Bjørn Melhus

Bjørn Melhus
Berlin
Germany

http://www.melhus.de

Bjørn Roald Melhus. Born in 1966, Kirchheim/Teck. 1985-87, training in photography and audiovision in Stuttgart. 1988-97, study of art at the HBK in Braunschweig, Germany. Has worked with Super8 and 16mm film since 1986, with video and video installation since 1988. Professor at Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. He is represented by the Gallery Anita Becker, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

Bjørn Melhus is a filmmaker and video artist who creates short, cyclic fairy-tales about movie myths, new media, eternal childhood, cloning and split personalities. Most of his work uses sound excerpts from TV or pop music, rhythmically assembled into new dialogues and redubbed by different characters, all embodied by Melhus himself. These creatures are not gender-specific and remain in a suspended state, a threshold that they can't overcome.Coming from the generation of a 'first TV-childhood' in Germany, Melhus makes uses of different phenomena related to TELE-VISION: the apparatus of identification, the mirror of doubles and multiplication of an electronic virtual life. His work has been shown worldwide in many festivals and exhibitions. (Video Data Bank, Chicago)

Bjørn Melhus processes found fragments of language from films, television or pop music, structuring these in a new way and using them as a basis for his stories and fables. The figures, inventions or free citations from pop culture appear as doubles or multiple persons, often in spatial border areas or without clear sexual identities; some are asexual. As a rule, the artist is his own protagonist or double in the videos. Melhus takes the phenomena of original and reproduction, reflection or virtual image as his theme, for example in DAS ZAUBERGLAS (1991), a modern media fairy-tale. NO SUNSHINE (1997) describes the problem of alienation caused by virtual systems becoming increasingly incomprehensible and threatening to the individual. He concerns himself with people’s subconscious longings and loneliness in their use of the media. Employing the means of digital computer technology, he creates virtual and symbolic locations as border areas where he sets his stories on various levels. In a fascinating way, he adopts the narrative form and the idols of modern, mass society in order to illuminate complex and demanding themes. (Video-Forum, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein 2001)

2003:

Auto Center Drive (realization)

2001:

The Oral Thing (production, realization)

1999:

ich bin du (realization)
Again & Again (realization)

1997:

No Sunshine (appearance, realization)

1995:

Aide Mémoire - ein schwules Gedächtnisprotokoll (camera)
Weit weit weg (appearance, realization)

1993:

Plötzlich Und Unerwartet - eine Déjà Revue (appearance)

1991:

Das Zauberglas (camera, writer, editing, appearance, realization)
Ich weiss nicht wer das ist (appearance, realization)

1990:

America sells (realization)
DIE STATIK DER ESELSBRÜCKEN (camera)

1988:

Tabu I-IV (camera)

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