Symbiotic Scenes – Incessantly Interweaved

ABSTRACT Symbiotic Scenes was a work of scenography created as part of the artistic research project Scenography as Symbiosis. It was realized on an empty lot between the cultural center TOU and the fjord in the former industrial area of Stavanger East, Norway, in September 2021. The work was developed through a research process carried out over the course of one year in this public context. Symbiotic Scenes was mediated by a 4 × 5 meter LED screen held by a revealed scaffolding structure. Its context, components and experience are described in this short written essay and explored visually through photographic documentation. The work is contextualized through a description of the artistic research project Scenography as Symbiosis to further emphasize the work as embedded within a broader artistic endeavor. With one of its beginnings in the word skenographia as connected to the theatre of ancient Greece, the research project explores ways of imagining an ontology of scenography, meaning contemplating how scenography comes into being through realizing works of scenography in various diverse contexts. Embedded within this endeavor is a queering of binaries such as foreground-background, inside-outside, active-passive, and present-absent. Finally, an interpretation of symbiosis through the philosophical framework of Object-oriented Ontology is described. Embracing this understanding of symbiosis, Symbiotic Scenes is imagined as having existed as a new symbiotic object, which appeared through biographical symbiosis between interwoven gradually transforming objects already existing within the environment. A state of being incessantly interweaved appears to be the how of the being of Symbiotic Scenes.