Mortal Combat
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(b.1988) is an artist, writer and publisher originally from London but based mostly in Bergen, Norway. He works with language as raw material—moulding, stretching and transforming texts on screens, on the page and through sound. Brzeski studied English Literature at University of Sheffield (UK), and Fine Art at Bergen Art Academy (NO). He has participated in the Maumaus Independent Study Program (Lisbon) and Mountain School of Arts (Los Angeles). Exhibitions and performances include The Norwegian National Museum (Oslo), Lydgalleriet (Bergen), Pachinko (Oslo), Bærum Kunsthall, bb15 Space for Contemporary Art (Linz), Meta.Morf—Biennale for art and technology (Trondheim), Black Box Theatre (Oslo), and Chao Art Centre (Beijing). Residencies include Contemporary Art Stavanger Art Writing Residency, Bas Fisher Invitational (Miami) and The Creative Europe Oscillations Program. He runs the publishing presses TEXST and Vibrational Semantics. In 2025, Samuel is a participant in the Jan van Eyck Post-Academic Residency (Maastricht).
Photo by ：Susann Jamtøy
Opening
18th January
Samuel Brzeski’s Mortal Combat, featured by Kunsthall 3,14 at Northing, consists of 24 electronic reading devices. The installation presents a way for visitors to “read” books from a definitive “100 Books to Read Before You Die" checklist through a speed-reading application. The work critiques practices of compulsive list-making and neoliberal productivity drives. Whose canon of works are we consuming? Each of the 100 books is delivered one word at a time, at the application’s highest setting of 5000 words per minute—a speed at which practitioners of speed-reading claim to be able to read.
The work is presented in connection to Brzeski’s exhibition Infernal Monologue at Kunsthall 3,14. Both exhibitions at Northing and Kunsthall 3,14 play with the limits of language to contest neoliberal conditions, creating acts of refusal to the contemporary machine.
