Considering the fact that Blank Blank not only created the profile for Østre — House of Electronic Music and Art, but also the profiles for three previous iterations of the Ekko Festival that takes place therein, the greatest challenge involved with creating another profile in this visual environment might be to avoid settling for a “standard” while re-interpreting ones own previous work. As we arrive at Ekko in 2014, the aim was nevertheless to continue a visual tendency established in the past years, but to take it in a new, darker direction to counterbalance last year’s playful aesthetics, lovingly nick-named “rainbow blobs” Drawing on keywords like “x-ray” and “night-vision”, an intense evening of photographic experiments, in close collaboration with photographer extraordinaire and frequent co-conspirator Sirio Magnabosco, resulted in a vast amount of compositions built from combinations of fish-guts, kiwis, octopi and various liquids. These images were then heavily processed and combined with a touch of warmth in the form of an organic gradient, created using a variety of techniques including hand-rolled mono-prints, silk-screen and digital. To complete this internal circle of Chinese whispers the motifs were cut and combined in a fashion mimicking that of last years, but with the intention of creating something more like an evil twin than a rip-off.
Year: 2014
Photography: Sirio Magnabosco
in collaboration with Blank Blank