Through their work, Ase Brunborg Lie explores how to live and create in our ongoing ecological crisis/era with its related philosophical and ethical questions, and work for more equitable possible futures. They point out blind spots in social structures and propose alternatives to the human-exceptional. Central to their practice are site-specificity and cross-pollination, inspired by queer-feminist, post-colonial, scientific and fabulatory thinking and doing. 

Projects often involve others from creative and scientific fields and/or local communities. Lie works in various mediums, including performance, sound, text, multi-media installations, bio-art, online work, sculpture, video, film, photography and more.

Lie just finished the post-master program Of Public Interest Lab at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. They hold an MA in Scenography from the Norwegian Theatre Academy and a BA from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. They live and work in Oslo, Norway.

Some of their recent work includes the ongoing collaborative project “Imagine Water” with artists Gülbeden Kulbay and Elin Stampe, thinking and working with the river Mälaren through textiles, participatory performance, a ceremony and text.

Another ongoing collaborative project is “disappearing archives” with artist Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and theatre makers Sudipta Dawn and Janardan Ghosh of the theatre company CultureMonks. Together and separately, they are creating an archive of ephemera, sound, memories and infrastructure on the verge of disappearance in their respective local neighborhoods of Oslo, the Hague and Kolkata. The archive will inform a future publication, performances and exhibitions in each city.

On the 2^nd of September, Lie will present a new sculpture  as part of the UrbanSoundArt Festival in Fredrikstad, Norway. The sculpture will partly be in the river Glomma and partly on land, and is inspired by water monitoring systems. It will act as an instrument to measure water pollution, temperature, organic matter and more. The readings will influence sound works experienced from the part of the sculpture standing on land.

During their research residency at iii, Lie will focus on e-waste’s toxicological web versus digital/electronic media’s possibilities of connection and world-building.

E-waste is the largest growing waste in the West. Norway, Lie’s home country, is the world’s biggest producer per capita. It sends waste legally and illegally to countries where people are exposed to hazardous e-waste toxins. 

Their main point of departure is the seemingly non-physicality of our digital media usage (as well as electrification and green growth), as opposed to the very real excavations, energy and extorted labor that goes into keeping it running, its production, shipping, and waste, which is a global environmental and ethical issue. E-waste is the largest growing type of waste in the West. Norway, the world’s biggest producer per capita, sends it legally and illegally to already environmentally pressed countries where people are exposed to e-waste toxins. Toxins from Agbogbloshie in Ghana, one of the world’s largest e-waste dumps, end up in the sea, and through gyres and water streams arrive back in Norway 3-5 years later. The streams also pass the Netherlands. Most of us are connected through digital ecologies, and all are connected through water.

Digital ecology poses ways of worlding beyond the confines of physical restraints. A queer extension of our bodies to play, learn and communicate. Originally thought of as a democratic tool, it is, however, instrumentalized by authoritarian bodies. E-waste toxins are relatively new. We know little of their long-term effects, though repercussions for those living near or in the disposal sites are already evident. 

During the next two years, Lie will be developing a two-part piece. The first part of the piece consists of a participatory work where the audience will play on handheld instruments. Incorporated in the instruments are toxins bio-remediated from waters contaminated by e-waste. Each instrument will have a specific role in the piece, depending on the materials of its body and the toxins incorporated.

This part of the piece will be developed together with musician and researcher Jennifer Torrence and built in collaboration with local instrument builders in the respective areas they are looking at. The instruments will all be inspired by the first historically known instruments from each area of remediated contaminated waters.

The piece’s second part consists of a sound work experienced on a boat. This poetic work, a composition of field recordings and text, will revolve around how we are all connected through water, following the materials and toxins from their ur-creation to the audience’s interactions with them and onwards.

For the project, Lie is in conversations with researchers that are part of the AnthroTox project at the University of Oslo. AnthroTox brings together social anthropologists, historians, STS-scholars, environmental toxicologists and chemists to understand how environmental, social and political-economic processes shape flows and impacts of toxicants across societies and ecosystems and to contribute to public debate, policy processes and remedial action. Lie will continue these conversations and collaborate with AntroTox researchers for the project.

The residency program of iii is supported financially by the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Creative Europe program of the European Union.