«When the dust settles» is a dystopian sound work exploring how the future may sound if mankind is obliterated from Earth.

Hundred of years into the future mankind is finally obliterated out of existence. Pandemics, ecological collapse, wars and hunger has killed billions. The last men and women die of an asteroid impact which sets of an extinction level event. While our bodies and minds perish, there are still countless traces of our species left. Some machines, life-support systems and energy-collecting infrastructure will continue to work, supported by emergency generators. Robots will run our creations for some time and the rest of our infrastructure will resist nature for thousands of years before finally collapsing. Mankind’s impact on Earth lives on, even if we do not.

Whatever we consider to be our legacy, the traces of humanity will take a long time to eradicate.

«When the dust settles» was part of the group exhibition «Freaky Avant Garde» at Lydgalleriet in Bergen.

The term avant-garde is stolen from the military: the vanguard. Being part of the vanguard is about mysterious foresight and tactics at the same time: a state of perceiving synchronously the alienated and familiar. In an artistic context the term is used condescending or exalted, referring to deep hate or love, and it is here sound art fits beautifully in.

It is ten years since Lydgalleriet showed the group exhibition «Zuper Klassik Freaky Avant Garde», where the starting point was to experiment with the noisy characteristics of sound art and the impossibility of curating an exhibition consisting of many sound art works. In response to the quotation «in the face of the Art, Silence is the only possible response», an exhibition was curated by people in Lydgalleriet's extended repertoire, with the idea that sound art was the freak of the art field.

Almost unsellable, yet very expensive, space-specific and space-consuming: sound art is still classic avant-garde.