„Event Horizon“ at BERG Contemporary: a conversation with artists Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir

by Daría Sól Andrews | Miðvikudagur.09.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

„Event Horizon“ at BERG Contemporary: a conversation with artists Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir

I spoke with the artists of Berg Contemporary’s recently opened exhibition, Event Horizon. Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir told me about their practice in non-representational painting, the particularities of working jointly yet separately, and their inspirational references in creation.

Can you describe for me the context behind your work in this exhibition at Berg Contemporary, Event Horizon?

Hulda Stefánsdóttir: Soon after we started to discuss the possibility of a joint exhibition, we found a common denominator of our works and interests in the art historical notion of negative pictorial space in the context of contemporary painting practices. We were all interested in the processes of image making that deal with a transferal, an inverse of sorts, or a translation, a mirroring, and to a certain degree: a deliberate confusion – the negative that becomes the positive. During this time of correspondence an image of a black hole, constructed from a mega data and the result of decades long science research was published in the media. We were all captured by it. This black hole image is a translation of an ineffable phenomena, an image of a world beyond the image, the imagined, set forth as an assemblage of the furthest distance, boundaries referred to as an event horizon. You wonder which is the actual image, the bright orange-yellow halo of the black hole or the black middle dot in the image? In fact, the image is not an image as such and the black dot in the middle is not a black hole but rather the shadow of a black hole. This spoke directly to our approach to painting, provoking thoughts on the limits of visibility.

Are there any recurring themes that you find yourself coming back to in your practice, places you draw influence from?

HS: Representation of time and movement on the surface of a still canvas is an overreaching theme I have approached from various angles before. Paul Klee said that the point about painting was to spatialize perception and make time simultaneous. It has to do with the functions of memory and the impossibility of presenting any given moment without echoes or traces of the past. Deriving from this is my interest in repetitions and ideas of the original and the copy, the foreground and the background, silent and disturbed surfaces. I seek to repeat, dissolve and reduce imagery to ambiguity as to stress the instability of our perception. It also has to do with art history and the history of painting that is a constant source of influence on my practice. Not only the fairly recent history of modern abstract painting and the non-representational, but history of art and image making to the furthers extensions of the past: cave paintings and discoveries of the earliest mark makings and from there on to today. This incredible need we have for visual expression as a source of communication and confirmation of existence are an endless source of inspiration.

Marie Søndergaard Lolk: Lately I’ve worked with translations between different states of images, often using found images as a source. Sometimes I’m treating an image as information or as something textual, that can be broken down into components, and so can have ambiguous readings. Sometimes it’s the other way around, the textual breaking up into bits of matter. I’m also very interested in joining ideas of the personal and impersonal, e.g. through interpretations of found drawings or found handwriting. Another recurring aspect of my work is perhaps the inclusion of glitches and faults, which also relates to this idea of translations I mentioned, it always implies a level of distortion or misrepresentation. In that connection I find I’m often looking at the generalizations and categorizations that things fall into, both visually and language-wise when you’re working with images.

Sigrid Sandström: I have for the past few years been preoccupied with paintings as evidence of past activities and how they nevertheless operate in present tense as they “unfold” in front the viewer. Traces of the painting process become parts of the final image. I think of my paintings as projection surfaces upon which we project our own agendas, and the many possible ways of approaching/viewing a painting is of great interest to me. The reception of a painting will keep shifting over time, suddenly it belongs to history while never the less it still exists as an object in the present, and I keep thinking about how the viewing that takes part in the making of a painting is somewhat different from the kind of viewing that happens once the painting is completed, and free for grabs, if you so will. The fluidity of the thing is of great interest to me.

Describe for me your process of production, both mentally and in physical creation.

HS: I often start with a textual reference, but during the process I realize that it is no less a material, a tactile and visual one; various impressions accumulating in a particular visual idea. I never consider new work to begin at a point zero, the works build up and, in a way, I am constantly responding to the previous ones. It would be hard for me to distinct the thoughts of the mind and the physical actions of the creation, sometimes matter comes ahead of a concrete thought and sometimes it takes some time to put my thoughts into actions. It is all about the tacit knowledge of visual thinking and a continuous process.

ML: The works in this show I’ve approached as a kind of bands or sequences, similar to strings of writing or even comic strips. Different elements are repeated and, in that way, become as much structure as image. I wanted to work with the formats as well and make them more like lines or borders in the space, something that could work architecturally. They are made on foamboard with marker pen and watercolour and so share a visual affinity with drawing, although the process doesn’t have the same directness. The seemingly quick lines and gestures of the source image are stenciled and in other ways modulated, partly as a way of deliberately halting the fluidity if the image.

SS: In my case, everything that happens in the studio is interconnected to earlier works, either in direct response to it or as part of a more casual dialogue with previous works. For this exhibition I wanted to work with the positive as a negative and vice versa. For instance, at the moment I use cotton rugs dipped in paint to press to the surface of the canvas, just like printmaking, in order to make the imagery in my paintings. The image is thus the imprint of the absent object, or ghost image of the rug I used as tool. I am interested in the fact that the absence of something simultaneously becomes the image. For this exhibition I chose to, in addition to the “printed” paintings show the actual tools (cotton rugs) as works in and of themselves along with the paintings.

How do you define nonrepresentational painting and its boundaries, as in the absence of an image?

HS: I think that one of the things we have in common as artists is to question the definitions and boundaries between the nonrepresentational and the representational. So, our painting practices deal more with the tension, and instability between the two, rather than the compartmentalization.
I question the image as such and at the same time I see my painting process as akin to printmaking or photographic dark room processes. What are we really seeing? To me it seems like a fragmented whole in a shifting and turning context. And the boundaries are constantly extended, the absence of an image broadening the pictorial surface and pushing the edge of visibility to the unforeseen.

How do you each as separate artists experience your three practices coming together in this exhibition?

HS: For me the dialogue and collaboration with Sigrid and Marie has been a challenging and enriching experience. Challenging in the positive way that it has provoked me to consider my work in a more direct broader context and enriching for the same reason, a sense for a wider perspective, shared commonalities and differences, yet a passion for the possibilities of the painting in contemporary art.

ML: I agree, it’s been a really good process and, to me, a stimulating encounter between our three quite different practices. I find the show to have some appealing dissonances as well as obvious common interest points. But it’s not so simple after all, I feel the show as a whole hasn’t quite settled in my mind yet.

SS: The show turned out surprisingly cohesive I find, because our approaches to art diverge from one another quite a bit. I very much enjoyed the collective effort of putting something together that was quite intangible at first. The days of installing the show were very focused as we were trying to get to know, understand and address our intentions and motivations. I thought we were very responsive to each other and our subtle, non-hierarchical collective way of decision making through trial and error was enriching for me.

Event Horizon, how do you define this term in relation to your exhibition here at Berg?

HS: As previously described the event horizon presented this viewpoint of imaging the end of visibility that we have all dealt with in one way or another in our works. A certain dishevelment that plays with these borderlines. The work may indicate a landscape, an object or a structure, but the work process always entails a willful distortion of a known reality. You question what you see and present a different way of visual experiencing / reading. The literate connotation of the phenomena is an inspiration in and of itself; event as an action, horizon as an indication of a distance, or a landscape, imagined or real. The Icelandic word Sjónhvörf, literally translates to edge of vision, and has a connation to myndhvörf (metaphor) or hvörf, that marks a turning point, the end of something and beginning of another, perhaps not yet known.

Why abstraction? What are the possibilities for you as artists in this specific approach?

HS: I think the free open space of abstraction is such an interesting way to approach existence and this crisscrossing time space we live in. These marks and dissolving symbols of a language meaning cut up and re-assembled, fragmented impressions that come together yet also feel like they are about to dissolve or burst.

Daría Sól Andrews

Event Horizon at Berg Contemporary runs until September 7, 2019.

Photos courtesy of Berg Contemporary and the artists.

Artists’ websites:

Marie Søndergaard Lolk: http://marielolk.com/

Hulda Stefánsdóttir: http://www.huldastefansdottir.is/

Sigrid Sandström: http://www.sigridsandstrom.com/

On Sculpture, an artbook by Eygló Harðardóttir

by Erin Honeycutt | Laugardagur.08.2019 | artzine in english

On Sculpture, an artbook by Eygló Harðardóttir

In the 1975 manifesto, The New Art of Making Books, by Ulises Carrión, the Mexican writer, curator, and conceptual artist expanded upon the traditional book form as a three-dimensional site of experience rather than as a container of texts. The manifesto begins with the dismantling of notions of the book: “A book is a sequence of spaces. Each of these spaces is perceived at a different moment – a book is also a sequence of moments. A book is not a case of words, nor a bag of words, nor a bearer of words.” This is where one can certainly find a doorway into Eygló Harðardóttir’s artbook, Sculpture.

Eygló’s organic sculptural installations manifested in book form create a seamless arch between the art object and printed matter. Her larger sculptural practice with its emphasis on the possibilities of material and its relationship to the surrounding space through composition and color take on a new dimensionality in book form, one that is more intimate and attuned to the unique experience of the viewer.

The careful attention paid to materials in Eygló’s larger sculptural practice transferred to the book form brings to mind Jacques Ranciere’s quote from The Future of the Image (2007): The mixing of materialities is conceptual before it is real. Before the visual and verbal became an established practice in the arts, it was literature that was able to bridge the verbal and visual in a way that defied traditional understandings of their differences and conceptually proclaimed the gradually diminishing chasm between them.

In Eygló’s artbook, we find a natural bridge between an object of art and printed matter. This is seen in Eygló’s aim to merge awareness of material, composition, and layers of color with the possibilities of a changeable book form. The binding is loosely stitched enabling flexible folding combinations. Perforated patterns appear on some of the pages, creating various options of bending and tearing some of the parts to create a new approach towards reading the book form as a moldable, interactive space. This is further accentuated by the artist’s emphasis on using ratios from the human body to emphasize the materials’ intended role of being part of an interaction with the viewer/reader.

The shape of the open book seen from above (as seen in the image) also brings to mind W.J.T. Mitchell’s diagram for exploring image-text relationships: the X. The unrepresentable space between image and text that goes beyond formal descriptions of the relationship between vision and language, metaphorical nesting of images, and graphic media is what Mitchell tries to relay in his X diagram. Unlike the slash (/) or the dash ( – ), the X puts an emphasis on the multiplicity of relations between image and text. However, Eygló’s Sculpture expands his X to other dimensions of materiality that encompasses the senses of touching and listening.

„Sculpture,“ says the artist, „is connected to the hands and how the materials are available for touch“. The work, as a sculpture in book form, changes the way one approaches the act of reading and all of the associated bodily notions that attend the act of reading: holding the open book in both hands, turning the pages, resting the book on a surface. The handmade paper invites touch with its soft accumulation of cotton and frayed edges. Perforations invite the reader to tear and bend the pages, creating a possible 3d structure out of the flat pages of the book, after which, it could rest in a new position, open or closed. The sound accompanying the tearing of paper also becomes another layer of texture in reading the book. The experience is one akin to reading poems composed of materials interacting with your eyes, hands, and ears, instead of words themselves.

The artist remarks on the differences in approach between bookworks and exhibition spaces: „Because bookworks last longer than an exhibition, they live on their own in an alternative space. The bookwork has freedom because it is not held by the constraints of an exhibition space. Bookworks are for the body, you can walk into the work and experience it in your hands; the body is the space in which you experience it. When you make bookworks you think towards a more private space than that of the exhibition viewer.”

„I can make two-year-long works that encompass time in a different array. I can take it apart and put it back together again. In this way, it teaches you about reading and gives you a clue about how to read again with the pleasure of the first acts of reading reignited. The books are oriented towards sounds, touch, and the entire orientation towards engaging with a book. It is against exhibitions, essentially.“

Eygló’s Sculpture expands Mitchell’s relationship between image and text to other dimensions by inviting such questions as: What is the future of reading? What does the materiality of the books have to do with their readability?

Erin Honeycutt

This article is a continuation of the series on artists’ books that began with an interview with Jan Voss, one of the founders of Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam.

Sculpture was published by ́uns plural for one in 200 signed and numbered copies using offset printing with four color CMYK, three Pantone spot colors, one color hand-painted.

Paper: Munken Kristall and Munken Polar 300g/m2.

Perforations were made by both machine and handmade, hand die-cuts.

Size 24 x 30 cm/dimensions variable.

Sculpture is available at: ‘uns ́s website catalog, Books in The Back/Harbinger Gallery, NYLO/Living Art Museum, Boekie Woekie and has been included in Printed Matter’s distribution program.

Sculpture came out in December 2016 and was soon after launched at Buro BDP in Berlin. In January 2017 it was presented in Harbinger Gallery in Reykjavík. Sculpture was exhibited in the show Other Hats: Icelandic Printmaking in IPCNY in New York, 2017. The same year the original artworks of the pages in Sculpture were part of the show OPNUN in Kling & Bang Gallery in Reykjavik. This show was presenting a group of artists that were part of a TV series about the Icelandic visual art scene (Curators: Dorothée Kirch and Markús Þór Andrésson). A special exhibition of Sculpture and its original pages was on view at the Culture House in Reykjavík in the exhibition Creative Printing & Artists’ Books curated by National and University Library of Iceland 2018-19.

Eygló Harðardóttir lives and works in Reykjavík: eyglohardardottir.net

́uns plural for one was founded in 2015 by Guðrún Benónýsdóttir. The press is based in Berlin and Reykjavik with an emphasis on publishing artist-made books, multiples and educational material: uns-artbooks.net

Ólafur Elíasson Opens a Retrospective at the Tate Modern, Activates a Participatory Togetherness

by Daría Sól Andrews | Laugardagur.08.2019 | artzine in english

Ólafur Elíasson Opens a Retrospective at the Tate Modern, Activates a Participatory Togetherness

Ólafur Elíasson’s In Real Life at the Tate Modern presents a deeply moving collection of work that encompasses a full range of emotion, medium and perception into one intensely thought proving experience. Nodding to Elíasson’s 2003 The Weather Project at the Tate, In Real Life combines a sensory interaction of people, experience, time, and space. The exhibition is totally and fully immersive, both inside and beyond the exhibition walls. Historically, Elíasson’s practice has revealed a deep and curious examination of light and environment in both an intricately scientific exploration and a delicately artistic unpacking, and In Real Life pays homage to just how massively prolific his career has been. Elíasson’s works prompt us to examine how we think about nature and perception, encouraging us to navigate our environments in new, playful ways. In a moment of temporary interaction, viewers become one in intimate experience, uniquely together. Around forty works spanning over three decades draw the viewer to ponder: how do we acknowledge others, our environment, and our own senses? And what necessary implications for action does this have in a world wrought with climate disaster?

The word experience is key: entering the exhibition, the interaction begins immediately upon stepping into the elevator. The viewer exits into monochromatic light, people mill around in black and white, bathed in yellow. In a way Elíasson here forces our perceptions to be reduced, rather than expanded, to something more minimal – literally black and white. Perhaps the artist is urging us to see the world as it is, without our obliviously rose-tinted glasses. This subtle action orients us into a curated emotional mindset before we enter the exhibition space.

In the first gallery is Model Room (2003) a large, room sized box of intricate curiosities, orbs and containers of different materials, sizes and levels. The work challenges our preconceptions of building and ways of architecturally using space. Next, the viewer enters into a large gallery presenting a combination of earlier works from the 1990s and alongside new creations. Yellow tones compliment green hues, earthly tones vibrate throughout. A massive wall is filled entirely with subtle green Scandinavian reindeer moss that creeps down to the floor. Guests are allowed to touch the installation, together; it is remarkably soft. As an Icelander I associate to home, summer, picking blueberries in the countryside.

Olafur Eliasson in collaboration with Einar Thorsteinn, Model room, 2003. Wood table with steel legs, mixed media models, maquettes, prototypes. Dimension variable. Installation view: Tate Modern, London. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Purchase 2015 funded by The Anna-Stina Malmborg and Gunnar Höglund Foundation. © 2003 Olafur Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson, Moss wall, 1994. Reindeer moss, wood, wire. Dimensions variable. Installation view: Tate Modern, London, 2019. Photo: Anders Sune Berg.
Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 1994 Olafur Eliasson

A reflected pane of window light mimics the outlines of some recognizable urban structure. Made from negative space, the work imitates a natural phenomenon, a reality, like the title of this show suggests. Four long trays of chemical yellow water line the floor, as if in some sort of photosynthesis or development process. The water sloshes back and forth in a synchronized movement, a quiet reference to the ocean’s waves. A window mimicking the rain – the mechanical imitating reality, quite masterfully. Outside is an artificial waterfall built out of scaffolding; Waterfall (2019) of the few new works in the exhibition, again brings together the mechanical and the natural in an imitating replica. These works suggest to the growingly blurred lines between man-made and organic.

Another of Elíasson’s new works, a black orb entitled Your Planetary Window (2019) playfully disrupts our sense of depth perception in a mirroring illusion. It is not until we encounter the other side of this orb in a separate room that the game of this work is revealed. The face of the viewer on the opposite side is plastered across the orb, like a fish eye lens. The work functions as a one way mirror to another person’s interactions with the piece, the minutiae of the person and their experience on full display. As private participants, we interact together in this work, unknowingly at first, in an element of voyeurism.

Following, in a black room, a soft misting of rain falls to the ground, a dim spotlight highlighting it. The room is warm and damp, fresh, the sound is soothing, taking us to a quite specific place, personal to each. This is Beauty (1993) and it is, quite simply, beautiful; pristine, quiet, intimate. The movement of the rain captured in the colorful light is bodily and emotional, physical. We want to grab it, but feel only it’s wet ethereal touch. The drops crystallize on the ground in a mirroring effect. It is seamless, continuous.

Olafur Eliasson, Waterfall, 2019. Scaffolding, water, wood, plastic sheet, aluminium, pump, hose. Height 11 metres, diameter 12 metres. Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. Installation view: Tate Modern, London. Photo: Anders Sune Berg.
© 2019 Olafur Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson, Beauty, 1993. Spotlight, water, nozzles, wood, hose, pump. Dimensions variable. Installation view at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2015. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 1993 Olafur Eliasson

Throughout this exhibition there is a warmth and happiness, a curiosity in exploration. We interact together, yet separately, as one participant. Elíasson captures an essentialness of group and simultaneously individual experience. For example, in Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger) (2010). Viewers enter into a 39 meter long room filled with fog and a soft yellow, monochromatic light that gradually turns white blue. Visibility extends only see a few feet in front, and the rest dissolves into a soft fuzz as your eyes work to adjust. People disappear and reappear, come in and out of focus. You are together, yet in solitude. And still, there is a calm serenity to this fog, like one is entering into the rays of the sun, welcoming a dewy unknown. You don’t know where your next step leads, but you walk forward, trusting, enveloped. Alone in the fog, something in me pauses. I rest here in this abyss of nothing, of sound and perception and smell, knowing that I am not, in fact, alone.

After, the viewer encounters another familiarly perplexing work of Elíasson’s, Big Bang Fountain (2014). Entering into a pitch black room, interactors are guided by the sounds of water splashing and crashing in a black abyss. At few second intervals a bright strobe flashes, showing for a split second an image in light of a drop of water. The drop is static yet in movement, imprinted into the interactor’s mind as glowing after image. Just outside, a circular shadow screen projects an image of a wisp of light that rainbows in color in an ethereal, otherworldly fashion. This object of light feels familiar but I can’t place it. DNA? The Milky Way? As people walk behind and around it the shape changes and morphs with shadows, mystically mesmerizing viewers.

Next, a kaleidoscope series; for example one life size creation that visitors can walk through like a shimmering black hole. One kaleidoscope piece reflects the viewer, the sky, the earth, and the city in endlessly repeating iterations. This coning of mirrored repetitions into one conflated object forces a cognitive shift as we perplex at new perspectives. As Elíasson explains in a wall text “kaleidoscopes offer more than just a playful visual experience. Multiple reflections fracture and reconfigure what you see. You are offered different perspectives at once, and understand your position in new ways. You might let go of the sense of being in command of space, and instead enjoy a kind of uncertainty.”

Olafur Eliasson, Your spiral view, 2002. Stainless-steel mirror, steel320 x 320 x 800 cm. Installation view: Tate Modern, London, 2019. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Boros Collection, Berlin. © 2002 Olafur Eliasson

Elíasson’s spectacularly comprehensive exhibition ends with a large educational center, the Expanded Studio, that encourages a focus on climate change and our environment, alongside a background into his studio practice and its connection to these social issues. This is a space to play and create and experience together in an extension of the galleries. Here Elíasson presents a continuing effort to invoke a change in consciousness, a sensitivity to our planet and ourselves, a reawakening of a sense of agency and proactiveness in all of us. In profound fashion, the overwhelmingness of this exhibition is educational in such a subtle way, bringing us together, without the viewer quite even being consciously aware of it. It is beautifully all encompassing, yet simultaneously simple and distinct in its message, awakening us.

Yet, perhaps some of this social commentary could be turned back around onto Elíasson himself, and his own studio practices. While projects like Green Light, Ice Watch, Riverbed, the solar-powered lamp initiative Little Sun, and his eco-friendly restaurant endeavors are all commendably environmentally oriented, to what extent does the Ólafur Elíasson Studio promote self-directed sustainability? For example, what is the environmental footprint of shipping blocks of glacial ice from Nordic environments across the globe, of transporting a massive wall of Scandinavian moss to London? What carbon footprint do his studio staff leave on the earth, with the endless air travel of Elíasson, his 90 people on staff, and his artworks and installations. Elíasson actively works with the World Health Organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and policy makers and UN officials across Europe in the interests of climate change and renewable energy, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda to fight against institutionalization and the slow progress of climate change efforts. Elíasson is certainly no self-proclaimed pioneer of zero-waste, fully sustainable practices, and he must have a self-awareness to this, but the irony can still be pointed out. Perhaps this is part of the point, to turn this critical eye to ourselves and the never-ending possibility to do more amidst the seeming impossibility of living a truly sustainable and zero-waste lifestyle. Like Elíasson stated in an interview with Wired Magazine in 2015, “I am very respectful of the people who are knowledgeable, and I say, ‘I don’t have an answer to the challenge, but I have a tool — it’s called creativity’ As an artist, I think I can co-produce answers.“ Perhaps through pondering this dichotomy, we can bring our own daily actions into some self-critique as well.

Daria Sol Andrews

Articles for Reference:

Dazed Digital 2018: https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39096/1/artist-olafur-eliasson-little-sun-diamond-environmental-crisis-art

The Art Newspaper 2017: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/olafur-eliasson-there-is-ultimately-no-space-in-which-art-cannot-work

Art Territory 2017: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/olafur-eliasson-the-return-of-the-sun-king/

The Telegraph 2016: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/olafur-eliasson-the-return-of-the-sun-king/

Wired 2015: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/olafur-eliasson-the-return-of-the-sun-king/

It´s Nice That 2015: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/its-ok-to-disagree-the-divisive-work-of-artist-olafur-eliasson

The Guardian 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/21/olafur-eliasson-i-am-not-special-interview-tree-of-codes-ballet-manchester

ArtReview 2014: https://artreview.com/features/december_2014_feature_olafur_eliasson

Cover picture: Olafur Eliasson, Eine Beschreibung einer Reflexion, oder aber eine angenehme Übung zu deren Eigenschaften (A description of a reflection or, a pleasant exercise on its qualities), 1995. Spotlight, mirrors, projection foil, motor, tripod. Dimensions variable. Installation view: Tate Modern, London, 2019. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Boros Collection, Berlin. © 1995 Olafur Eliasson.

The exhibition In Real Life is on view at Tate Modern in London until January the 5th, 2020: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/olafur-eliasson

A table or a hand: on the progressive hospitality within Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s Vanishing Point: where species meet

by Juliane Foronda | Miðvikudagur.08.2019 | artzine in english

A table or a hand: on the progressive hospitality within Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s Vanishing Point: where species meet

A wooden bespoke table grounds itself by the River Gota. A seabird soars above it, and clouds are scattered across the otherwise blue sky. These early views of Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s Vanishing Point: where species meet act not only as an introduction, but an invitation; a gesture of welcome into their performance. Originally commissioned for the 2011 Gothenburg Biennial curated by Sarat Maharaj, this three-channel video is currently suspended above the altar in Edinburgh’s iconic St Mary’s Cathedral as part of the 2019 Edinburgh Art Festival.

I entered St Mary’s in the middle of a heatwave and immediately sought refuge in a seat at the front pew. I fell into the serenity and silence of the space, and basked in the cool shade as I witnessed the meal unfold. Pieces of bread were tossed from one end of the table towards the circular divot in the other, prompting the seagulls to flock towards their appetizer. A generous pat of butter slowly melts in a hot skillet, and a piece of fish is dropped in and it sizzles. In the Cathedral, the strong sun shines through three enormous stained glass windows at the top of the alter, echoing the three screens in front of them which hold Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s work in a way that proves that it’s resting in its rightful (albeit, temporary) home. I cannot help but associate this alternative rule of thirds that rings so prominently throughout my time with this piece and in this place: the video screens mimicking the stained glass (or vice-versa), the Holy Trinity, breakfast, lunch and dinner, a three course meal – I could go on.

The title, Vanishing Point, stresses the importance of the action itself over the location of it. Though this work was originally made as a site-specific piece, filmed on the roof of Roda Sten (the main Biennial building in Gothenburg), I believe the heart of this work exists in the convergence between species, and emphasises the importance of the willingness to share, and of unconditional and unwavering hospitality. In light of the current political climate in the UK (and globally, for that matter), this reminder of unity could not (re)surface at a better time. Sitting with this piece a bit longer, I fall into a trance of the birds calling one another, which within this sacred setting, feels like nature’s orchestra. They ring through the Cathedral in a similar way that the organ would draw the congregation in for Sunday morning service. My eyes are glued to the screens, and I find myself creeping up closer and closer to get a better view. There’s something so curious that happens with my perception of scale as I’m drawn in. The large screens suddenly feel slightly small only in comparison to the grandeur of the space that’s hosting them, but the images on the screen – the sky, the sea – span much larger than any architectural masterpiece ever could. My concentration was broken for a moment by a tourist who clearly missed the (vanishing) point of having this work installed within this context, as they exclaimed to their partner that the work was ruining the ambiance of the Cathedral and walked off. Their comment in turn broke the solemnity of the crowd viewing the piece. I shared a small smirk in solidarity with another visitor, and we went back to watching the morsels of bread fly across the screens.

The video continues, and my eyes remain fixated on this table. More so than any other piece of domestic furniture, I understand a table to have the function of hosting. A table is where we know to gather; it’s a meeting place. This basic form exists in many iterations and serves various functions within these roles, but inevitably, its purpose is to hold and support simultaneously. There even exists a strong presence of tables throughout art history – from Erwin Wurm’s altered furniture sculptures, to Robert Therrien’s Under the Table (1994)[1], to being a support or background within countless still life paintings, to being the central gathering place in DaVinci’s infamous The Last Supper (1495-96), which particularly resonates with Snæbjönsdottir/Wilson’s piece in this current installation. Most prominent in my mind, however, is Allora & Calzadilla’s Under Discussion (2005), in which we witness Calzadilla perform some sort of erratic act of engineering by upturning a table, attaching a motor, and turning it into a boat. The video captures this makeshift boat being used to survey the area of Vieques, which is an island-municipality of Puerto Rico that the US Navy had occupied and used as a bomb-testing site for over sixty years. This action offers a place to have a conversation that is often only ever had behind closed doors, prompting questions of information and access[2]. The table acts as a silent but active participant within this radical socio-political statement, which is similar to how I perceive the role of the table in Vanishing Point. Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s construction is situated in a way that gestures an open invitation, it’s nearly anthropomorphic in its way of being – acting much like a hand reaching out to greet or assist us. This wooden table was undoubtedly built with intention, with a “bowl” of sorts carved out of one end to hold and serve the meal to Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s winged guests. The intimate structure of a table enables the actions of gathering and support, and the proximity that we often allow them to have between ourselves, our actions, and others is perhaps why it seems to be the most hospitable piece of domestic furniture. Céline Condorelli speaks of her perception of intimacy garnered through proximity in an particularly resonant way within Support Structures, as she sheds light on the “violence” of support: that how being supportive implies more than mere contact, but furthermore being right up against the subject of concern. She states that to work in support means to emphasise the need for it.[3] Perhaps the table acts as more than just a literal support structure in this setting.

As I take in the piece in its entirety, I begin to see it very much as a daisy chain of shifting hospitality. Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson are preparing the meal, but are fundamentally guests or visitors in the environment of the seabirds, but the seabirds nevertheless accept the invitation to break bread within their natural space. That said, perhaps the seabirds were also considered (unwelcomed) guests within Roda Sten, where they are notorious for brazenly joining in on visitors’ meals at the waterfront al fresco cafés in the area. In the exhibition catalogue for FEAST: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, Jan Verwoert’s contributing essay[4] speaks of “the artist’s guest”. Perhaps this is referring predominantly to visitors in a gallery, but this particular work sheds a new light on this when considering host and guest dynamics within Vanishing Point. Within this particular installation, where they have been graciously invited by the Provost of St Mary’s to exhibit this work in the Cathedral, the invitation alone carries strong connotations of hospitality in and of itself; they’re guests in these spaces, but hosts through their objects and actions. Verwoert also speaks about the labour of constant care, as well as the invisible labour of the host.[5] Conventional notions of hospitality lead me to consider if hosting in general is a performance. If so, is the table merely a prop? And are guests the performers? Upon reflecting on Verwoert’s words, I came to realise that Vanishing Point is not solely about hospitality, but more so community, as the labour was never hidden.

The work comes to a close by placing the viewers in the perspective of being seated at the table to share in the meal as guests. The politics of equality and inclusion are truly challenged in this piece as it breaks down the preconceived differences between species, and highlights something that we all fundamentally need at our cores. It’s a reminder that everything and everyone requires nourishment to survive whether we seek it ourselves or its offered to us. Perhaps upon first look, some may find it strange to host a meal for seabirds, but how is it fundamentally that different from a conventional dinner party? We are all simultaneously hosts and guests to this Earth, and Vanishing Point instills in me that we are all connected – as much as humanity has often chosen to believe otherwise. I’m also reminded of the urgency of sharing rather than taking. With this meal, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson choose to build bridges instead of walls – breaking down barriers and proving that generosity truly can be unconditional.

Juliane Foronda

[1] A similar, and often mistaken work of Therrien’s Under the Table is No Title (Table and Four Chairs), 2003

[2] “Under Discussion.” DMA Collection Online, collections.dma.org/artwork/5329404.

[3] “Directions for Use (Features: Proximity).” Support Structures, by Condorelli Céline et al., Sternberg Press, 2014, p. 15.

[4] Verwoert, Jan. “The Anti-Angelic Host: Reading the Politics of Hosting Culture Through the Writing of Virginia Woolf.” Feast. Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, David & Alfred Smart Museum, 2013, pp. 360–366.

[5] Verwoert, Jan. “The Anti-Angelic Host: Reading the Politics of Hosting Culture Through the Writing of Virginia Woolf.” Feast. Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, David & Alfred Smart Museum, 2013, pp. 360–361.

Vanishing Point: where species meet continues through 25 August as part of the 2019 Edinburgh Art Festival. Please note that St Mary’s Cathedral is an active place of worship and this means that at times the sound component of Vanishing point may temporarily be muted. A reception featuring an artists’ talk and discussion event will take place at St Mary’s Cathedral from 4:00-6:00 pm on Saturday 10^th August, 2019 and all are welcome.

For the last twenty years, artists Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, have been practicing and producing in the field of contemporary art on an international stage, with projects and exhibitions in the UK, Europe, Australia, and the USA. Through their work they ask what it means in the context of crisis, (e.g. mass extinction and the Anthropocene), to consider and practice art as a tool of disruption and mediation, how the semblance of passivity might subversively be channeled as an instrument of change and how complex, cross-disciplinary relationships can effectively and otherwise, be managed.

Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir (PhD) is Professor and MA programme director at the Iceland University of the Arts, and Mark Wilson (PhD) is Professor in Fine Art and Course leader in MA Contemporary Fine Art at the University of Cumbria, Institute of the Arts, UK. They live and work in Iceland and the UK.

https://snaebjornsdottirwilson.com/

Photo credits: Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir/Mark Wilson.

…and what then? at Nýlistasafnið

by Bergur Thomas Anderson | Sunnudagur.08.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

…and what then? at Nýlistasafnið

Entering Nýló I see a large clock, colorful drawings for musical scores, crumbling plastic containers, meticulously crafted bodies and utopian visions that explore what’s ahead by touching upon our modern and possible not-so-distant future positions, identities and situations. I sit down with curator Sunna Ástþórsdóttir and artist Rebecca Erin Moran for a talk which took the theme of innovation as its starting point to speak about the more personal anxieties of contemporary artists and the agencies that the arts have in our current political landscape. …and what then? Is Sunna’s curatorial debut with Nýlistasafnið, she has been studying and practicing art theory and curation in Denmark for the last eight years. Rebecca Erin Moran is an American/Icelandic artist currently living in Berlin.

The exhibition gathers a handsome roster of artists: Andreas Brunner, Eva Ísleifs, Freyja Eilíf, Fritz Hendrik IV, Huginn Þór Arason, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Rebecca Erin Moran, Rúna Þorkelsdóttir, Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir, Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson and Þórður Ben Sveinsson.

B: The first thing I noticed when I walked in to Nýlistasafnið was a peculiar atmosphere. I somehow felt an immediate connection to science fiction. Was this intentional?

S: The exhibition looks to the future and I think it’s a natural step to move into science fiction when it comes to speculating things to come. The overall theme is glancing at things approaching us, how to approach them and exploring areas which are unknown to us at this date. We’re dealing with concepts of innovation, foretelling and poetically exploring what may or may not happen in our not so distant future.

B: To me, the large painting by Þórður Ben seems to have the strongest or most literal connection to sci-fi. It depicts a temple-like architecture surrounded by dreamy meadows and a utopic landscape bathed in Icelandic summer light. Here we are proposed with an escape from reality in favour of something greater. Could you tell me little bit about how this work came to the show?

S: Þórður’s painting has that approach for sure. It imagines a place which could very well be derived from a science fiction novel. With all of these artists, dealing with the future has to do with each of their intentions. This painting, for example, is from 1983, and I believe that looking towards utopian futures seemed like a brighter vision at the time. Today it seems like a far out dream, because the end of earth is becoming increasingly more feasible to us. Those who understand it do everything in their power to protect while for many, the future is too dark or hopeless to see these utopian, alternative realities. On the other hand, the utopian vision seems to feed into younger generations of artists. Fritz Hendrik IV brought two paintings to the show which depict similar scenarios, but imply more of a dune-like, outer-space scenario. The human is still present in his portrayals, and like Þórður, there is a craving to escape the instability through the making-of a possible world.

R: I think innovation links to sci-fi, and it ultimately connects to creating the spaces where something new can happen. It reminds me a bit of the Dialogues between David Bohm and Krishnamurti, where the reader witnesses epiphanies happening in real time. He released a whole series of transcriptual writings where he spoke with scientists, theorists and spiritualists discussing time and existence. It’s an exploration into the space where something new is being created. Sunna and I had long talks about the role of arts within the political sphere through that lens of being-in-creation, a speculative fiction/reality which can only happen in media res, its process coming into the world…

S: … and the show turned into a series of works which are glancing in to the unknown. I see each artist contributing richly to this as some works are in the midst of a decomposing process while others are proposing alternative, heterotopian and even utopian future scenarios. It opens up many discursive trajectories into means of poetically looking forward to what agency artists have today. The term sci-fi never came up in the process, but I saw it turning into a very sculptural, material speculation. We are interested in technology, robotics and ecosystems, but perhaps the role of the arts is to look into the thinking behind it. What the works in the show have in common is this speculative nature that image-making and representation have towards the question of and what then? We are all anxious about it and there is increasing worry and trouble arising in each of us as to how to solve current world problems. I found interesting to look into what contemporary artists could add to that dialog in their own way, without being guided towards making an exhibition strictly about the climate crisis, let’s say. This I feel made a poetic turn within my personal curatorial approach and I felt an increasing sense of trust in the fact that the works would evoke justful contemplations into these themes.

B: Rúna Thorkelsdóttir’s sculpture made of garden cress hangs gently and touches the floor of the gallery. It’s growing and contained at the same time, reflecting our relationship with nature and our longing to control it. The work has a life of its own, stripped from its natural setting and ultimately decomposes during the exhibition period. Can you tell me how our impact on the earth is effecting these artists’ thoughts?

S: Rúna’s work in particular makes the process of life and death visible. You can see the roots on the backside of the piece. The exhibition has only been going on for a week, and runs for six weeks! The cress will develop according to their circumstances, which are not ideal in this case. They’re supposed to be dying, but as with organic substances, it decomposes rather than rots. There is an element of chance here which allows things to take their natural course.

B: Uncertainty is in the air, for sure. Our times are dominated by instabilities and ambiguities, as is visible in f.ex. Huginn Þór Arason’s work. His sculptures from 2002 display plastic containers with colorful play-doh sculpted around them, perhaps hiding the reality of plastic waste with ornamental and colorful gestures?

S: Huginn’s work came from the archive of the Living Art Museum and I saw it bring the discourse around the conservation of an art work. The sculptures were much fresher when first made. When unboxing them, the crafted clay had turned soggy, crumbling and collapsing on top of their supports. It’s interesting to place together these different processes, between the natural and plastic, man made material. In both of these cases, we can wonder how time treats art works, and how we experience works from the past today if they are intentionally or non-intentionally supposed to change over time?

B: Would you say it’s a bit like unfreezing something?

S: In a way! As someone from the cultural sector you find yourself constantly dealing with this maintenance in art works such as these. You unfreeze them, blow the dust off and constantly check if something needs repairing. Often the works need re-adjusting or re-making the work all together! However, for Huginn’s piece it became necessary to show them as they came out of the box, as a slightly altered version of the works that were made a few years ago. With both of these artists, I see them creating a space for the viewer to contemplate this change in relation to their own body.

Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson’s video is another great example. His Most real death (2000) shows people taking turns staging their own death in front of a camera when shot at by a finger-gun. It exhibits this type of anticipation we live with, this knowledge we all have. In a very bodily way, you are confronted with your own reaction of the work. You might laugh at the first three enactments during this simple game of pretending, but then the violence kicks in. It’s a total of 37 people staging their death in front of the camera. I feel this work describes very well the overall approach that the artists took to the show’s themes. There is a lot of color and humour before the terror reveals itself to you. The viewer realizes that experiencing art changes over time, just like the artworks are evolving, decomposing and taking new shapes as the exhibition continues.

R: I feel it’s also interesting to look at the impact of humour that Thorvaldur’s work has. It’s meant to questions our ethics, but through this very specific style that he shares with his generation. It has this slap-stick like quality and a visual poetry. It reminds me a bit of Bas Jan Ader and how he staged emotions like sorrow or grievance. This particular body humour and gestural action had a lot to do with these artists. It is a very different type of humour if you compare it to the younger artists in the show. I feel that contemporary artists are faced with a totally different type of anticipation. Maybe one which places the body in relation to its environment, or attempts at contemplating, in a physical manner what is to become of this relationship. The younger generations seems to have a much darker or dystopic view of things.

S: Definitely. I see your work, Rebecca, along with Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir’s and Andreas Brunners as contributing to another conceptual thread of the show. I think that artists today are faced with the contemporary worries brought about by the human’s imprint on nature and other people. We seem to be haunted by guilt, on top of our anxieties, and we perform these socio- and political acts of undoing what we’ve done wrong. Perhaps even to see at what point in these complex relationships we actually belong?

B: Here we can transition from the utopian to the more contemporary idea of gender and the body, which I see resonating in Rebecca’s works. Would you like to tell me about the somatic onesie?

R: I just have this small anecdote before we go into that. I have a good friend in Berlin, who is 25, and getting her PhD in astrophysics. She is working with potential future environments for planets, and other complexities beyond my comprehension. One day, I mentioned that I was envious of her generation, as everything seems to be so possible in terms of creating new living conditions, gender fluidity, open communities. She turned to me and said bluntly: “but you will die a natural death, and our generation will witness the earth die first”. She is busy exploring the nuts and bolts of how to survive the earth’s destruction and what consequences it has for its inhabitants. When she said this, I was just like “woah…” She is in the science world and she’s confronted with these really real problems. The time is running out and figuring out an alternative before the 2050 deadline is just a very high, practical priority for her and the contemporary science world.

S: And here the anxiety kicks in again…

R: For sure! I had just never, thought that far!

B: Is the youngest generations of art students and scholars more inclusive because of this hidden knowledge? Is it because we are running out of time and they realize that it’s best to just join forces?

R: It’s something we can’t understand. In the past, there were generations that went through wars and saw the potential end of the world. But those were all very hypothetical, man made conclusions. We found ways to continue because we still had enough resources to re-build what we destroyed. Now the problem is actually real. The sciences today are actually trying to understand how to slow down this process or find an alternative in a new ecosystem. I found this extremely interesting.

My work, as in the Somatic Transit Onesie, romanticises evolution. I made it in 2015 for a show about the EU in Lichtenstein. It was presented with a sound piece called Stop belonging now. At that time I was idealizing if we could evolve in to a male/female/land-animal/sea-animal type of body. A hybrid of some sort, but seeing this body as already belonging to a past. The onesie piece therefore exists and is presented like a skin someone has already shed. So what comes after is unknown, and does not need to be visually represented. It aims to create a jumping off point for the imagination, I’m always looking for a state of potential; where a work creates an open ended process that is inclusive to the viewers experience. The onesie is perhaps the last point of materialization, what comes next is open.

S: This work is also about removing external markers through this dialog with the viewer. We have so many borders, there has always been this connection between the “one” and the “other”.

R: Stop belonging now, the sound piece, creates the notion of ending belonging in order to belong everywhere. Without perspective, point of view, in order to perceive all viewpoints. Erasure as a way of empowerment. As soon as you come to one end of the spectrum you’ve gone full circle. Identifying in the middle is where you get stuck. Fixed positioning is just a very strange and dangerous concept to me! Conservatives, who have fixed opinions about the LGBQT communities and then these same communities have fixed ideas about how a conservative thinks… our societal standards are always to reject a notion, or fight against a norm, the position is always fixed against something. I’m looking for a non-binary positioning which is neither on the offense nor defence. A place which is neither/and/or. A non-binary positioning which can’t be polarized.

B: Would you say this is totally neutral ground? What does this new life-form present itself as?

R: I don’t really believe in sameness, I believe in fluidity, process, and continual flux. But it’s just the level of which one zooms in or out. We talked a lot about non-being, about consciousness, about wholeness. There are many theoretical discourses about parts of a whole, but why do we constantly speak about parts? We’re always dissecting, categorizing, and picking at things on such a zoomed in level. It somehow takes away from just being in my view, takes away from the interconnectedness.

S: The print that Rebecca presents in the exhibition is a work in progress that might take on another form or become a part of a larger series in the future. I’m pleased to include this work in the show, as it strongly suggests a new kind of animal/human ambiguity and questions notions of intimacy and our preconceived notions of gender or our place in the natural world. On the side that faces the window we see a human holding this dog, but we can’t really see its a dog. You can sense that it’s an animal, by our reading of creatures. There is a beautiful collision that happens.

R: It was a great process working with Sunna. She understood the works before they entered the exhibition because she had this overview of what it could become. I was very happy to hand the choosing to her and where the print ended up being in the space.

S: Each artist added to the discourse of the exhibition, and its ideology was shaped through the unfolding of dialogs and experiencing the works themselves. It became important to me to keep the dialog open towards the end. This photowork is just, really, sensual and materialistic, it fell in to place after having strong dialogs throughout the entire process.

B: So, in the beginning the concept of the show was very open, and it’s theme’s come more through working with the artists?

S: I had specific questions that were related to the landscape of exhibitions happening in Iceland when I started working on the show. I knew it was going to have a socio-political angle to it. The framework shaped itself through having discussions and actually seeing what each artist contributes instead of forcing them in to a specific curatorial agenda.

R: Our first conversations were about doing a political show. But you were not really interested in overtly tackling contemporary politics, as in, protest, or propaganda let’s say…

S: It is about what we perceive as political art today and what role art can play in the political landscape. If you place something in the world, it always says something and that’s what we wanted to bring attention to. The works reflect on and invite you to re-think our current situations, deal with your anxieties, engage. Not in a didactic way, they propose what political positioning artists may be taking and have an inclusive positioning towards the viewers own time and place.

R: I think it’s overtly political to be against something. That is the easiest positioning, to be against something or with something. As a contrast to this show we can recall an infamous moment that Nýló had in 2011 with Koddu. It was a politically charged exhibition. Much of that work was radically against something. This was important at the time of course, as we were facing financial crisis. Right now, however, I think that political art should be about engagement and discourse; finding ways to form connections, even just being intimate.

S: The presences of the works in this show are strong. They can be evocative, questioning and disturbingly confronting. The atmosphere of the show is thought to offer this type of open engagement…

R: … and I really feel like this show escapes all tag line theories, which has a positive impact. It’s liberating to participate in a show that does not associate itself with a specific theoretical model or an -ism.

S: The anthropocene was a topic that came up frequently in my conversations with Andreas Brunner and I think that many people might discover that, while others discover something else in his work. Some people are engaged with choosing -isms and theories attached to exhibitions and I know that the risk of not having such strict tag-lines or themes might result in a chaotic exhibition.

B: I think that with this positioning, the poetry of the exhibition reveals itself. Coming back to Andreas Brunner, it gestures at our attempts to undo the things we have done to nature by covering up our workings and re-workings in to the earth’s layers. He reflects on this through small marble pieces, which is usually thought to be a very sacred material, something which can’t be manipulated. We’re always dealing with these gestures of undoing, as artists, as people.

S: There is almost no untouched surface on the earth left, and at the same time we’re very unapologetic about it, we seem to constantly be in the process of covering up our own traces. It is as if we were idealizing our own absence and idleness at these places, as if nothing ever happened.

R: There’s also a trend now in idealizing native and indigenous traditions, and it’s usually done by white people. I find this trend not only awkward, but also total cultural appropriation. This show, on the other hand, is more about looking forward instead of trying to get back to. I do think we need to unlearn industrialization and recognise our animalistic sides and deeper connections to the earth and all living things: but without trying to emulate the past.

B: There is constant guilt in the air of those who have oppressed and suppressed, for example how the colonisation of Suriname or the Dutch Caribbean in the Netherlands is being undone through the renaming of places or the revisiting of their culture by white people. It does lie on a very sensitive border and has an awkward feel to it. It’s part of the process of becoming guilt-free of the past, of righting wrongs. But honestly, how else to do to it? What comes next?

S: Exactly, why is there this need to become guilt free? We’re in a place where we can’t undo more. We are acting oblivious to what comes next. I had a talk a few days ago and they asked me what if all these terrible things happen and we just survive?

B: You mean, what happens when we actually inhabit a place we can’t imagine what is like at this time?

S: Precisely, what happens beyond this beyond?

B: I think one of the stronger points in this show is to refuse a single categorical umbrella. It brings forth the personal anxieties in each participant and invites more intimate readings as to look into the role of art within all these contemplations. The universal is explored through the personal. There is more space to think about the possibilities than what should be or what we should have done. I find this very important, to localize these problems and share them.

S: We hear about the artist as being a mirror of society, but we seem to have lost what the mirror shows us. So my question becomes, what is the errand of art in society today? There has never been a reflection which shows you the real, so the creation of personal, alternative heterotopias become a way to actually explore this question. Ultimately, the artists here are exploring their role just as it is important for everyone to attempt a private understanding within our current state of things. The reflection is found in the artworks and I have found great readings in each of the works here. As a curator I’m interested in seeing how an artist can make political art without overtly educating and narrating an audiences experience. How to make an artwork which is not with or against, and actually trusts the experience that the work brings about in itself?

R: We’re not here to tell you how it is. We like things to have a life of their own and trust in the life that the art piece can have. Sometimes the artist sets limitations with their intentions by using text or didactic forms. Sometimes we don’t realize it, but at most times an artwork can have a much bigger identity than the one the artist insists on. Using naming, or words, can be a limitation. It’s time to celebrate the situations that an artwork can set up with any crowd without leading them to a certain conclusion or opinion. Many people come up to me and they say “oh you had that guy on the floor! It looked great!”, and instead of being like “well, actually, it is a… and it means this, and you should interpret it exactly as I do”. I just don’t like to be told when to change my position, my reading, my experience.

S: The truth is, logic just follows what you experience, directly. You should always trust the viewer to make their own conclusions, based on their experiences. They should not be controlled, and my intention is making a show which is accessible to people who don’t necessarily visit art galleries on a regular basis. It is important for the arts to participate in any contemporary political discourse we are facing, be it a local or a global one. What is even more important is that the arts should be inclusive and welcome to different readings. We are all facing these problems and I find it interesting to see what the arts can show within the current spectrum. With such a diverse group, who all contributed greatly to this journey of speculations and questions, I wish to create a fertile, poetic ground to contemplate what is to come. This is what I hope translates in to the viewer, who always adds something to the dialog just by experiencing.

Bergur Thomas Anderson

The exhibition …and then what? runs until 4th of August 2019.

Photo credits: Vigfús Birgirsson

Arctic Art Summit 2019: The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy

by Ana Victoria Bruno | Sunnudagur.07.2019 | artzine in english

Arctic Art Summit 2019: The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy

The Arctic Art Summit is a biennial event established in 2017 which brings together art professionals, academics, artists, and those involved in the cultural field from Arctic countries to discuss shared challenges and to both encourage and support the establishment of circumpolar collaborations. The Summit was created to strengthen the art community in the north of the world, to focus on local art and to create infrastructures and opportunities for the nordic art to develop. This second edition was held in Rovaniemi, Finland, the capital of Lapland and homeland to the indigenous Sámi people, with conversations centered on the theme The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy. The event stretched over three days with conferences, discussions, exhibition openings, and artistic event where Arctic art and artists were protagonists.

The characteristics of arctic countries such as isolation, extreme weather, small communities do not affect the quality of art production, on the contrary art in these countries has maintained throughout the years certain specificities related to the particular history of those populations, characteristic which make it highly valuable. It is hard to define what arctic art is, to whom or what the term applies and how strict this definition should be, however we can assume that arctic art generally addresses indigenous and non-indigenous cultures in the nordic region. Thanks to their similar characteristics and histories, the arctic countries constitute the perfect ground for arctic artists to share their works, and for communities to establish horizontal orientated bonds which would disrupt the north-south movement of art. Creating microcenters outside of the traditional international art routes would counter the conglomeration of art in the big European or American capitals.

In a thoughtful speech, Dieter K. Müller, professor in Human Geography at the Umeå University, Sweden, highlighted that the arctic circle is “moving south”: more and more countries want to identify themselves as part of the Arctic region because that denomination would make them look more attractive to tourists’ eyes; “the Arctic is hot, in many senses” he said. The Arctic is hot because it represents the promise of adventures, stunning landscape, and exotic populations, therefore tourism has been on the rise in this part of the world during the last decade. Global warming is affecting the North faster than other parts of the world, the Arctic is literally hot and environmentalists look at what is happening up here in order to predict the trajectory of climate change throughout the world.

Dieter K. Müller giving a speech on the second day of the Arctic Art Summit. Photo credit: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen.

Müller expressed his concerns that this interest in the Nordic countries from the rest of the world might instill misrepresentation of those countries’ identities: Arctic populations need to define themselves by themselves, their image shouldn’t be shaped by the rest of the world. These beautiful lands so attractive to tourists are in fact inhabited by people, sometimes indigenous people, and instead of stereotyping them to attract more tourists we should learn from them, and leave them free to define themselves and to share their understanding of the lands they have engaged with for generations.

In the publication What is the imagined North? presented during the last edition of the Arctic Art Summit in Harstad, Norway, author Daniel Chartier, professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, wrote that there are two visions of The North: the one from the outside, the representation of not-Nordic people, who arrived one hundred years ago, but have been imagining The North for many hundreds of years, and the one from the inside, the actual culture of the Arctic, which stems from the indigenous or native populations’ understanding of their lives in these lands, a knowledge passed through generations of inhabitants, shaped through years of living there and adapting their lives to the geography and environment. The indigenous framing, experience and definition of landscape and the Arctic has long been ignored by colonial history, and as such the idea of an uninhabitable Arctic took hold. The colonial voice dominated.

The management of cultural institutions and museums which gives more space to internationally recognised curators was raised as a concern by Müller, the implication of this is that they are more skilled and capable of representation in major institutions then local practitioners. Müller highlighted that it is fundamental to value local art professionals and to develop a stronger awareness of local culture and art, focussing effort on studying and researching them, to provide artists’ with platforms and opportunities to show their work. The main goal should be to reach a balance for local and international professionals who both have something to offer and the reciprocal benefit that can manifest. Cultural products from both sectors should be presented on the same level, to pursue post-colonialist values and restore a balance of power between dominant and marginalised communities.

Panel discussion Sustainability through Art and Culture in the Arctic. From left to right: Tuuli Ojala, Jan Borm, Gunvor Guttorm, Daniel Chartier. Photo credit: Janne Jakola.

2019 is the United Nations’ year of indigenous languages, this was acknowledged by Arctic Art Summit through giving prominence and focus on indigenous art, culture and language. Recurrent conversations asserted the importance and understanding indigenous language in order to understand indigenous art and culture. Gunvor Guttorn, professor in Duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art) at the Sámi University College in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway, highlighted the importance of keeping Sámi languages alive since they are key to understand the development of Sámi culture for they are strongly intertwined with the history and lifestyle of these communities. The Sámi University College, in facts, offers education in Sami languages, providing Sami people with the opportunity to be educated in their own language, a right of which everyone should be entitled. Tiina Sanila-Aiko, president of the Sámi Parliament of Finland, emphasised the importance of indigenous languages by giving a speech in Sámi language, an interesting experience for those in the public who didn’t speak the language, the particular sound of Sami words did however unveil certain characteristics of the culture itself. She stressed that language constitutes a mirror of a culture, it reveals the philosophy of existence, the values, and the perception of things. Language is a powerful tool giving insight into a culture, and for too much time indigenous’ languages have not been heard. At this year’s Summit, David Chartier empathized that “we have to preserve languages for ecological reasons, if we lose languages we lose ideas”. He explained that we are all connected within the world, and ecology is not just about nature and environment, but it is also about preserving humans’ cultural heritage. We need an ecology of the real, which takes into account everything existing around us.

Panel discussion Decolonizing Research Practices. Speakers: Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, Charissa von Harringa, Pia Lindman . Moderator: Heather Igloliorte. Photo credit: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen.

Panel discussion Duodji in Contemporary Context. From left to right: Irene Snarby, Duojár Katarina Spiik Skum, Svein Aamold, Gunvor Guttorm, Anniina Turunen. Photo credit: Janne Jakola.

People from different Arctic indigenous communities and people from dedicated art and cultural institutions which support indigenous’ art and culture took part to the summit, discussing the situation of the communities they work with and sharing how they operate with respect to indigenous communities, raising consciousness and discussing better ways to valorise indigenous art and promote an understanding of it from inside the community, avoiding displaying such works from a western standpoint, as mere exotic object. Indigenous’ art requires specialized engagement, and at the same time it’s important to open these dialogues to the world and placing them in conversation with mainstream art. Such works demand a presence global art community and to be engaged with at an international level.

The situation of indigenous art is delicate, in fact in order to understand and connect with their art one needs to be familiar with their culture and the way they live, indigenous art is often inseparable from indigenous people’s lives, their art is often expressed through objects used in everyday life, art research and functionality are often combined. Therefore, indigenous people should be included and consulted when art from their communities is the subject. Indigenous art professionals exist, and art institutions who wish to work with objects from indigenous communities need to have members from that specific communities operating on all levels of the institution. This falls within the process of de-colonisation, a hot topic in every cultural and non-cultural sector. Giving opportunity to those who had been deprived of any kind of powership over their own land, culture, image, of taking back their histories and validating their specialised knowledge and skills is important to re-establishing a balance between powers in the world.

The Arctic Art Summit left everyone with a positive feeling for the future of the Arctic. Thoughtful conversations, inspiring speeches, and insights into institutions who are really making a difference though their work with and for indigenous communities’ cultures, left participants of the summit hopeful that a future based on respect, understanding, and inclusivity can and will exist and that the research of and engagement with marginalised cultures will keep them alive.

Ana Victoria Bruno

Sámi band Soljio playing on the last evening of the Arctic Art Summit. Photo credit: Janne Jakola

Arctic Art Summit website: https://www.ulapland.fi/EN/Events/Arctic-Arts-Summit-2019

Cover picture: installation view of the show Fringe at Galleria Valo, Arktikum. The exhibition focused on art and crafts from the Arctic periphery runs from June 4 – August 11, 2019. Photo credit: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen.

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