TWAPS @Drammensmuseum

fter our exhibition in the shipment container there was a certain longing to be able to foresee occurring problems. Where a shipment container is open 24/7 and can be targeted by anybody, be it birds that want to eat the fish or people who find it funny to cut electric lines and by this make the whole system to shut down, we found the orderly world of a museum intriguing. We decided to apply for exhibition space at the Drammens Museum for the November exhibition organized by Buskerud Visual Artists.

We were accepted – which is great, but we got an interesting gap between “everything is possible” in the container exhibition and “wow, we have never had living animals and plants before” at the museum. We had to promise that no water would leak, and no harm would be done to the walls and the floors of the museum. Scared by those big promises we made – to be honest: our art is messy and dirty and it even smells and has sounds – we ended up with a much smaller and less voluptuous, green and beautiful installation. Yes, artists do experience self-censorship!

It is a cool reminder that art changes when it gets moved. We were eager to test our concept in the walls of an institution. We decided to move the growing bed up. By this we reduced the growing capacity to its minimum and unfortunately made the waterbed less visible for children and others. The reason to do this was to shorten the way of water transport from aquarium to growing bed and by this reduce the risk of spilling the water. We also applied water baskets to catch the spill from the pumps.

Since we had reduced the growing beds from several beds to just one, we decided to use the water spill by the pumps to grow plants that use very little water – like amaryllis.

The driftwood, once found in the dirt of the nearby forest, looked stunning against the clean white museum wall. The highly necessary light of the fish gave long shades and lightflashes alongside the walls. The living fish felt alienated and beautiful in its new surroundings. The system was still a circular growing system with salads and fish in its simplest capacity.

Artist Cathrine Finsrud wrote beyond other things in a readers post to the local newspaper: “they show a commitment to what concerns the desire for a better future. … they communicate a hope that humanity will, at one point or another, see itself saved and find its rightful place in the food chain. That we should adapt our use of the world’s resources to a level that cancels the next pandemic and natural disaster. The hope that sustainability will function as something more than trinkets in a party program”.

Looking at our installation with those words in mind, we are happy we made it to the November-exhibition 2020.