Pulp Press | Kistefos

Project Description

Pulp Press (Kistefos) 2013 is situated in the grounds of the Kistefos-Museet Sculpture Park, the site of a 19th Century paper mill in Jevnaker, an hour north of Oslo, Norway.

The work consists of a large projected moving simulation of the an original paper press, housed in a 100m2 poured concrete pavilion designed by the artist in collaboration with Dublin-based architects A2 with technical design and object production handled by Vienna based Inseq Design. The pavilion sits along the edge of the river Rands, which powers the work by hydro-electrics – the same river which gave rise to the original factory in 1889.

Pulp Press (Kistefos) 2013 is a hyper-realistic portrait of the machine, (which was decommissioned in 1950), painstakingly remade as a virtual form. Importantly, it has been renovated within the virtual to function once more. Pipes have been replaced, valves sourced, missing components researched by the production team for over a year and recreated in simulacra. The press now generates bales of virtual paper pulp, each structurally unique and preserved as data in an ever-expanding store of hard drives housed sculpturally within the work.

Robin Mackay of Urbanomic describes the project: „A ‚virtual double‘ of now-dormant machinery suggests an examination of the discontinuity between industrial and post-industrial modes of production; but more importantly insists upon a more fundamental continuity, emphasizing that today’s ‚information economy‘ remains reliant on material means and heas material consequences.“