Black is Light by Claudia Hausfeld and Klara Sofie Ludvigsen

by Erin Honeycutt | Sunnudagur.06.2018 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

Black is Light by Claudia Hausfeld and Klara Sofie Ludvigsen

The exhibition, Black is Light, by Claudia Hausfeld and Klara Sofie Ludvigsen is on view at Harbinger until the 24th of June. In the exhibition, black and white analog photographs are not as they appear on their surface. As one scans the surface of the images, the conflicting meeting place between the proof of the image and the imagination of the observer is constantly revealed. Both slight and blatant manipulations made by the artists disrupt the reception of how one usually absorbs a photograph, demanding a sharpening of the gaze. Such is the magic of painting with light in the darkroom, as well as the suspension of working in with darkroom processes which the artists shared with me in the following interview.

Erin: As I was looking around at the works and noticing how well they work together, the question I really wanted to figure out how to answer was: Whose is whose? I think it is because the photographs work so well together. How would you describe a way to differentiate between your works?

Klara Sofie: I think there are many ways of answering that question. One concrete thing is how we work in the darkroom. I work in the layer with the negative whereas Claudia works on the paper so that is a difference but you can’t really see that. It’s just something we know.

Erin: That is the exact kind of information about the work that I think is so interesting to know because it’s something we would never know, or see.

Claudia: I think you can even say that it is all darkroom images, which is a fundamental ingredient in our work, and that it is done in the darkroom and that it is chemicals and light which made the images.

Klara Sofie: It is important as this process is informing the outcome. Claudia is doing it on the paper like stopping the light from working on the surface whereas I am doing it with the negative by taking new negatives on glass or on transparent paper with different techniques. So I’ve always stopped the light when the negative is on a layer.

Claudia: The enlarger we use in the darkroom functions like a reverse camera. The paper we print on is like the negative in a camera, and the negative itself is like the thing you take a picture of. The higher up and further away the negative is from the paper, the larger the image. And by doing it Klara’s way, by putting a drawing or painting on glass together with the negative, you also enlarge the painting on the surface of the image, so you see these lines that were painted on glass or plastic were enlarged along with the image, whereas mine were printed directly on the images so it is not enlarged. It is more of a photogram, like a direct copy.

Erin: That really gives it a totally different sense. When I look around I feel like they have a totally different depth feeling to them.

Claudia: I was wondering about this one for instance. It is really difficult to tell what is image and what is negative.

Klara Sofie: I think it is lead because this is a negative combined with a positive. What you are looking at, the white part, is a positive, which comes out negative, which means it is a black lead lying on the foreground there as salt storage. That is the light blended into the other images which is a negative coming across as a positive.

Claudia: I just don’t understand this image. You know this thing with photography where you know you are dealing with something that was actually there but you just can’t believe it. Did you cut on the negative?

Klara Sofie: No, when I placed them on top of each other this is what came through because the salt is white and when it is a positive that is where the light shows through and it gave room for the negative to show.

Erin: This is the positive and this is the negative?

Klara Sofie: No, that is just the opposite. It is very easy to get dizzy when it comes to positives and negatives because part of the process is to constantly turn it which is what the title is playing on as well because what is black in the negative stops the light, and becomes light in the photograph.

Claudia: For this image I made a torch with this little nose out of paper, like a funnel. So the light only came out of this tiny hole. I placed the paper with a red filter so it didn’t expose it and then I switched it on the torch and went all over the place with it, making a drawing.

Erin: So you made black with light?

Claudia: Yes, because that is how the photographic paper is burned; it turns black.

Erin: And this is Claudia’s?

Klara Sofie: No, that is mine. But this is a strange one because it is also painted on glass in the same size as the negative and then doubled so it is a painting and a photograph. This is a special version because it is light leaked on the paper which, in a way, relates them even more to Claudia’s because it is not something I usually do.

Claudia: What I like is that it has this randomness in which you can see how light behaves in these stripes.

Klara Sofie: I don’t understand the logic of it. I don’t know how this appeared because it doesn’t really make sense the way it is placed.

Erin: How does it feel to work with something that you don’t always understand the logic of?

Claudia: It is so exciting; I really love it. I guess I work like this because I do something on the paper itself. The thing is, you are in this room and you can have this red light on so you see quite a bit and you take out this white sheet of paper and you place it there and then you put some light on it and when the light turns off the image is still white. It seems like nothing has happened but you know that latently there is an image on that white sheet of paper. Then you take it and you put it in this tray and magically something appears; this moment is such magic every time.

Erin: It still has so much variation at that stage in the process of creating the image you want.

Claudia: Yes, of course. You can take it out earlier and you can switch on the light and change everything up.

Erin: How did you two meet?

Klara Sofie: We were paired together. We had never met before and we were asked to do a collaboration together. First we had an exhibition in a gallery in Bergen in April 2018. That was the first time our works met and we were pleasantly surprised. It was a very funny experience because we saw that they spoke so well together. We were laughing quite a lot.

Erin: Can you tell me more about this one?

Claudia: It is a little bit of an experiment because I wanted to illustrate the whole darkroom process in an abstract way; painting an image in layers. So I took that idea and decided to make shelves, also inspired by Klara who was making these shelves with glass. This sequence of images I made by walking around a hole and every step taking a picture. I wanted to make the hole three-dimensional to keep true to the process. In the darkroom, I placed this tiny piece of paper in the middle also and crumbled it smaller and smaller until it almost disappears at the bottom-most shelf.

Erin: There is a lot of illustration of the photographic process going on in the exhibition.

Claudia: Of course, because it is very process-based and also very playful. Actually, with none of the works was I preconceiving that I was going to make this kind of image or that one. I browse through my negatives until I find something that I’d like to play with.

Klara Sofie: For me, for years I found photography to be quite a stiff medium. It’s very formal because it has so many processes that make it feel very controlled, unlike painting, which is more improvised. I am working to make it more improvisational and playful because I wanted to have more fun, so eventually I just had to give up control. So, this way of working is just a result of this release of control and matching what I’m painting with different negatives and seeing what compositions appear and sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn’t but it does after a while. It’s just a constant process.

Erin: Photography does carry with it this heritage of stiffness.

Claudia: It is actually a theory that I would like to explore a little bit further. I’ve been looking for literature about this digital/analog dichotomy. Photography released painting because, after the inception of photography, paintings didn’t have to concern themselves anymore with the representation of reality and it could sort of fall back on itself and research itself. This was always the thing that photography had to deal with: representation and depiction of what was there. Now it is digital photography that has taken that in all forms like scanners and surveillance cameras. Now that everything is digital photography, analog photography can finally concern itself with itself. It doesn’t need to represent anything anymore. The need to show that ‘this is what existed’ is gone. It feels kind of fresh and free because now it is really painting with light.

Erin: It is being returned to its core, so to speak.

Claudia: It is so funny because it isn’t a painting. It isn’t a pure invention of my hand and brain. It is still real stuff but I can tweak it and play with it.

Erin: The way you are both manipulating the photographs in the darkroom process really disrupts the observer’s ability to ‘scan’ the image. It’s like you are dismantling the whole linear process of one thing leading to another and creating your own world within the photographs – breaking the spell of the photograph. Any final words?

Claudia: I would like to add that it is such a nice feeling knowing that people can work together, yet separately, on a collaboration. We just played on our own and it came together. Now, when I’m working in the darkroom I love knowing there is someone else out there doing the same.

Erin: Thank you Claudia and Sofie.

Erin Honeycut

The exhibition was on view from June 2nd to June 24th as part of a collaboration between Tag Team Studios in Bergen, Norway and Harbinger Project Space in the context of the B-Open Project ‘Norden TIL Bergen.’

Photo Credit:
Featured image: Erin Honeycut. Exhibition photos: Claudia Hausfeld.

Artists websites:
Claudia: claudiahausfeld.com / Klara Sofie: klarasofie.com

A Triangle Dreaming of a Triangle – an Interview with Ignacio Uriarte

by Erin Honeycutt | Fimmtudagur.06.2018 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

A Triangle Dreaming of a Triangle – an Interview with Ignacio Uriarte

In Ignacio Uriarte’s exhibition, Divisions and Reflections, now on view at i8 gallery until August 4th, the black and white drawings create a suite of connective material, like the tissues of the same organic world of shapes. Uriarte is known for his background in business administration which he has carried into his artistic career by using the same tools of the trade – those belonging to the office. However, in this office space, the traditional ways of looking at the use of objects are given a new formula that explodes the mundane aspect of the work to touch on the body-machine relationship where tools are extensions of bodily functions still restricted yet extended. In an interview, the artist spoke about the way narrative is written into signs and symbols in a way in which the signs and symbols can be nostalgic and even dream of themselves.

Erin: Your background in business administration has really been the focus of a lot of the writing I have read about your work. I watched one of your earlier works in which an actor performed the sounds of a typewriter. It really gave these tools an embodied aspect, like a Cronenberg effect. It seems like a similar effect goes into your drawings by making a caricature of the body as a tool.

Ignacio: The typewriter is a writing instrument but it is almost played like a keyboard with the sounds of a percussion instrument. It used to be the soundtrack of the office and was used in movies when you wanted to announce that someone is entering the pressroom or the office. The typewriter just belongs there, but it’s a bit of a pity because the typewriter really inherits that world wherever it goes. I wanted to do homage to the sound qualities of the typewriter without showing a typewriter.

I recorded in a technology museum where they have thousands of typewriters and every couple of years they have a different model, electrical ones or ones with digital memories with each typewriter having a different sound. The actor is basically listening to the original sounds and recreating them with his mouth. The History of the Typewriter Recited by Michael Winslow (2009) is the name of the piece. The work had so many reactions with people from the art world reacting in a certain way, typewriter fetishists reacting in a certain way, and beatboxers reacting in another way. It was so funny to have all these reactions.

Erin: That’s the magic of how a simple thing put into a new context can have a different meaning for so many people. Off the top of my head, Naked Lunch is my first typewriter association.

Ignacio: Yes, a typewriter turned into a living being. I think a lot about Cronenberg [David Cronenberg, the director of the film Naked Lunch based on the novel by William S. Burroughs] in my work in general and the interactions between man and machine. Often, with him, it’s the physical connection of man to a machine.

Erin: There is a really strong connection when you think of office work and this constraint put on the body, as in the typewriter; the act is so physical.

Ignacio: I find with the typewriter that there is another aspect of the way we become digital. For the people who grew up with pre-digital technology, the typewriter has given us quite a lot of help. You have the idea of the function of a paper where you can copy things and take them out again. These physical things were taken from the computer screen.

Throughout the filming, I came up with these very constructed drawings that often take a letter or a sign like in concrete poetry where they take a word or a concept that is a visual image but is also a visual result. So I started moving in that direction of taking a sign and seeing what sign is makes in space. Now, I do a lot of drawings in that manner. Sometimes it becomes way more organic than you would expect from an instrument. I make curvy lines by slowly rotating the paper and it gives you images you wouldn’t expect from a typewriter.

Erin: It really brings together the notions of art and poetry and art and writing. I was thinking a lot of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or workshop of potential literature) movement in the 1960s in France, a group of writers who put these constraints in their writing to make it sort of mechanical, similar to how you work within the constraint of using office supplies. These writers would create a boundary for themselves from which to write so that the whole meaning of what was within these boundaries could be expanded: writing poems using only one vowel, for example.

Ignacio: For me, the use of office material was a way to stay rooted in reality. I tend to go for these images that are rather universal, minimal, or abstract. When you restrict yourself to certain tools, as well as methods, it is not the typical gestural painting of beauty out of intuition, but more about someone adjusting and obeying an everyday life situation.

Erin: It seems that this exhibition is more of an organic geometric world with these kinds of shapes, much more so than your previous works.

Ignacio: It is very new for me to move into the shape to begin with. This is the second show in which I’m influenced by geometry. You can see the influence of these Swiss designers, like Max Bill. First of all, it is a very reduced language; Bauhaus didn’t invent it. The Catholic Church began it. We’ve been doing this for a long time – when you want to find a universal symbol you tend to reduce it. I remember being taught in a Montessori Kindergarten in which kids are taught to read with symbols, so the verb is a red circle, as it is a movement that’s jumping around, and the article is a triangle, as it is set in place. In a way, I’m using what the Bauhaus educational system used. It’s appealing because I’m still bringing the empty container in which everyone can bring his or her own whatever-is-in-their-mind. It is a very playful way to explain the world and there is some optimism. I think the show even looks a little bit nostalgic of the 1960s.

This one, in particular, Ten Documents (2018), with the op-art effect may remind you of when people were using drugs in the 1960s, like the doors of perception. The work is actually about the size of the DIN system. In Europe, the sizes are designed by German engineers in which DA 0 is exactly one square meter and if you divide it by half, which is half the space, then it is DA 1, DA 2, DA 3, and so on and if you turn it around it is exactly the same orientation. There is a lot of method involved. It was invented for the First World War and for a really big war you had a lot of office administration. So for this square, if you calculate it, you can easily think that if you need this many pieces of paper, you know you will need this many pieces. Many things were invented for war purposes that had a very positive use in society and they usually put a lot of research into it. The thing is, you don’t think of war as being in the office. So, although the work has this op-art effect depending on the perspective, I call it Ten Documents to bring it back to reality.

And with this one, Eight Circles Forming a Square (2018), it is rectangular and I tried to make a square with eight circles by playing with halves. The end result is these overlays, typical things you use to explore shapes.

The whole show was made with the same pen. There is something about transparency and overlap in Four Rotating Squares (2018), the way the more you overlap the darker you get. There is a kind of summing up of surfaces in the way that this is a circle trying to become a square and this is four squares becoming a circle. It is a very simple gesture in which you have these shapes and then you have this effect. It is so simple and universal, this shape; it is like a sun freeing the shape of the sun. There is always a bit of transformation happening – a triangle dreaming of a triangle.

Erin: Creating triangles with triangles sounds like a format for concrete poetry. It almost seems like a formula in which you can only use the thing you are creating to create the thing you are creating, almost like a mise en abyme event.

Ignacio: This triangle also relates to the square. It’s very constructed. That’s why, to me, the exhibition space is a choreographed space. They are part of the same fabric – a suite of works that talk to each other.

Erin: Has anyone commented on the overt hairiness of these strokes?

Ignacio: In other pieces, people say they look like sweaters. One idea with the strokes is their relation to chance more than to scribbling. It has this very chaotic, organic, physical, almost biological feel to them. The making of these strokes is so anthropomorphic, as well. The repetition and the natural movement reflect the size and radius of your wrist. This work is called Chiasmus (2018), like the narrative structure used in literature. It could be representative of this narrative structure in which the second part is mirrored against the first part but with a role reversal.

In these works (Two Quarters, Four Eights, and Eight Sixteenths (2018)) you can see this Cronenbergian worm that is being divided. The space each shape needs is compacted. Because I left the same procedure for each one, the paper is what gives it shape, but it is almost like the space has to give it shape. I am not trying to distract from it. You’re getting into the consequences of a system that works very well on the viewer and the reader and then suddenly your personal story becomes extremely universal of that consequence. The question in any art form is: What do you want? Do you want an artwork or do you want to live in an artwork? Do you want to distract or, through it, understand reality better or do you want to come to a realisation of something?

Erin: With these questions in mind we thank Ignacio.

Erin Honeycut

Photo credit: Featured image by Marcel Schwickerath. Images of works: Vigfús Birgisson.

Beyond Human Impulses goes to Greece

by Erin Honeycutt | Sunnudagur.04.2018 | artzine in english

Beyond Human Impulses goes to Greece

The performance arts festival, Beyond Human Impulses, began at Mengi in Reykjavik on February 2^nd, 2016 as a monthly performance series occurring on the first Monday of the month. Between its inaugural performance and July 2017, 75 performances were realized. The festival was initiated by five female Icelandic artists: Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir, Ingibjörg Magnadóttir, Eva Ísleifsdóttir, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, and Katrín Inga Hjördísar Jónsdóttir, who all share equally the role of curator while also performing in the festival themselves.

Before Beyond Human Impulses, a disparate group of artists established Leikhús Listamanna, a platform for performance artists in Reykjavik that began in 2003 and lasted on and off for the next decade. Other than that, there have been no other platforms of this kind devoted to performance.

When Eva Ísleifsdóttir opened A-DASH, an exhibition space and art residency in Athens, Greece in 2017, it became an obvious place for the next incarnation of the festival. On the weekend of April 12th-14th, Beyond Human Impulses held its first festival in an old paper warehouse in the commercial district of Athens along with the help of Athens Intersection, Athens Trigono, and CheapArt, an organization that secures short-term art venues in empty buildings in Athens.

The festival opened on a Friday night with the performance Apogee or Nobody by Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir. A fitting inaugural piece, the robotic vacuum that roamed the floors of the old warehouse seemed to bring awareness to the little corners and crevices of the decaying building, showing the viewers a new point of reference for vision that would set the tone for the rest of the festival. The saucer-shaped vacuum with its internal whirring motor spun in circles and sensed the space´s corners, the columns that stood under the balcony, and the feet of viewers who followed its movements patiently as though being sniffed by a wild animal. As the robotic vacuum explored the space, it sang a melancholic song in acapella through a speaker placed on top of it, echoing throughout the building.

Humming of Venus by Berglind Águstsdóttir.

The Storm is Coming by Maria Nikiforaki.

Reflex by Yiannis Pappas.

Ego Friendly Love by Katrín Inga Hjördísar – Jonsdóttir.

Radar LXXVII by Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir.

B – Be – Bee – By – Bí – Bý – by Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir.

Braid Choir – Solidarity by Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir.

Apogee or Nobody by Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir.

Exiting… by Eva Ísleifsdóttir.

Reality in other words by Rakel McMahon.

Homo Bulla Est by Erin Honeycutt.

With the space now mapped by these beyond human senses, the evening could begin in earnest. “Thank you for believing in the moment,” Eva Ísleifsdóttir announced on the opening night. Performance thrives in the moment, the fleeting image or sound or combined effect, the unique audience, the circumstantial arrangements of the space, the day, month, era – all a moment (that can’t be purchased, although for sale throughout the weekend were posters with quotes from each of the 18 participating artists.) The passing moment that is so circumstantial in performance art, although in some instances can be restructured in similar surroundings and set-ups, are inevitably tragic, in a way, as it can never be documented for posterity in its true form.

The decaying paper warehouse on the cobbled, winding street called Chrisospiliotissis set the stage perfectly for these fleeting moments to appear and then dissolve. The space was characterized by its high ceilings and ornate decoration encircling the lighting fixtures in a state of decay, the tall, obscured windows with iron bars crossing them, the dust that covered every surface, and the wooden staircase that was a little too noisy to imagine lasting many more events like this one. Even the part of the ceiling that came crashing down overnight in a crumble of pieces on Saturday was a performance on the part of the building, a reaction from the space itself.

What better location for three evenings of performances that all seemed to relay a comment on the tragedies taking place in the world outside and the inner catharsis that may seem personal, but speaks to those events as well. Since we are in the realm of performance art, however, we do not have to serve the proper function of tragedy, regardless of how eloquent our poetry or how fine our choreography because this was Beyond Human Impulses, which became a running question throughout the weekend. What exists beyond human impulses?

We decided it was, more or less, when we decided to go beyond the human impulses of anxiety and worry to embrace an impulse that is co-creative, empathetic to the world at large, and creating a container in which to perform and enact rituals that transform the performer and include the audience in the transformation. Consider Katrín Inga Hjördísar Jónsdóttir’s Sunday performance Ego Friendly Love: a ritual in the nude in which she placed flowerpots and triangular mirrors around the room with audience members involved in the reflections.

On Friday evening, Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir enacted Braid Choir – Solidarity, a piece that has been performed before in different compositions of choir members and lyrics. With a gathering of long-haired women standing outward in a circle, Gunnhildur stood in the middle braiding the hair in a single circular plait while the choir spoke and sang sometimes in unison and sometimes as lone voices. The piece was dedicated to the two young Greek soldiers who were taken into custody in March 2018 for allegedly entering a Turkish military zone on suspicion of attempted espionage and who still remain in custody.

However, in Dionysian fashion, tragedy is followed by dancing and rapture – this was brought in full aesthetic qualities of Beauty and Significant Form in a performance by Berglind Águstsdóttir titled Humming of Venus who opened with the recorded sounds of the planet Venus borrowed from NASA. In her flowering kimono, bubble-blower, tinseled rotating fan and bright red lips, she became a new kind of demigod, singing along to a track overlapping Indian ragas with the duet ‘Islands in the Sun.’

Imitation, Aristotle argued, is a natural human impulse that humans enjoy and is our greatest learning mechanism. In this way, he defended tragedies, stating that they could appeal to the mind, the emotions, and the senses, and if confronted in a healthy manner, bring about a cleansing emotional catharsis, which is definitely the experience of a performance by Berglind – propulsion by catharsis.

Saturday opened with Eva Ísleifsdóttir’s Exiting…, an embodiment of the human inability to escape from the signs and symbols that surround us. Eva lay beneath the humongous exit sign, surrendered to the external meaning it purported to portray. Following Eva’s contemplation under this very physical and heavy sign under which she literally lay crushed on the pavement was a performance by the author that also dealt with our connection to universal signs and the meaning we make from them. In a baroque hair-do of the same era in which the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin lived when he wrote in Athens in the early 18^th century, whose writings were quoted throughout the performance, a series of planetary aspects of the day were read.

Mars trine Pluto, for example, was applied a meaning based on observations taken from walking around the city in the few days leading up to the festival. Does the brimming strawberry cart on the square imitate Venusian effects? Is that couple fighting by the fountain an imitation projected in our earthly reality of Uranus’ interaction with the moon today? While there are thousands of opinions by astrologers to be found especially on the internet, the real answer is not as important as the place the question takes us, which is back to the mythic imagination, a reminder that our 40,000-year-old brain has not changed since the time when we couldn’t tell the difference between mythic reality and reality – they were both an equal reality, just a moment in time.

Following are names of the artists that participated with links to artists websites:

Amalia Charikiopoulou, Aristeidis Lappas, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Berglind Águstsdóttir, Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir, David Kirshoff, Erin Honeycutt, Eva Giannakopoulou, Eva Ísleifsdóttir, Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir, Ingibjörg Magnadóttir, Katrín Inga Hjördísar Jónsdóttir, Maria Nikiforaki, Ragnheiður Sigurðardóttir Bjarnason, Rakel McMahon, Snorri Páll, Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir og Yiannis Pappas.

Erin Honeycutt

All photos courtesy of Georgios Papadopoulos.

Websites:
Beyond human impulses
A-DASH

The Scale of It All

by Erin Honeycutt | Miðvikudagur.02.2018 | artzine in english

The Scale of It All

From screensaver screenshots taken in 2007 by Katrín Agnes Klar to pen plotter drawings on engravings from Baroque 1730 publications by Lukas Kindermann in 2018, Distant Matter, now on view at The Living Art Museum, takes that which is remote and brings it under close inspection.

The artists’ first exhibition together on this scale since meeting at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design/ZKM ten years ago is vast in its breadth of subject matter and material discourse. It is seemingly difficult to break into, as though your body were being asked to negotiate between the vast scales and ratios having a dialogue within the space. Am I infinitely small or infinitely large? Does that meteorite (1:1, 2016, Lukas Kindermann), 3D printed based on data gathered from NASA and lying on the floor, exist just as much in this exhibition as it does on Mars? Does a 3D print make the object a hyper-real version of itself, etched layer by layer out of silica sand and epoxy resin? Am I the distant matter at hand or does that moniker belong to these objects in quiet conversation?

The conversation seemingly concerns the history of tools used in measuring the great distances between things such as the entire sky as in Lukas’ Atlas, 2018, in which an original copy of a photographic atlas stellarium by Hans Vehenberg is placed on a wooden platform. The viewer looks down into an inverted sky graphed into measurable squares which are scattered with both the originals of fossils, meteorites and roman shards as well as 3D printed carbon-silica sand and PLA replications. The conversation also concerns the small distances between things, as in the domestic and the everyday, as in the wallpapering table on which Katrín’s gradients of color are UV printed that could just as well be in your living room.

When placed side by side, these two vast scales at work allow the exhibition space to breathe – both in long inhalations and in short gasps – the body’s sense of scale likewise tries to keep up while the distant and the conjunct play in reciprocal motions, back and forth (like the movement of pen plotters, 3D printer arms, and the light beam from an image scanner creating a digital version of what once was held in your hands.)

The quote about quantum physics that is all too easily misunderstood in layman’s terms comes to mind while walking around the space. It goes something like this: you are an observer located at a single point in space-time, an event. The singularity principle also comes to mind, something about how equations that diverge towards infinity are afterward completely unknown to us.

The exhibition can take you through a crash course in these ideas but leave you feeling very human in the end, returned to the land, so to speak, like the meteorite itself brought you back, even if as a 3D print – which will have to do, since that appears to be the direction of things as 3D printing technology infiltrates our biology, building prosthetics and completely collapsing the staggering Old World equation of measuring costs in material, time, and energy on a human scale. The exhibition can take you to these places, yet leave you, rather singularly, with a body of resources and tools to extend the senses into vast distances to be mapped, like tossing a rock into a well and listening to the echo to get an idea of the depth and fullness.

In conversation with Katrín, I am told that she and Lukas have always had a conceptual approach:

“The art movements of the 1960s and early ‘70s like Land Art and Minimal Art have been an influence on both of our work, just as much as a Pop point of view. Perhaps symptomatic of the times we are in, I would say young artists have a wide-ranging frame of reference. Essential for both of us, though, is the fundamental concern in creating good images. Creating an image has such a universal meaning and is so deep in global history, but everyone connects to it at the same time.”

While seemingly a simple and straightforward concern, in the making of good images one can look at many overlapping cultural and scientific histories to see the depth at which one can travel in search for how to go about this activity. What makes it so difficult? Are there too many demands on the image in the 21^st century or not enough? Consider: Is it aesthetically pleasing, in good resolution, conducive to the surroundings, making the best use of the technology that made it? “I grew up with an Icelandic art history background so the strong tradition of the influence of the landscape on the viewer has always been present. In all of my works,” Katrín says, “ I am imitating nature.” Perhaps that is the only real standard by which to judge a good image.

Katrín has worked before with the poster medium, one of many everyday objects she often includes in her work. On one whole wall of the exhibition space, a grid of posters called Blue Gradient (taken from airplane), 2018, is wallpapered to site-specific dimensions. The photo, indeed taken from the window of an airplane, shows a gradient stretching from dark blue sky to white horizon line. “Vice versa to the imitation of nature with computer-based tools,” Katrín says, “I simulate digital effects with material captured in nature, with photographs of the sky.” The photo is turned sideways so that the white horizon lines now touch other white horizon lines and are transformed into a wall of roving light photo scanners, giving the sensation that the whole room is in the process of being copied, digitized, turned into pixels, tossed into outer space and returned to something we can understand here in this room, like an everyday affair (like the cloud our phones and computers send data to, an everyday reality, so abstract yet mundane at this point.)

Works with UV printing, very common in advertising, are together with other techniques adapted from that field, definitely part of her ‘everyday’ oeuvre. However, unlike in advertisement, her images are based on a conceptual use of color. Boundary Colors (2015) is based on the color theories of Goethe who observed colors on the borders of darkness, which Katrín tells me, is, of course, sunrise and sunset. The piece in question is a lenticular image, meaning it changes depending on the angle from which it is viewed, displaying an almost time-lapse painting display of colors corresponding to those edges of darkness.

“A lot of these works are process-based, and because of the nature of the long-distance atmosphere, many of the final curatorial decisions were made on site,” added curator, Becky Forsythe. “There was this flexibility, from beginning to end, which is the way I like to approach exhibition making.” This open flexibility practically bleeds into the horizon, making distant matter an object on the table, observable from an airplane window or through your mobile phone, stretching across vast distances that could also be seen as quite minuscule. Formal elements connect the space through color gradients, scales, and patterns, like the structural layers creating a 3D print which build upon the other, making the intangible tangible. The space breathes, despite the large number of works in the room; perhaps it is the abundance of gradients of colors, allowing everything to exist on its own scale.

Erin Honeycutt

Distant Matter at The Living Art Museum by Katrín Agnes Klar and Lukas Kindermann. Curated by Becky Forsythe

Exhibition duration: 19.01.18 – 11.03.18

Photos: Vigfús Birgisson

Anna Julia’s Serenade

by Erin Honeycutt | Þriðjudagur.10.2017 | artzine in english, Uncategorized, Viðtöl

Anna Julia’s Serenade

Erindi / Serenade is on exhibit at Hafnarborg Centre of Culture and Fine Art until October 22^nd. In the exhibition by Anna Júlía Friðbjörnsdóttir, various elements are taken from sociology, astronomy, poetry, and ecology, into an acknowledgment of the biggest crisis´ currently facing the world. Like a natural scientist who uses poetry to interpret her findings, Anna Júlía looks at ways of addressing climate change and human migration that recognizes human vision. In the following interview, Anna Júlía and I discuss the exhibition and her concern with the synthesization of meaning- from the 19th-century Romantic movement to biometric identity management systems.

Erin: The first perception of the exhibition for me was the impression of there being many layers involved: the art-song lieder tradition, the Romantic notions, the migration of the Passerine species to Iceland, references to human migration and the weather. Can you tell me more about how all of these are related?

Anna Júlía: The starting point was the birds. I had seen in the news years ago these announcements about Vagrant birds arriving in Iceland. It was in 2005 that I first started paying attention to it and I always wanted to look further into the different species. I came across the Singers, as they are called in Icelandic, and found them interesting not least because they are predominantly a European and Asian species associated with the Old World that migrate from Africa and other southern destinations. Then I looked at their distribution patterns and it struck me because it looked like maps of human migration into Europe. I had been thinking a lot of Europe, and how we, as a whole, are tackling the challenges of migration today.

So I decided to narrow this down to the Old World Warblers because of this pattern and how they come to Iceland in particular. I thought there was a correlation between the birds and the influences and culture that originate from this Eastern direction that Western societies are based on but we think we are independent of it somehow. I thought it was an interesting way to look at one species and look into smaller examples of our ecosystem and how it’s changing – a macro view. It just represents a much bigger picture of something that is in flux and seems to be happening very fast. So there are social and political issues that factor into my interest in this, but on the other hand, there is also the climate change issue and you can’t really separate the two. Of course, that is only part of the story about how all these things are related.

The other thing I should say regarding the birds is that it is not just the changing of these fundamental systems, but also the systems of taxonomy we created in the 18^th century- these man-made systems that we have stuck to and maybe are just now realizing are fixed choices that aren´t necessarily truths that we have to hold onto. The Warbler species are very old, dating back around 16 million years. Linnaeus classified many of them and some were described in his 1758 Systema Naturae but in recent years these birds have been the source of much taxonomic confusion and rearrangements within the taxonomy. This is because of new technologies and genetic research. This case is like a little snapshot of this kind of changing worldview.

Erin: It reminds me of something I was just reading in preparation for our discussion from the Finnish cultural theorist, Jussi Parikka, who writes about how recent technological networks are modeled from systems in ecology and especially migration patterns, herds, and swarms. I saw a connection between his ideas and some of the points you were touching on in your exhibition.

Anna Júlía: It also shows us how nature is much more complex than we tend to realize and that these very complex patterns are there and that we can look into for inspiration. I like Parikka´s comment: „It’s the environment which is smart and teaches the artificial system.“ Although I am looking at natural patterns they are not necessarily the super-developed kind such as swarms but the accidental as well.

Erin: Yes, I think it’s this anthropocentric point of view of nature that has simplified things, but that is not the case.

Anna Júlía: It brings into question where the human comes into it, the co-creative factor of the human as narrator.

Erin: In some ways, the Romantic Movement in art, literature, and music really was inclusive to this connection between humans and the environment on all levels. Do you think there is a clue to how we handle the huge upheaval of human migration and climate change in the arts, and specifically how we see connections between the humanities and the natural sciences? Do you think this movement can give us a clue as to how to navigate all these changes?

Anna Júlía: I think definitely there is a connection. The Romantics were also coming out of a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, so that is maybe what is parallel with today- these similar issues in a different context. In my work, of course, I am using it as a metaphor. In relation to the exhibition, the Romantic sentiment is a total contrast to the scientific and the kind of systems used in science. I brought in these Romantic lieder songs as a contrast to the scientific thought. The songs also give the exhibition a narrative which would otherwise have been an installation consisting of a few parts. I broke it up into pieces and attached each one to a romantic song and in that way, gave it some narrative. Also, the poems bring in a human voice and in that relation, the Romanticism speaks of this need for freedom- a basic human need.

And in the context of the work, the poems put them in context with the night as the spatial and temporal dimensions of human experience. The poets were allowing themselves to focus on feelings rather than the hard-core rhetoric of Rationalism. I think that is also what we need now and I think there is a demand for emotional intelligence.

Erin: Your exhibition also holds an allusion to the era when Europeans were creating categorizations for the natural world and putting it into systems for our analysis- maybe this goes back to what we talked about earlier in trying to find clues to our current situation by creating a new model of thinking about nature and culture, human and non-human? As much as rationalism has carried Western civilization forward, it also needs to be paired with equal doses of empathy and understanding, which was obviously the Romantic reaction this period’s mechanical focus.

I think you capture that really well.

Anna Júlía: That’s definitely what I had in mind- a call out for more empathy. This rationalization, of course, applies to the human classification going on now. I found similarities between the taxonomic classification and the human cataloging, especially in the problem that Europe is trying to address. We have created these laws in the last century when the UN was formed- human rights laws and laws pertaining to refugees. We need to adhere to the basic beautiful idea of the laws but they are being stretched, borders have moved away from the actual physical borders not in a way of inclusion but exclusion. Once a person trying to enter illegally is caught, he or she is registered and cataloged almost like a taxon in a way that people in the western world would never agree with being treated. These databases are very inhuman.

Erin: What about some of the more material aspects of the exhibition – can you comment on this continuing theme of fragility and ephemerally in the materials being used?

Anna Júlía: Yes, the choice of materials is deliberate, of course. The xenon gas and the fragile paper reflect the ephemeral nature of the subject matter as well and how these ideas are a bit afloat. Because we were talking about the wind and birds being carried by the Eastern wind, I wanted to choose materials that were reflecting this ephemerality. I am interested in primary elements and in the transformation of elements be it in technology or nature. I chose these as basics- the carbon and xenon. Of course, I’m playing with the etymology of the words as well. Xenon comes from the Greek word for stranger and carbon is a word that is somehow intrinsic to the discussion of climate change. But then the carbon paper is itself a material of fragility and lightness and also holds this possibility within it because it’s indeed a tool, something to make a copy with. So these are the material factors but to me it represents bureaucracy. I used the carbon paper as well to make the drawing of trees at the far wall opposite of the window.

Erin: Can you tell me more about this drawing, Mondacht / Moonlit Night?

Anna Júlía: The tree in the drawing represents the home for the birds because they live in trees and are insect eaters – but it can also be a home or a shelter generally. But again, it’s also part of the language of the Romantic night, dark and the North, trees, and forests being part of that. Then again it’s just a copy, so there is a kind of dreamy feeling about it. Maybe it’s just a kind of faint memory or a vision. The title and the location within the space also have significance in relation to ´reading´ of the works.

As I mentioned earlier the lieder songs lend the exhibition a narrative. It has a beginning and an end and you can read the exhibition in this order with Ständchen / Serenade being the first piece. I don´t see the work being illustrations of the poems but they get an added context and a certain tone. You could say that each piece is twofold – the physical, straight work and the emotional connotation of each poem, which is almost, like a sub-theme. For instance, Ständchen / Serenade is a positive, light song and has this inviting or luring factor at the same time as setting a melancholic tone.

My songs beckon softly
through the night to you;
below in the quiet grove,
Come to me, beloved!
The rustle of slender leaf tips
whispers in the moonlight;
Do not fear the evil spying
of the betrayer, my dear.
Do you hear the nightingales call?
Ah, they beckon to you,
With the sweet sound of their singing
they beckon to you for me.
They understand the heart’s longing,
know the pain of love,
They calm each tender heart
with their silver tones.
Let them also stir within your breast,
beloved, hear me!
Trembling I wait for you,
Come, please me!

(Ständchen / Serenade, D. 957, Schubert, 1828, poem by Ludwig Rellstab)

En Dröm / A Dream, by Grieg, also has something positive and hopeful about it. The piece, two adjacent barometers, has to do with the measurement of the world which isn´t accurate and juxtaposes two very different things – a scientific measuring tool and the idea of the dream, which is the only connection to the poem.

Then, To Evening / Illalle, which is the carbon paper sheet with the star constellation mapped into it, is the point when you enter the night with its dreams and sense of refuge.

Come gentle evening, come in starlit splendour,
your fragrant hair so soft and darkly gleaming!
Oh, let me feel it round my forehead streaming!
Let me be wrapped in silence, warm and tender!
Across your bridge of magic, smooth and slender,
my soul would travel towards a land of dreaming,
no longer burdened, sad, or heavy seeming,
the cares of life I’d willingly surrender!
The light itself whose bonds you daily sever,
would flee, exhausted, seeking out those places
where your soft hand all toil and strain erases.
And, weary of life’s clamour and endeavour,
I, too, have greatly yearned for your embraces.
Oh, quiet evening, let me rest forever!

(Illalle / To Evening, Op. 17, Sibelius, 1898, poem by Aukusti Valdemar Forsman)

Mondnacht / Moonlit Night is such a beautiful poem and the song a perfect calm. I get the feeling it pauses time, you´re kind of poised in the quiet moonlit night.

It was as if the heavens
Had silently kissed the earth,
So that in a shower of blossoms
She must only dream of him.

The breeze wafted through the fields,
The ears of corn waved gently,
The forests rustled faintly,
So sparkling clear was the night.

And my soul stretched
its wings out far,
Flew through the hushed lands,
as if it were flying home.

(Mondnacht / Moonlit Night, Op. 39, Schumann, 1840, poem by Joseph Eichendorff)

And the last piece, Après un rêve / After the Dream, which is the bird skins in the vitrine with the Xenon light above. The poem has a tiny glimmer of hope that is never realized. One is brought back to reality again and it’s the end of the dream. We don’t know if the birds are sleeping, or in a coma, or dead.

Drowsing spellbound with the vision of you
I dreamt of happiness, burning mirage,
Your eyes were gentler, your voice was pure and sonorous
You shone like the dawn-lit sky
You called me and I left the earth
To flee with you toward the light
For us the heavens opened up their clouds
To reveal unknown splendour, glimpses of divine light…
Alas, alas, sad awakening from these dreams
I call out to you, oh night, give me back your lies
Come back, come back, radiant one
Come back mysterious night.

(Après un rêve, Gabriel Fauré, 1878, lyrics by Romain Bussine)

Erin: What about this use of carbon blue which flows through each piece and the inversion of the natural colors to these ultramarine hues in the bird portraits in Ständchen / Serenade?

Anna Júlía: It came about for a few reasons. Aesthetically, I just thought it was very interesting how the feathers almost look like they’ve been inked in, but it’s also a way to distance myself from the scientific approach, as a filter to get away from that. But then it also has something to do with the night because they are all spotted and photographed in the daytime. It is a reversal both of the colors and the original daylight photo could be a night scene. So there were practical and conceptual reasons and it all came together in this fusion. I just like the colors. It was also a bit of a chance finding because the reversed images have the same blue tone as the carbon paper. The blue drawing on the wall is just made directly from the carbon paper.

Erin: Haven’t you made allusions before to how colors were brought to Europe from the East, in your exhibition at Harbinger last year, for example?

Anna Júlía: Yes, I had previously used the symbolism and history of colors. In the exhibition you are referring to it was Tyrian-purple that originated from Phoenicia and was a symbol of wealth. In Serenade the color is ultramarine blue. The name comes from the Latin ultramarinus, literally „beyond the sea“ because it was imported from Asia by sea. It was imported to Europe from Afghanistan in 14th and 15th centuries.

We connote it to the Far East as well, to China. There is also something about it in that it is not a color in Icelandic nature that you can find naturally. Blue was always a very exotic color in Iceland because you could not get it naturally from nature so it became a sign of someone with wealth who had been traveling abroad. At the same time, blue is also our national flag color so there are many associations. Xenon is also blue when charged through electricity. Also with Xenon being used in searchlights, it is enlightening, in a way, bringing something to light. Yes, so the blue color is there for many reasons but not least because of references to ink and bureaucracy.

Erin: There is also a thread of navigation in the exhibition, of the notion of finding ones’ way in the dark or through difficulties.

Anna Júlía: The theme of finding ones’ way is important especially with the star map and the way the birds navigate. It’s not just those finding their way to a better life, but also us as Europeans, and every human really, in navigating the best way to face these challenges.

Erin: There are so many endless correlations in the exhibition that it really becomes a constellation of sorts. Everything is connected on some level of meaning to everything else, micro and macro – the transformation of centuries of thought as well as the lifespan of a single bird.

artzine would like to thank Anna Júlía for the interview.

Erin Honeycutt

Installation photos: Vigfús Birgisson. Portrett: Helga Óskarsdóttir

For more information about Anna Júlía’s work, visit her website: www.annajuliaf.com

Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/user/1189549579/playlist/7szowWHtdm3DRXUUWb0D8x

« Older Entries

Next Entries »