In Aestu Solis (In the Heat of the Sun) is the third part of a trilogy of works by Jens Settergren that utilise the tropics as an instance of a (Western) collective imaginary: The tropical cast as a heterotopia comprising both pure idyll, recreational tranquility and certain more uncanny elements.
The piece made for die raum targets the human senses by way of temperature, colour and sound. For all of its apparent shortcomings and contrasts with regards to the environment it aspires to simulate — the organic wildness being reduced to a rigid and controlled simulacrum of basic sensual stimuli — the effort to do so is that much more insistent.
The viewer is invited to take a seat in a lounge chair equipped with transducers, facing a triptych of sound-emitting neon-green radiators which most of all resemble a domestic altar of television screens. The high temperature is coupled with a synthetic 7-channel soundscape comprised of exotic birds, crickets, ocean waves etc., which travel through bodies and architecture.
The soundscape composed for In Aestu Solis is a collaboration between Settergren and sound artist Sebastian Edin.
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