What Do You Hear When You Eat Chocolate

by Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar | Föstudagur.03.2017 | artzine in english

What Do You Hear When You Eat Chocolate

„Hot chocolate will leave the necessary stains for images to turn into visions and conversation. If the Cacao Allows it***“

„This Rabbit Looks to the Left“ is a performance piece by Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla that has taken place between 2014 and 2016. The performance is centred around the reading of chocolate, which like tea or coffee, leaves traces inside a cup that can be deciphered for clues about the future. For each reading, the participants of the performances have been invited to take a sip of the chocolate, so that their futures may be implicated in the reading. Each subject drinks from the cup, which is moved counter clockwise in 7 circles. The cup is then turned upside down to dry.

Now to read a cup of chocolate is a gesture that informs at least two conceptual movements: on the one hand it is a way to reinstate the original ritual function associated with the history of chocolate. On the other hand, it is also a nod to the cult-like trends of New Age self-improvement associated with modern-day consumer culture. As its ideological construct is to support any form of magical thinking the consumer may feel compelled to act, fortune telling is therefore another layer of product fetishism that may be associated with commodities such as chocolate.

In Kunstverein Amsterdam, Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla give a short introduction about the history of chocolate before the ritual of deduction begins: its origins as ritual paraphernalia within the religious and economic structure of the Aztecs. And then its travels to Europe, where alienated from any context other than bourgeois comforts and daily impulses, chocolate has become one star within a constellation of modern-day consumer habits. Forming a mild addiction, the consumption of chocolate in Europe is accompanied by the sporadic necessity of restocking supplies from sources of a different climate. From a psychological point of view, the origins of these commodities is untraceable, as there seems to be no tangible way to establish a relation between cause and effect when it comes to consumption and the extraction of resources.

However at the beginning of the performance, Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla have brought a representative of chocolate. The physical presence of the pod is a gesture that presents us with the material proof of the chocolate’s origins as plant. Moreover, as a performative gesture it evokes a metaphor about the dialectical tension that exists towards the subject of the reading. In the logic of consumer culture, it is the consumer who is the subject buying knowledge about the future. But the gesture to bring the pod may indicate that the real subject of the reading may be the chocolate itself.

What this game of divination now comes to imply, is the paradox of authority when attempting to speak on behalf of things that do not have voices. In the case of chocolate, the object had been silent because it is inanimate, but this is a process that can be understood as a continuation of earlier work that attempts to speak for living things. In their first collaboration of „What Do You Hear When You Eat Chocolate“ (2014) Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla have been interviewing the cocao plant. Asking about the life of its life, its origins, history and travels. The plant moves and the artists translate its movements into annunciations of the human voice. It is a game of suspended disbelief wherein we listen to the plant talking. As the plant shakes, it claims to be proletariat. It’s a hard-working plant.

Which in turn seems to be a natural continuation of what each of the artists in the duo had been doing separately: Luisa Ungar in „Guided Zoo Visit“ (2013) had created the context of a guided tour as a context by which to talk about the illegal trade of animals and its relationship with the trafficking of drugs and art. This is a process of investigation that would evolve into „Clapping Backwards“ (2015) where when asking an animal behaviour professor about the details of her profession, the artists seems to slip almost accidentally into the role of animal. Meanwhile, Milena Bonilla had dealt with human / animal relations in „The Destruction of One Someone“ (2011) in a collaboration with Pedro Gomez Egaña to perform literary texts that describe hunting scenes. As well as within „A Report to an Academy“ (2010-2012) – an installation consisting of a pair of rotating plants, music from wildlife documentaries, and dialogue from Hollywood movies that includes scenes of a trained monkey giving a lecture to scientists.

What these works have in common is how they exhibit the formal qualities of an investigation towards the structural violence that exists in the act of interpretation. As each gesture to speak for the other will evoke the same power dynamics that had silenced the subject in the first place, perhaps recycling it. Then these works do not resolve the tension of authority when presuming to know what the other is thinking. Instead they disclose the dynamic embedded in the gesture. Mirroring the slapstick humour of colonizing persona and the condescending nature of his flamboyant self-satisfaction.

In trying to understand what the chocolate is trying to say, divination follows as a logical conclusion in the movement that has taken place between interpretation and translation. This gesture to include the divination technique of reading chocolate, evokes a complex irony within the context of a performative art piece: it implies and then dispels the consumerist logic of New Age culture by pointing towards the commodity’s autonomy as a subject of divination. The act of ritualized group participation also implies an aesthetic nod to the conceptual purity of the 60s and the weight of rational deduction that comes with it. Meanwhile the inclusion a pre-Enlightenment technologies such as divination forms a sculpted transgression. One that may have been designed to evade the weight of authority implied within traditions of Enlightenment thought.

Seen strictly from an art historical perspective, the recuperation of pre-Enlightenment logic may imply the stylistic presuppositions of late 20th century postmodernism in its reaction against the rest of the century. Yet it would be a mistake to see this act of inclusion of pre-modern technology such as divination as merely reactionary. It is rather part of a wider trend within the cultural zeitgeist that has trickled into contemporary art production of recent years. This is the tendency to reflect a world of hyperconnectivity and the multiple contradiction of perception inherent to the 21st century. It is where sources promise merely degrees of credibility, and algorithms have ordered information in hierarchies of relevance, corresponding to money spent to curate its ranking. Which is why the act of divination has becomes a relevant description for the processes by which the modern mind attempts to decipher the information on offer. Its blend of intuition and half-truths corresponds almost poetically with the breakdown of analytical thought within the information structures of the modern age.

But there are other factors at play in the decision to include pre-Enlightenment technologies of thought. As the chocolate plant herself point out, it had been a commodity within a system exploitation designed to enrich Europe through territorial conquest in South America, which combined with forced labour extracted from Africa, created the structural condition by which the cognitive achievements of the Enlightenment could be subsidized. In addition to exploitation embedded in international trade relations, the chocolate plant may also point out that even on a local level, there exists a class relation between manual labour and intellectual labour. The fact that someone, such as the chocolate plant, had carried out manual labour, is what had allowed another class to pursuit cognitive labour. A body unspoiled by the labour of the earth, may be prone to come up with ephemeral and theoretical systems of thought. To evade Enlightenment logic, is therefore also to avoid not only the structural component of exploitation to which it is aligned, but also the dichotomy of body and mind implied by the division of labour on which capitalist exploitation had been founded.

In the basement one of the building within the 44th National Salon of Artists in Pereira (CO), a group gathers in something like a conference room. It is a room with a very big oval table around which the participants sit. There is another row of seats for those who are passive observers. By participants, what is implied is the activity of having taken a sip of the chocolate and thereby to infuse the liquid with the prophetic potential of each person that forms the circle. The other thing that participants can do is to add their own interpretation about the meaning of stains left in the bottom of a cup of chocolate. It is the setting for a situation in which a group draws together towards a single point of attention. To the extent that it is a space for a formal question, it is a return to ritual. Expectation abound.

Specifically, in using chocolate to read the future at this particular moment in Colombia, the upcoming peace treaty would inevitably be up for discussion. The vote to establish popular support for the proposed treaty had been on everybody’s mind. It is a moment of suspense, like that of a coin being flipped into the air. The coin turns around its axis for a while before dropping down. And it turns out that the year of Brexit and of Trump, is also the year that gave a ‘no’ in the vote for the Colombian peace treaty. This moment that had been defined by a clash between post-truth and a deficit in democracy, was also defined by the weakness of modern-day future-telling devices. Like any other form of prophesy, a poll executed before an election will effect the results.

So there is a special kind of formal irony that happens in the reading of the chocolate when participants volunteer their opinion. It invokes a frustration verging on the comical, when competing to have any particular interpretation, about the meaning of random patterns, taken into account. It reflects the fact that in the 21th century opinions are always being extracted; there are endless possibilities for participation. But no one asks what the participant thinks without having an ulterior motive. So the contemporary subject is naive to think that their opinion could hold more sway than the necessity of a spectacle to be successfully concluded. Because actually, the participant’s input had already been had in the form of stains at the bottom of a cup. It is just up to the professionals – the official oracles – to tell us what they mean.

This irony implied in the gesture of staging a collective reading of the future may therefore encompasses other problems at hand, when it comes to life, democracy and art: how the inability of any group to even see the same thing, much less agree on a future vision, has long since been self-evident. But the interesting thing about staging a ritual in which to interpret an abstract image, to see if the rabbit it is turning to the left or the right, lies not so much in the collaborative approach in seeking an answer to any particular question. Rather it is an investigation into the formal conditions by which the question had been posed. It is a way to explore how the question’s formal qualities may effect the answers extracted. Just as it is a way to consider how the outcome of any survey may change, depending on whom the question had been directed. Which in turn is also a way to wonder if it is possible, instead of recruiting more voices to speak for things that have been quiet, to pose the question towards the thing itself. Perhaps it is a way to ask the ones who had been at peace what they are thinking, and how they did it.

Höfundur: Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar

What is outside the circle of friends

by Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir | Fimmtudagur.01.2017 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

What is outside the circle of friends

The Icelandic art scene has the tendency of being somewhat constructed around the phenomenon of the ‘friend circle’. Certain artists are exhibited again and again in different context and the focus is on those that were raised up in Iceland and were educated in the local art school. Everybody knows everybody or are familiar and know what to expect from the usual suspects. It is thus like tasting a new culture of flavours to meet an Icelandic artist that one does not know about. Then the person is usually raised up in another country, has received their art education somewhere else or has lived abroad for extensive amount of time and is therefore out of the loop.

One of these happy moments happened at the book fair ‘Friends with Books’ that was held at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in late 2015. artzine journalist was there to introduce her own book when she discovered that the strangers face in the next booth spoke Icelandic.

Filmstill. Fragmentary Pieces of Intelligence, 2011. Video on DVD. 04:35 min

Sveinn Fannar Jóhannsson is a visual artist that is raised up in Norway and educated in Germany. He was the recipient of the Norwegian residency place at the renowned Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin during 2015-2016. Sveinn has not been exhibited in Iceland but Friday the 13^th of January the curator Heidar Kári Rannversson opened the exhibition ‘Normid er ný framúrstefna’ at Gerdasafn museum where Sveinn is showing together with a group of artists from the Icelandic contemporary art scene who mostly live and work abroad. At the exhibition visitors can view Svein´s works ‘Mirror with Shelves’ (2008), ‘Another Double Open’ (2008), ‘Untitled/Six’ (2008), ‘Untitled/Twelve’, (2009) and ‘Fragmentary Pieces of Intelligence’ (2011). In the exhibition text the curator questions whether the artists that are seldom or never shown in Iceland can really been said to belong to the Icelandic contemporary art scene.

artzine journalist asked Sveinn some questions.

Sveinn, tell us about yourself. Who are you?

I am an artist, curator, publisher and self-taught hobbyist gardener in no particular order. I was born in Iceland but moved to Norway and from there to Germany and then back and forth until recently settling in Oslo. At the moment I am in Reykjavík preparing for the above mentioned show NORMALITY IS THE NEW AVANT-GARDE at Kópavogur Art Museum – Gerdasafn, together with a group of other Icelandic artists of which many also are currently spread around the world. And just for the record: I actually did live in Kópavogur in a very early part of the eighties, it’s good to be back.

Collector’s Edition. A Sudden Drop + Eight and a Half Days, 2015. Artist’s books wrapped in found underwear. Limited edition of 30 copies with an original 30,6 x 22 cm color ink-jet print enclosed in an acid-free, cellulose archival folder, housed in a Hahnemühle archival box. Signed, dated („2015“) and numbered (1/30 to 30/30) on the back.

Was it in Kópavogur in the early eighties that you decided to become an artist or did it happen later? How?

Ha, ha, more like two decennials later. I grew up with a normal interest for sub and pop-culture and everything that goes hand in hand with that, including a broad aspect of music, film and visual culture. It was from there on I developed a keen interest in photography which gradually led to the more murky waters of visual art in general.

How did it come about that Heidar Kári ‘found you’?

I’m not sure actually, however I like to imagine that there are not many artists in the Northern Hemisphere escaping his horizon.

Untitled/Six, 2008. Lightjet print (framed). 113 x 140 cm.

Untitled/Twelve, 2009. Lightjet print (framed). 113 x 140 cm.

What I see in your art is that you are looking at society from the perspective of art. Any thoughts about that?

I do try to engage in a number of different projects and activities reacting on or against structures in the society, twisting and turning them, deliberately misunderstanding them or just purely sabotaging the way we normally go about with our daily business. On the one side it is about presenting an alternative view on some of the many things that we take for granted, but on the other side it also melts together with a more narrow aspect of our culture, namely art history and contemporary art culture. In the end you could say that I am looking at society from as many angles as I can possibly think of, but the results are objects or printed matter, some more ephemeral than other but nonetheless usually presentable in a contemporary art-setting.

Installation view, Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Untitled (Holes), 2016. Ink jet prints on Alu-Dibond, pine, white aluminium metallic paint, cement, sand, water and stainless steel double countersunk chipboard screws. Dimensions variable

Talking about being ‘presentable in contemporary art-setting’. By that I imagine you mean material objects. What about immaterial labour and research. Could you describe for us your methodology? What happens before things start to materialise? What happens when material comes into play?

These things develop on different levels and within several time-frames. Some works or projects are more location and context-related than others and additionally I often have ongoing processes where materials and ideas are developed over time, sometimes over many years. This can be for example collecting found images or objects, and some of these processes find their way into a finished result, some never see the light of day. The materialisation of each work is developed together with the content and relates to each particular piece on its own premises. Often the idea will define the form and the format, but I try not to be too dogmatic.

Yes, dogmatic can be limiting. Have you tried to expand the platform that you show your art outside of the exhibition space context?

Occasionally I’ve taken the opportunity to install or arrange sculptures in public spaces, leaving them to their own faith and gradual decay in interaction with their surrounding environment. These works typically have a limited existence aside from a photographic documentation that at some point may or may not become a work in itself.

Night Out Dress Down, 2013. Found clothes, oriented strand board, pure rice starch, glue and screws. Dimensions variable.

Tell us a little bit about your book publications. When did you start to publish books and why and are they available in Iceland?

There are a couple of early collaborative artist’s books created with colleagues a dozen years ago and then later I started working with Teknisk Industri in Oslo and also started self-publishing with Multinational Enterprises, my own one-man artist-run publishing house. For me the artist’s book is a classic genre just like painting, sculpture, photography etc., with its own history, limitations and possibilities. It is also an utterly generous medium allowing me to produce complex artworks with a great quantity of material by means of limited budgets and reach an audience on their own premises, be that their own private apartment, a library, an art book fair and so on. The artist’s book definitely lives and thrives inside as well as outside the white-cube. Some of my books can be acquired at the newly opened art bookstore Books in the Back, located in the back room of the Harbinger Gallery in downtown Reykjavík, others, you’ll have to import yourself.

Portraits by Waiters, 2013. Page 48, me enjoying a nice meal in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Published by Multinational Enterprises

We thank Sveinn for his answers.

Sveinn Fannar Jóhannsson grew up as a child of nature at a bottom of a valley in Norway but then at the tender age of 18 moved to the big city of Oslo before embarking on an art education in Leipzig, Germany. He has exhibited solo around Germany and Norway and these days he lives and works in Oslo.

www.johannsson.org

Interview: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir

Featured image with article: Back in the childhood home, Kópavogur 2013

Curating The presence at Wind and weather window gallery

by artzine | Föstudagur.01.2017 | artzine in english, Performance, Video, Viðtöl

Curating The presence at Wind and weather window gallery

In the dark days of the New Year, January and February 2017, Wind and Weather Window Gallery presents The Presence, an artist performance series in three parts featuring the Oracle, the Consultant, and the Masseuse. Each role will be representative of different aspects of presence. Varying formats will mediate the scene, which will be recorded and live-streamed at artzine.is, as well as projected at different times throughout the series from the artzine website, Hverfisgallerí in Reykjavík, the Queens Collective, a community art center in the Medina of Marrakech, Morocco, and at Tranzit, a comtemporary art network in Lași, Romania. The window will act as a portal to elsewhere, just as video spans dimensions, present yet infinitely distant.

The series will begin with the Madame Lilith, the oracle and deer messenger, passing from this world to another through the medium of video in the body of Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir. The Oracle brings information about infinite presence with the help of tools to carry the information. When the Oracle is not present in body, she will be present through video. In Ásdís’ previous incarnations of performance she has used video to explore perception and the projection of the poetic imagination onto objective representations. In collaboration with artist, Kathy Clark, the Oracle arrives in this dimension by way of set and setting. Through infinite presence, we see how different layers of mediation are played out in reality.

Vedur og Vindur / Wind and Weather Window Gallery, Hverfisgata 37

The Consultant, embodied by Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, will provide services through her window office in the bureau of internal affairs. The office will work as a structure through which the intangible world can reach the mundane. It is through structures such as offices that the officiality of transactions goes unquestioned. Therefore, it is the chosen infiltration setting for the Consultant to serve her role as detective of the poetic imagination. An omnipresence who sees and knows all, she explores the contexts of situations client by client.

In the month of February, Katrin Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir will present The Friction of Art through the intimate service of the foot massage. Katrin explores the friction between the viewer and the performer through this intimate exchange of giving and receiving. She aims to relay the sincerity with which art is working in service to society. Art can be as intimate and sincere as a foot massage, although she shows us blatantly how so. The foot massage is a metaphor for what artists do on other levels, carrying on the knowledge of teaching intimate presence.

(See full Schedule below)

Kathy Clark, curator of Wind and Weather Window Gallery.

Kathy Clark, curator of Wind and Weather Window Gallery and collaborator in The Presence, has been holding exhibitions for the past three years at Hverfisgata 37. Kathy works in sculptural installations and found objects in her studio beyond the window gallery. The exhibition space incorporates a quotidian atmosphere in which everyone is part as passersby can experience the exhibition from the street. I spoke with Kathy while work on The Presence was underway to find out more.

Do you feel that the studio makes an impact on how things are composed in the gallery, and/or vice versa?

They are quite separate. It was in the beginning just me showing my work and then I started going to openings and meeting people. Later, I started asking people if they were interested in showing in my window gallery and everyone was really excited at the idea. Because people are walking and driving by, the idea is that it is art for everybody. Not everybody walks into an art gallery as it is more closed and can be only people who are interested in art go. It’s very much a DIY venture, which people are very responsive to here in Reykjavik.

As a non-commercial gallery, everything operates on an exchange of ideas with the artists exhibiting. Wind and Weather Window Gallery and its publicness allow a curious interplay as one usually finds this type of window full of commercial advertisements or products for sale. When that is replaced by a display whose agenda it is up to the viewer to decide, many things can happen.

Each exhibition runs for two months, quite some time in the space of a year. All of the wider socio-political events taking place in that time frame seem to become part of the public dialogue as the window gallery is part of public life. The everyday holds this presence that is at once everywhere and nowhere. There is also the idea that the everyday can be more confrontational to things in the wider world, especially outside of the art world, and in a way that art institutions cannot address as potently. There is a democracy to the everydayness as it is in the day-to-day where encounters happen that invoke real change.

Do you see that being a non-commercial gallery affects what the artists choose to exhibit?

True art to me comes from the person. What do they want to share with the world and what do they want to express? If that becomes a trend, that’s great, but more importantly is just that the artist expresses what the artist needs to say. What does it mean to them? I think it is becoming more and more a minor point in the discussion. I know artists go to school and become affected by their peers and teachers. But all of the factors leading up to where you make the decisions you make is very important. Where along the line have those decisions come from? Basically it is a question of choice for the person. Of the whole realm of that person what does that decision mean for you? I try to draw that out of the artists exhibiting when we have dialogues.

Since 2013, Wind and Weather Window Gallery has shown a variety of artists, both local and from abroad. In 2013, the gallery featured work by Kathy Clark, Steinunn Harðardóttir, Rebecca Erin Moran, and Claudia Hausfeld. In 2014, Auður Ómarsdóttir, Dóra Hrund Gísladóttir, Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir, Ragnheiður Káradóttir, Guðlaug Mía Eyþórsdóttir, and Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir. In 2015, Ólöf Helga Helgadóttir, Myrra Leifsdóttir, Ragnhildur Jóhanns, Serge Comte, Ámundi, and Amy Tavern. In 2016, Haraldur Jónsson, Christopher Hickey, Halldór Ragnarsson, Linn Björklund, Úlfur Karlsson, and Anne Rombach exhibited. The space has experienced performance, video, installation, and many hybrids. From 2015-2016, Kathy also had a space on Laugavegur called Better Weather Window Gallery which featured exhibits by Halla Birgisdóttir, Johannes Tasilo Walter & Rebecca Erin Moran, Steingrímur Eyfjörð, Guðrún Heiður Ísaksdóttir, David Subhi, Sigurður Ámundson, Lukka Sigurðardóttir, Leifur Ýmir Eyjólfsson, Nikulás Stefán Nikulásson, Claudia Hausfeld, Freyja Eilíf Logadóttir, and Snorri Ásmundsson.

Do you feel like a curator in any sense?

We do talk about their ideas and when they come to me. I do have to agree to it because sometimes an artist may have an idea that I don’t think would work in terms of lighting or space. More often than not I am open to their ideas. I’m also here to give advice and support and bounce off ideas and ask questions. I’m interested in finding out what are they trying to say with their work. You have this whole space so I want the artist to consider the whole space. It’s this exchange that has been so potent. It has nothing to do with commercializing. I pay for the sign and I give my time. The only thing I ask for is an art piece in exchange. So it is an exchange of energy from one artist to another.

Although Kathy does not describe herself as a curator of Wind and Weather Window Gallery, her role brought to mind older contexts of the term ‘curator.’ Looking at the etymology of the term ‘curator’ we see it comes from the Latin cura, which means ‘to cure.’ In the middles ages the term was linked to the two curious positions of both the parish priest who was the ‘curate of souls’ and a more bureaucratic keeper of books and public records. In some ways the modern curator is still a curious mix of these two roles, procuring a kind of aesthetic cure for society. In Kathy’s case, the exchange of time and space with local artists does as much for the public.

Erin Honeycutt

The Masseuse

February 3rd.

February 8th.

The Consultant

January 23rd.

January 25th.

The Oracle

January 14th.

January 20th.

January 8th.

January 7th.

The Oracle: Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir 7. janúar – 20. janúar 2017

The Consultant: Ásta Fanney Sigurðarsdóttir 23. janúar – 28. janúar 2017

The Masseuse: Katrín Inga Jonsdóttir Hjördísardóttir 1. febrúar – 26. febrúar 2017

Below is a detailed schedule with information about appointments and screenings:

The Oracle: Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir & Kathy Clark 6. janúar – 20. janúar 2017

Appointments by email at asdissifgunnarsdottir@gmail.com or windandweather.is/contact/
The Oracle is live and present in the window gallery on the following dates:
January 7th, 8th, 14th, 15th and 20th at these times:

17:15
17:30
17:50
18:15

Walk-in-sessions:

18:30pm and 18:50

On Friday, January 20th is the closing performance, a farewell session open to everyone from 17 – 19.

One may make an appointment on these days or special appointments can also be made upon request.

The Consultant: Ásta Fanney Siguðarsdóttir 23. janúar – 28. janúar 2017

Appointments by email at astafanney@gmail.com or www.windandweather.is/contact/

The Consultant is live and present in the window gallery as follows:

Appointments begin January 23rd – January 28th at 12:01 pm

One may make an appointment on these days at 12:01 pm

Special appointments can also be made upon request.

On Saturday, January 28th is the closing event open to everyone from 17 – 19.

The Masseuse: Katrín Inga Jonsdóttir Hjördísardóttir 3. febrúar – 26. febrúar 2017

Appointments by email at artstudiodottir@gmail.com or www.windandweather.is/contact/

The Masseuse is live and present in the window gallery as follows:

Saturday, February 4th is an opening performance from 17 – 19. All are welcome to attend.

Saturday, February 4th from 17 – 19 with appointments available at the following times:

17:15 pm
17 :40 pm
18:20 pm
18:45 pm

Walk-in-session:

18:45pm

February 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th, 24th , 25th ; from 16:30 – 19.

Walk-in-Sessions:

16:20
16:40

Appointments:

17:00
17:20
17:40
18:45

Walk-ins are also accepted.

Appointment email: asdissifgunnarsdottir@gmail.com or windandweather.is

More about Wind and Weather Window Gallery.

A ‘site-specific play’ by Anne Rombach

by Erin Honeycutt | Föstudagur.12.2016 | artzine in english

A ‘site-specific play’ by Anne Rombach

Now on display for the months of November and December at Wind and Weather Window Gallery (Hverfisgata 37) is a ‘site-specific play’ by Anne Rombach who graduated earlier this year from the MA in Fine Art at Listaháskoli Íslands. “Don’t worry, it’s my job to lose touch with reality” asks questions about the role of the artist in society with the consoling yet flippant title suggesting the multitude of realities to advocate.

The potency of the self-titled ‘site-specific play’ is in turning the quotidian reality on its head. All of the events that have taken place both locally and on the world stage since the opening of Anne’s exhibition seem to play into her reality equation. Perhaps as the lines between the ‘everyday’ reality and the reality of the media are blurred, it is the role of artists to remind people how to differentiate and find the real in a sea of imitations and simulations. In the window, a pair of orange rubber gloved hands cups an empty space that reveals a curious fold of white paper in the exhibition space behind the window. Is the artist’s job like that of a scientist, to bring minute, mysterious specimens up to the light of the world whether that be infinite nothingness or the reflection of a passersby on the street? In this way, the exhibition becomes the ‘play’ in which we participate everyday.

The artist remarks that she was immediately drawn to the found image and its contradictory nature: “…orange gloves holding something very carefully, this something seems to be very precious but dangerous at the same time. They want to hold and show it, but they also have to protect themselves, their skin, from it. Soon I lost interest in what they were actually holding; it became a blank page to me. I was drawn to the wonderfully paradox gesture of the two hands covered in gloves. I found more pictures of that kind and cut out whatever they were holding. Even though the ‘main actor’ vanished operated by my amputation, it felt like they are holding something much bigger.”

“In the window gallery I show the moment of the vanishing blank page,” she continues. “You see two hands covered with orange gloves palming a hole through which you can look inside. In the space you see something hanging there. It is the cutout piece that is disappearing through the wall, escaping maybe. It is caught in that transitional moment, a bit like a photograph. I extend the moment of a fluent passage into a 2-month installation.” This transitional moment is where the multitude of realities touch in Anne’s ‘play’. According to the self-talk that inspired the title, touching reality and losing touch with reality are part of the same act.

The exhibition will close at the end of December 2016.

The Importance of ‘What If?’

by Erin Honeycutt | Fimmtudagur.12.2016 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

The Importance of ‘What If?’

Kwitcherbellíakin at Reykjavik Art Museum.

The two week installation Kwitcherbellíakin ended the last weekend of October at Reykjavik Art Museum as part of the Occupational Hazard project, a think tank which evolved around the former United States Naval air base, Ásbru. In the project, the former NATO-base plays a role as both a geographical place as well as a rhetorical meeting place where local Iceland meets global affairs. The site has now been reinvented as Ásbru Enterprise Park, a business development center for science, education and innovation. As Ásbrú is a poetic term (from the Snorra Edda) to describe the rainbow bridge leading to the home of the gods, it is a fitting description of the transitive identity of the place as a means to another place. The Occupational Hazard project focuses on the use of speculative fiction to rework past narratives and imagine future scenarios and conditions of being. A place such as this acts as a non-place in which to both rely on as a structure and to formulate the breaking of that structure through imaginative speculation.

In the installation put together by Hannes Lárusson, Tinna Grétarsdottir, and Ásmundur Ásmundsson, we see an amalgamation of Land Art and Glitch Art meeting cultural detritus. Other artists collaborating in the installation were Pia Lindman, Unnar Örn Auðarson Jónsson, Skark and Ato Malinda/The Many Headed Hydra. The digital collages within the installation contained historical events, icons, and innuendos mixed with a wide sweep of Western Art historical iconography. The symbology juxtaposed with historical imagery spoke of the contemporaneity of the situation as the historical events’ power and influence was still as much a part of the current dialogue.

I continually returned to Foucault’s notion of heterotopias when attempting to unpack the layers of meaning involved in the installation and its context within the wider speculative project. Foucault’s heterotopia is one in which the suspension of time and place holds infinite possibilities of past and future. His account of institutions of power produce a contrasting space in which several incompatible spatial elements are juxtaposed in the same plane of possibility, encapsulating discontinuities. Time becomes weightless in the heterotopian conditions. Embracing seemingly everything but art, the installation makes an account of the condition of being spliced between neoliberal ideologies and capitalist junctures. Aesthetic engagement can bring a more sophisticated take on the reality which we are grappling with.

No title, 2016 (Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Hannes Lárusson og Tinna Grétarsdóttir)

In 2011, the artists created the controversial exhibition Koddu which highlighted political and socio-cultural changes taking place in Iceland since the 1990s. Their aim was to thread the relations between iconography and ideology in contemporary Iceland before and after the financial crisis and to address core ideas of national identity. In their analysis of Icelandic cultural politics, they brought into discussion some of the ways in which artists are used in the redefining of Icelandic culture to suit the needs of corporate branding, which can lead to a distortion of reality. In Kwitcherbellíakin, the artists continue to explore these themes in the direction of a model which aggravates the focus on utilitarian outcomes of art.

In conversation with Tinna and Hannes after the closing of the installation, we spoke further about their intentions, inspirations, and the processing of reactions. Hannes spoke about how the installation openly addressed elements that continue to play themselves out in the arts, such as the local/global interaction, which, according to the artist, is a continuation of the agenda that began with Iceland’s independence from Denmark in 1944. World War II not only marks the turning point in the history of Iceland toward modernization; the blast of the atom bomb in 1945 marks the beginning of the Anthropocene. As Tinna pointed out, “the promises of the ‘good life’ of modern progress has turned into times characterized by precarity. It is not just the soil that is exhausted – the social structures and human rights that are supposed to secure human and non-human well-being are increasingly dysfunctional and ignored.”

The installation was a camp in many ways, something which Tinna brings to the wider sociol-political sphere in noting how the term has been used to characterize today’s socio-political developments. The notion of the camp has been described by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben as “the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the Modern” (see Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life). The sociologist Pascal Gielen uses the term to describe the art world and the false sense of freedom that it evokes, as the encampment of the art world is continually defined by the inevitable enclosures of capitalism. Tinna notes how Kwitcherbellíakin was the name of a camp in Reykjavík whose commander planted two palm trees and gave it this name. Other camps had very different names after generals or military history. As stated in the introductory text, it could be seen as the first art installation in Iceland, and the first contribution to the local scene.

Image: Kwitcherbellíakin, Reykjavik Art Museum (Court yard). Ingvar Högni Ragnarsson.

The ‘camp’ composed in the installation consists of a variety of elements each carrying a plethora of messages with which to assimilate into a consensus, but perhaps the heterotopic nature is best put into context here where the aesthetic statement is one of disjunction, certainly not an easily quantified outcome. The scale of the installation is immense for a two week time frame: 81 pieces of cloth painted as a rainbow by asylum seekers at Ásbrú during a separate project (the Broken Rainbow Project) hang on the railing amongst pieces of “trash” (none of which is made locally), 15 enlarged digital collages held up by 20 used Lazyboy recliner chairs resting on 40 tonnes of soil. There was also sound installations, videos, a diesel electricity generator, freezers, a compound microscope for viewing the tardigrade – one of countless organisms living in the soil, and three tonnes of stones from the demolished turf house, Litlabrekka.

Tinna described the reactions to the role of the soil in the exhibition space and how reactions to it were a case in point:
„While entering the exhibition space the audience becomes part of the installation. They need to find their feet to move around in the space ‘wearing’ blue plastic shoe covers – a telling image of our relationship with the soil and non-humans others. The 400 square meter exhibition’s soil-covered floor seemed to irritate many of the museum staff – they saw it as creating mess, infecting other spaces of the museum etc. Children were the most enthusiastic about the soil – curious and relating to it and its inhabitants. Soil is not simply a base of life. It is a world of relationality – a ‘multispecies muddle’ to use the words of Donna Haraway. The urgency of our times has called for reconfiguration of how to live with the planet and its inhabitants. Moreover, understanding the multiple temporalities of soil, its organisms and ecological assemblages might prove valuable to disrupt and resist the Modern progress of the anthropocentric, capitalist timescale.“

No title, 2016 (Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Hannes Lárusson og Tinna Grétarsdóttir)

While all of the digital collages in the installation are untitled and meant to be seen as a continuous iconography, it is possible to look at them individually. This image is meant to mark the beginning of the worldview that began with independence from Denmark in 1944. World War II was taking place at the time, a fact that the artists feel the impact of which is missing from historical narratives. In using speculation about the past the artists have the ability to bring up discussions about the commonly held narrative that has not been very present in public discourse. In the image are references to these global affairs such as the Russian tank and the American pin-up postcards on the table where the document is being signed. The absence of women at the signing is notable, although one of the men wears a woman’s hat from the Icelandic national costume. As the image tries to contextualize the place of Iceland in world affairs at the time, the dire situation is painted with humor. According to Hannes, “Iceland is always in dialogue with colonization, something which is not from Iceland, but the rest of the world. Even in current affairs,” he says, “the idea of maintaining independence while taking part in the global economy is a constant struggle.”

Images: No title, 2016 (Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Hannes Lárusson og Tinna Grétarsdóttir)

The frivolity which has marked the media sensation of the US presidential elections can be seen in these two images representing the dichotomy that has become the figures of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Their respective icons have become synonymous with certain ideologies mashed together to create their monstrously heavy identities. The exhibition was held at the same time as the Icelandic elections with the US elections on the horizon; a precarious temporality, which in hind-site seems worlds away. The condition of time in the camp of the exhibition is effectively multilayered to address this sensation.

Like figures from the collective subconscious, they are composed from an array of sources that the viewer may not take into consideration consciously. The Medusa from Caravaggio is wearing a skirt from Degas that covers the tail from Nina Sæmundsson’s mermaid sculpture. Her outstretched arm is holding the balls of David from Michelangelo. Tinna notes that the male anatomy here is more like a handbag, which poses the question of how we are going to inherit this history: “…what kind of luggage are we going to bring with us into the future?” Thinking about future speculations and what kind of future we have ahead of us, this is why the Medusa is so important in this image. She pops up and has been used in philosophy and cultural discourse throughout history. As the original ‘nasty woman’ she has been brought up in the US elections as an allegory for Hillary Clinton. There are again many narratives to choose from. Tinna notes that these two images “…are not just the state of mind, the state of the world, or the state of art, but the state of the post-human…” The amalgamated figures are barely human, a branded interspecies pair who de-center the human from the Anthropocene.

No title, 2016 (Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Hannes Lárusson og Tinna Grétarsdóttir)

The Anthropocene, the epochal term that is marked by significant human impact on the earth’s systems, plays a large part in the exhibition. Covering a very broad timeline and embracing many system’s processes, it gives us glimpses of the role of speculation and imagination as a powerful tool in coming to realize the tensions inherent in any narrative. This embrace can allow a consideration of a wide spectrum of potential futures. To answer one of Tinna’s questions, “What can artists do in this system?” I think a potential answer is to continue wielding a way of thinking and creating that pushes the boundaries of our imagination where systems of oppression and fear would have us encapsulated by small-mindedness. We can turn judgment into curiosity and use fear to rouse empathy. In continuing to let “What if?” permeate our convictions and narratives, a plethora of possibilities and perspectives is opened. As political dichotomies seem to be approaching radical opposition in many places in the world, the need to break out of this binary thinking seems more important than ever. Speculative tools, as these artists have shown, can lead to different realities, some more dystopian than others, but it is the ability to be adaptable and authentic in our thinking that could make all the difference.

Erin Honeycutt

Featured Image, overview of courtyard: Ingvar Högni Ragnarsson

Sequences celebrates its 10 year Anniversary

by Innsendar greinar | Fimmtudagur.11.2016 | artzine in english

Sequences celebrates its 10 year Anniversary

Sequences – real time art festival celebrates its 10 year Anniversary Saturday November 19th in Reykjavík and welcomes everyone to the celebration this forthcoming weekend.

The festivities begin at 12:45 in The National Gallery, introducing the theme of the next festival and announcing the Honorary Artist. David Horvitz’s piece Let Us Keep Our Own Noon will also be introduced, but the piece will be on view in The National Gallery until winter solstice on December 21st. The work consists of forty-seven handbells created through the remelting of a French church bell dating back to 1742. The work is activated by forty-seven performers who, at local noon, taking place at 13:13 on this day, collectively ring the bells and then disperse throughout the building and out onto the surrounding streets of the National Gallery. The board of Sequences invites all guests to enjoy a homemade birthday cake after the performance.

From there we move on to Mengi, performance venue on Óðinsgata 2 where Rebecca Moran shows a recent piece and an open sculpture tournament takes place and DJ Emotional (Ragnar Kjartansson) plays moods for listening and relaxation. Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir will host a show of .gif animations by various artists. The program finishes with the unveiling of DayBreak, Forever a sound installation by Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson, that will be on view until next Sequences festival, fall 2017.

While this day’s program celebrates the 10 year anniversary of Sequences, it also serves as a bridge to the next festival that will be held in October 2017. The artists showing their works are, for instance, all exhibiting in the next Sequences and the curator’s involvement testifies to her commitment and interest in creating strong connections to the Icelandic art scene and artists and in exploring the cultural life of the city before and leading up to Sequences VIII. The anniversary program can thus be said to be a prelude to the ten day festival to come and therefore it is only appropriate to ask the curator herself, Margot Norton, for some insight into her vision for the festival, as can be read below:

What do you think first attracted you to your field?

I was fortunate to grow up in New York City and being surrounded by so many great museums and galleries certainly played a role in developing my interest in art, although not necessarily with a contemporary focus or as a curator. It wasn’t until after my undergraduate studies upon moving back to New York, that I developed more of a focus on the contemporary art field. I had always admired the non-profit cultural center Exit Art, and decided to apply for an internship there. Founded in 1982 by the late curator Jeanette Ingberman and her partner, artist Papo Colo, Exit Art was known for an experimental and innovative approach to exhibition-making that highlighted diversity and often presented the work of artists who confronted difficult social and political questions of the time. During my internship, I worked alongside the curatorial team there to develop ideas for exhibitions, vet artists’ proposals, and select artists and works for various shows keeping in mind the conversations generated through their juxtaposition. It was through this brief yet formative internship that I became interested in curatorial practice—everything from developing concepts for exhibitions to working on the most practical and mundane aspects of production—and particularly at an organization that embraced challenging and thought-provoking work by artists from diverse backgrounds, which is of course central to the New Museum mission as well.

Are there any guidelines you go by in choosing your projects, because obviously you must have your hands full in your position as a curator at the New Museum? What has made you come to Iceland and be a part of the Sequences VIII during its anniversary year?

At the New Museum and more generally, I am drawn to working on projects that disrupt what is expected and expand the definition of what an art-viewing experience can be. Reykjavik’s “Sequences” festival was founded to do just that: embrace cutting-edge visual art and provide a platform for time-based mediums that are often overlooked such as video, performance, and sound. When I first came to Iceland several years ago to work on a New Museum exhibition with Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, I was struck by the dynamism of the art scene here. There is a genre-bending and collaborative spirit among cultural makers in Iceland that yields such innovative projects and platforms. I am thrilled and honored to be developing the program for Sequences VIII during its anniversary year, and to be working in such a robust and invigorating cross-disciplinary environment.

What do you think makes a good curator and what do you feel are the jobs greatest challenges?

To put it simply, the most important thing that I want to accomplish as a curator is to make everything possible so that a work of art can be shown to its fullest potential and allow for an artist’s vision to shine through clearly and brilliantly. There are naturally challenges in doing so in terms of budgetary constraints and physical logistics, but also in terms of making space to allow for interpretation and, at times, to encompass a breakdown of preconceived notions.

Can you tell us a bit about your vision for this year’s festival, what can people expect? Any goals or messages you wish to come across in your work?

I’m excited that the hub of Sequences VIII will be the recently-opened Marshall House—the new home for the artist-run spaces NYLO (The Living Art Museum) and Kling and Bang. It is great that so much of the festival will take part in this reinvigorated historic space for art in Reykjavik. There will also be a handful of projects at select venues throughout the city. Many of the works will be new commissions for these spaces inspired by its theme. The artists chosen for Sequences VIII will come to Reykjavik from across the globe and collaborations between these artists and the local art community will be encouraged.

About Margot Norton
Margot Norton is Associate Curator at the New Museum in New York. At the New Museum, she has curated and co-curated solo exhibitions with artists Judith Bernstein, Pia Camil, Sarah Charlesworth, Roberto Cuoghi, Tacita Dean, Ragnar Kjartansson, Chris Ofili, Goshka Macuga, Laure Prouvost, Anri Sala, and Erika Vogt, and group exhibitions The Keeper, Here and Elsewhere, and NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. She also organized the retrospective exhibition Llyn Foulkes, which traveled from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and worked on the exhibitions Ghosts in the Machine, Chris Burden: Extreme Measures, and Jim Shaw: The End is Here. Norton curated Night Transmissions: Electronic Intimacy, a program of video art broadcast on RÚV, Icelandic National Broadcasting Service in early 2016. Norton is currently working on the exhibition, Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest, on view at the New Museum October 26, 2016—January 15, 2017. Before she joined the New Museum, she was Curatorial Assistant on the 2010 Whitney Biennial and in the Drawings Department at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Norton has lectured and published on contemporary art and holds a Master’s Degree in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.

Interview:
Kristína Aðalsteinsdóttir
Project manager at the Icelandic Art Center

Image credit: Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

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