Directly outside Oslo’s Teknisk Museum sits a cargo container. In it is a heating chamber which all objects to be exhibited must go through in order to kill off anything living that might cause harm inside the museum.
Documenting conservation workers at the museum, The Heat Treatment tracks how the process of heat treatment evolved from past practices using toxic pesticides to treat objects, rendering them forever poisonous and causing nerve damage to conservators. The practices discussed reveal the ‘anti-life’ attention necessary to create the everlasting objects of the museums’ bizarre collection. Life and death intertwine within the museum’s walls, with the heating chamber central to the museum’s battle for ecological-hyper control over entropy.
The Heat Treatment was made following my participation in the PRAKSIS residency, Live or Buy, which was developed with Nina Sarnelle, Ida Falck Øien and HAiKW/. It was made with support from The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, exhibited at the Teknisk Museum in Oslo, Norway andThe Acoustic Tunnel at the Crypt Gallery in London, United Kingdom. The film was screened at Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland and with VITRINE gallery in London, United Kingdom.
