YELLOW FLOWER POWER
Ottar Ormstad
Chapter from the book: Menon, N et al. 2023. Indian Electronic Literature Anthology: Volume I.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Menon, N et al. 2023. Indian Electronic Literature Anthology: Volume I.
YELLOW FLOWER POWER (2017) is the fifth film by Norwegian concrete poet Ottar Ormstad. Here again viewers encounter letter-carpets and a yellow y he identifies with. The work is based on slogans and song-titles from different countries at the end of the Sixties, presented in their original language, intentionally without translation.
The texts are combined with photographs of sculptures from the Vigeland Park in Oslo/Norway, where Ormstad lives and shot the naked people exposed in stone and iron by sculptor Gustav Vigeland (1869–1943). This park is the largest in the world based on one artist and contains more than 200 works.
The film also includes live video-footage of Charles Lloyd playing saxophone in front of a huge painting by Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (friend/enemy of Vigeland), as well as an unpublished photo of the young Mick Jagger, both shot in Oslo by Ormstad.
Like in earlier works, Ormstad uses a strong sound in the very start for creating a period of silence at the beginning of the film.
The animation is created in close collaboration between artist Margarida Paiva and Ormstad. YELLOW FLOWER POWER invites viewers for an individual experience dependant upon the viewer's language background and tolerance towards non-translation.
Ormstad, O. 2023. YELLOW FLOWER POWER. In: Menon, N et al (eds.), Indian Electronic Literature Anthology. Indore, India: Indian Institute of Technology – Knowledge Sharing in Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.57004/book1.n
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Published on Dec. 13, 2023