<\/a><\/p>\n

This past July, Canadian-born artist Laura Piasta<\/a> sat in her studio at The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, where she was finishing a residency with Johan Bj\u00f6rck<\/a>, a Swedish artist she met at the Ume\u00e5 Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden in 2010. Sitting between them on the ground was a strange machine salvaged from a scrapyard, its screen glowing the nostalgic green of Apple IIe computers from the 1980s: \u201cEveryone walks in and asks \u2018What is this? What does it do?\u2019\u201d Piasta said. \u201cIt actually does engine diagnostics,\u201d she added, \u201cbut what\u2019s interesting about it is how we all have a relationship to this technological machine.\u201d Though this cultural relic is not a sculpture in any formal sense\u2014rather something the artist hauled up for further investigation\u2014it points to the sort of anthropological study that interest Piasta and Bj\u00f6rck as a team. In their work, objects point to how we investigate both our technological and natural surroundings.<\/p>\n

Bj\u00f6rck and Piasta began collaborating together in school: Among their first shared endeavors was the video Bronze Age Stone Phone<\/em><\/a>, shot at Hagbard\u2019s Gallow, Varg\u00f6 Island and the Ume\u00e5 River, near where Bj\u00f6rck grew up. In the bright northern light, Piasta\u2019s camera panned monoliths and carvings from bronze-age sacred burial sites, often focusing in on a girl holding a rock to her ear, as if listening on a cell phone. The short film\u2019s soundtrack\u2014composed by Bj\u00f6rck \u2014underscored a dreamy awareness of eternity and contemporaneity converging.<\/p>\n

The confluence of geological and technological is a theme in several of Piasta\u2019s works: In March 2012, she presented a series of works-on-pedestals called Sculptures for Listening to Inaudible Frequencies: Pyrite Radios<\/em><\/a>. Visually lyrical on their own, these are also working receivers made from wood, copper wire, earphones, scrap metal, and fool\u2019s gold (a crystal diode). \u201cI\u2019m fascinated by the instruments we use to comprehend phenomena that are otherwise incomprehensible\u2014for instance a particle collider,\u201d Piasta explains. \u00a0Similarly, \u201cthe art object makes a concept perceptible. It\u2019s a scientific tool in that respect: It allows you to manifest an idea, continue an ongoing investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Banff residency, Piasta and Bj\u00f6rck spent days doing field investigations, allowing their findings to filter into their artwork back in the studio. On mountain hikes, they studied the area\u2019s indigenous flora and geology, recording their findings with rented tech equipment. Piasta\u2019s relationship to sound in situ<\/em> came together in Plein Air Travelling Sound Box<\/em><\/a>, her wood-and-speaker assemblage that\u2014easily carried from place to place\u2014suggests sound as a traditional artist\u2019s tool, as portable as a travel paint set. <\/strong>Meanwhile Bjork\u2019s interests brought him to investigate the North American culture of baseball, which he explains (growing up in Nordic territory) has many aspects that are exotic to him. This ultimately led him to make a series of sculptural baseballs and bats\u2014made from both utilitarian wood, and symbolic ceramic\u2014and also to the duo\u2019s second collaborative video, Practice<\/em><\/a>, which captures a ball game played in the Canadian pine forests.<\/p>\n

I asked what\u2019s next after these summer investigations. While Laura mused that she was considering doing future sculptures in bronze, \u201cI\u2019m still thinking about poetry and baseball,\u201d Bj\u00f6rck said. \u201cAnd the creatures here, especially prairie dogs. I shared an apple with a prairie dog today. They\u2019re pretty friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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