COPENHAGEN.- A series of intense political events at a wildlife reserve in Oregon USA are the focus of Søren Thilo Funder’s deeply serious and equally deeply strange video work The Watchers of Malheur (TWEET TWEET). The work combines reportage with speculative fiction, political events with extended periods of waiting, wild nature with a digital sensory apparatus, and filmic construction with virtual transience. Photo-realistic camouflage, a motion capture studio with a horse and a Berlingo car, vast expanses of the American landscape, fetishized optic tech, and a pitiable animated Twitter bird are just a few of the many layers that comprise the transrealistic story of armed combat between ornithologists and militia members on the borders of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
The narrative unfolds around an incident that took place on January 2nd 2016, when the armed private militia Citizens for Constitutional Freedom (C4CF) occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Their goal was to convince the US government that rights to federal land should be handed over to individual states and thereby back to ranchers, lumberjacks and miners. As the conflict attracted more and more attention local citizens - most of who were not supportive of the militia’s action -, became increasingly frustrated and worried, at the same time as nature enthusiasts and ornithologists became increasingly interested in the occupation. Birdwatchers proclaimed their imminent involvement in the conflict online, threatening to document the illegal activities of the militia with their specialised observation equipment. The conflict between conservationists and the militia never went beyond the social media – until now, when Funder stages a physical confrontation that never actually took place.
Funder uses the wildlife reserve as a backdrop for the work’s exploration of concepts of freedom, land rights and nature conservation, as well as temporary political and economic circumstances and the permanent impact they can have on our surroundings. In a Danish context the case can be compared to plans by the local government in Copenhagen to build housing on the nature reserve Amager Fælled (Amager Common), plans that have been stopped by public protests.
The landscape in The Watchers of Malheur (TWEET TWEET) was been filmed on location in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, whereas the recreation of the confrontation that never happened has been filmed in a motion capture film studio, resulting in sharp contrasts between the chaos of wild nature and the constructed narrative that plays out within it. Computer-generated video footage that includes breeding birds add yet another layer, creating pathways to new augmented and digital visual paradigms. As Funder himself says in describing his art practice: “I get entangled in complex situations and political scenarios, then use emotional tools in an attempt to disentangle myself again.”
The curators invited Søren Thilo Funder to exhibit at
Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art because of his unique ability to spot local stories and develop them into universal, highly relevant narratives using detailed chains of events and visually powerful staged dystopias to create a space for political reflection.
Søren Thilo Funder (b.1979) is based and works in Denmark. He is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and has also studied at the School of Art and Architecture at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He has just embarked on his PhD in Artistic Research at the Department of Contemporary Art of Bergen Art Academy, University of Bergen.
Søren Thilo Funder has an extensive back catalogue of solo and group exhibitions in both Denmark and abroad, including The Vanishing Table at Turku Art Museum, Finland (2017), Cool, Calm and Collected at ARoS, Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark (2017), You’re Gonna Die Up There at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2016), and Little Lies at Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, Baku, Aserbajdsjan (2016).
