ARTHEMIST lighthouse 48

Why tie your head to a tree, when no one is looking?

ARTHEMIST lighthouse 48 documents a year of performance actions by Norwegian artist Bjorn Veno, with a foreword by philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller.

Across 54 filmed gestures, still images, and experimental poetry, the book becomes a ritual, an invitation to perceive beyond the surface of art and language.

There is no fear of failure, no guardrails leading to success in these words and images. They fumble their way through darkness, into the uncaring embrace of the unknown, where words are eaten by fish.

Shot and written on the island of Venoya, Lighthouse 48 merges photography, performance, text, and philosophy into a single act of creation. Each page oscillates between documentation and incantation, image and word, presence and absence.

Grounded in Veno's philosophy of Arthemy, art as alchemy, the work challenges the commodification of art and the passive gaze of spectatorship.

It is not a record of art made for display, but a living archive of struggle, perception, and becoming.


Published with support from BKH- produksjonsstipend 2021 awarded by SFKM, Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum.

Book launch February 14th 2026. 


Arthemist Statement 2.6: Why create art that nobody asked for?
By Bjørn Venø
ISBN: 9788269279733 (hardback)
Publisher: Venø Gård KUNST
Copy-editing and proofreading by Cathy Johns

Published: 2026
Format: Hardback
Language: English
Reading time: 1 h
Words: 8200
Pages: 162
Size: 8” x 10”
Images: 63 B&W still images by Bjørn Venø 2023-2025