Possibility of Being
Sofie Kjørum Austlid
December 6th - January 8, 2019
@
King’s Leap
368 Broadway #506
New York, NY 10013
Hmm hmm, White heat
Hey foxy mama watchin' her walk down the street
Hmm hmm, White light
Come up side your head gonna make a deadend on your street
How strange to see the illumination of project streets, and consider the floodlights’ glaring intensity in the windows of tenants on Floor 1, Floor 2, Floor 3. Oppression. Foreign eyes rightfully struggle to make sense of the brutal logic of American Surveillance. Charitable impulse; maybe the street lamps aren’t working?.. The photographer barely lets a site seen before considering how something might be translated to her forms of representation. Is the signified enough? What’s a metaphor anyhow?
...Freedom Tower, One World Trade Center, now the name...
Later a picture, later still, a realization that the signified, has no, ahem, real , relationship to the intended signifier; not the NYPD floodlights, rather, more benign, charitable even (a page 7 fluff piece), lights to illuminate events in the park, street festivals, etc. How effortlessly a tool slides through violence & extraction and into public-spiritedness & resourcefulness. Lights, camera , action
I was then a “we.”
The photographer (she) reaches for (her) words fluently, mostly eloquently, but still evincing their ESL status. She (it, they) sound(s) more prosodic and affective with time. Coz she’s puttin’ in the time. White light, white heat.
They say I mope too much but really I’m loudly dancing.
The act of breathing in New York City makes you feel full. Kinda need to spend some time here to really grasp “alone together together alone.” Two women, one known, one a stranger. Can you tell which?
The photo is farther away
That photo is pretty much what it is
“It looked like she was looking for someone.” To me, it looks like she was looking for someone. Ha ha ha the photographer wants to be seen. It made her feel like she could approach her. Can she narrate without telling a story?
*Lou Reed, Sofie Kjørum Austlid, Elizabeth Hardwick, Frank O’Hara, She, Her - Daniel Shea
Sofie Kjørum Austlid (b.1991, Hamar, Norway) is a photographer currently based in New York City. Recent group exhibitions include those at Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden, and Centrum för fotografi, Stockholm, Sweden. This is her first solo exhibition in the United States.
