry eyes. On the other hand, these cyborgs also attract us because of their fleshy orifices, engendering a different kind of attraction linked to a different drive. In addition, these cyborgs repulse us because they transcend a foundational dichotomy between man and machine. They are unclean and dangerous. Lingering between our attractions and repulsions, lacking a category for classification, is the point of rupture. This rupture can reveal to us the inherent ideologies around us: how, for example, scopophilia is engaged in our desire for objects of pure symbolic value and how this again is tied to Western culture’s fantasies of the perfect form, which in turn subscribes to a dubious discourse of cleanliness we find not only in our Greek ancestry but more recently in the ideologies of wartime Germany. But rather than exposing these inherent ideologies bluntly, the rupture opens up a gap in the chain of signification, at the moment of deferral of meaning . This gap reveals a glimpse of the void: the Real in Lacanian terms; that is obscured by the Symbolic Order and the Law of the Father.

 

CV
Work experience
Head of Multimedia    Gazette      2005 - 2006
Graphic Designer/Animator   Gazette      2000 - 2005
Freelance illustrator and designer  Aktuba Ink     1998 -
Education
MA Digital Art    MICA, Baltimore    2006 / 2007
BA (hons) Visual Communication Design  Middlesex University, London   1995 - 1998
Ex. Phil, art and philosophy   Nansenskolen, Lillehammer   1994 / 1995
Publications
«Sykdommen!»    No Comprendo Press    2002
«Boka om Tombo»    No Comprendo Press    2001
Exhibitions
Coming up: Tegnebiennale 08   Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway   March/April 2008
Coming up: iCyborg Manifested   Sound of Mu, Oslo, Norway   September 2008
Tur/Retur Inderøy    Hembre Galleri, Inderøy, Norway   July 2007
Radius 250     Plant Zero, Richmond, Virginia   June 2007
ZERO - 3500    Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD  January 07
FIG.TXT     Kunsternes Hus, Oslo, Norway   August 2002
Scholarships
Fulbright scholar          2006 / 2007
Awards
Radius250     Honorable mention    Photography
Kaptial Prisen 06     E-product of the year    Interactive design
Visuelt 05      Honorable mention     Animation/Design
Visuelt 05      Honorable mention     Animation
Visuelt 01      Honorable mention     Animation
McMillans Children’s Book Contest 98   Commended Entry    Childrens’s book
Other
«Bryteren bak døren til klasserom 5a»  Radio play for Radio Nova   1998
Yobrepus     One-man band    2006 -