Forms of ev (evolve - to unfold, open out, expand)

Randi Nygård 2011, installation, video (26 min, dvd, colour, sound), dictionary, photo collage.

During a cruise with scientists in the fjords of Svalbard the summer 2010, I started thinking about the very long time span in the evolutionary processes and how we as individuals relate to this. Since words as evangelical, evaporate, evolution, every, ever, evoke all start with ev, I wanted to find out if there were other connections between words on ev than the syllables. My project departs from all the words on ev listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it looks for a form they might have in common. Word with the same beginning often have visual connections, words in germanic languages starting with str most of the time describe something long and thin, and words on kn something little and round. I have first tried to find visual representations to each word on ev, but not all can be represented visually and for those I have found definitions and origns from an etymological dictionary. I have enlarged a dictionary and added the images and the definitions. The video shows all the images I have found and the sound is the definitions of the words I didn`t find visual representations to. I found out that the ev-words don`t have a simple form in common, there are more complex movements appearing to be what many of them describe (examples: evacuate, evade, evaluate, evanescent, evaporate, ever, everyone, evangelize, evicerate, evict, evoke, evolve). To visualize this, I have put all the images on top of each other and cut figures and forms out of them, so they rise out of the pile and become connected in a complex three-dimensional form.

Installation views from Tromsø Kunstforening