Åsa Stjerna

Sweden, b. 1970 in/lives in Stockholm.

Studies in classical piano. Philosophy and musicology at Stockholm University. Academy of Photography at University College of Art Crafts and Design, Stockholm and Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm. Courses at EMS, Stockholm.

First sound art work: The Big Dipper (Lovers Anonymous), with Peter Cederblom. Firework Edition Records, Stockholm 2001.

In my work I use photography and sound synonymously: as two aspects of the investigation of reality. My artistry mainly concerns time and the perishable, closely connected to the concepts of nature and culture. I often investigate a specific phenomenon and its transformation over time. By bringing together and juxtaposing different layers and perspectives of the phenomena in question, side by side, the history behind becomes visible.

One example of a piece using the sound as artistic expression is Lamento (2006).

Lamento is an eight-channel sound installation made for being performed in a forest. It mainly deals with the concept of transformation from nature to culture. The main theme is the piano and its pre-history of once being a tree growing in a forest. My aim has been to visualize the history of the material of the instrument; how it, by being transformed from nature to culture, has become a piece of wood in a piano.Tones and sounds from eight pianos have been recorded. Then eight loudspeakers have been mounted on trunks in a forest. Each loudspeaker represents one of the instruments. Trough the loudspeakers, the eight different instruments are slowly playing a C-major scale, time after another. The sounds from the wood of the piano is integrated with the former sounds from the wood of the piano; the forest. By incorporating sounds from the piano in a surrounding in which the instruments once lived as trees, two segments of the same subject for a single moment interfere.