The Fabric Created the Form: On Artistic Potentials Of Covering

by artzine | Þriðjudagur.03.2018 | artzine in english

The Fabric Created the Form: On Artistic Potentials Of Covering

Plastic animals

In september last year I saw a work at the Miró foundation in Barcelona that sparked my thinking about the act of covering, and its artistic potential. An installation by Gerard Ortín titled Reserva includes some fake, plastic animals that are manufactured as hunting dollies. The worn-out surfaces of these foamy creatures suggests a lived experience. They are placed in forests so that hunters can practice their skills on them, long before they approach real wildlife with real animals. Within the installation, the plastic animals are presented on a big screen, in their appointed role. Placed, standing still in a wild-life situation, they blend with the environment, immersed with their surroundings. Endured, still frames are presented to the viewer, giving her the time to actually find the subject hidden within the frame. Boars, bisons, mules, deers and other creatures imitate a natural setting, where the animals are frozen in place.

Each time an animal is found, the video cuts to the next frame, where the process of spotting may begin again, separating the subject from the background. Next to the screen, the foamy animals are exposed as what they are, piled together (physically) as plastic objects full of holes and wear from their days of being hunted over and over again. The dimly lit space blurs the boundaries of each body so they actively camouflage each other. Their collective shape remains a large, blurry, foggy, body of legs coming out here and there. These moments of revealing make it possible to identify animal from animal and manifest my initial interest in looking at the inherent duality of covering and revealing. In this way, going from representations on a screen and being superimposed in a space, the act of covering could be the participation in a collective body. A collective body which fluctuates in a dynamic consisting in constantly hiding something, and as a consequence, revealing something of it at the same time.

A blind tent, a camouflaged shelter made for photographers hiding in the woods (Stock photo)

Artists are hunters in the many ways that they collect materials. Seen through the lens of mere commodities, these animals become figures in a constant limbo. That is to say, they continue to play dead even though they are to imitate the living. Immobile in the space they are presented in, the animals reflect the way humans have hunted for many, many years. Humans hunt with stillness as their weapon. Stealthy, sleek, and above all, hidden from the one who is being hunted. In the woods, camouflage patterns are worn by hunters to disguise them as their surroundings. Imitating the animals that have the color palette of the forests that engulf them. The environment covers, the animals are the covered, and humans have appropriated this fashion to their advantage.

Concealing coloration and the invention of camouflage

The modern understanding of camouflage can be traced back to the artist Abbott Thayer and his research in to the colors of the natural world.

“In natural camouflage, a wide range of animals benefit from an inverse coloration scheme. That is to say, their bellies are white or lightly colored while the color of their fur turns progressively darker as we scan towards the top of their body. 1”

Especially when still, animals can remain mostly undetected to the naked eye. Thayer did paintings and studies of natural inversions of color, proving that opaque, three dimensional objects can be flattened out and effaced in to their surroundings by light hitting their surface. Animals, naturally, become living optical illusions this way and other solid things too if shaded correctly. The contrast usually highlighted by the outlines of opaque objects breaks by nature’s ability to erase it. The things in the foreground start merging with the background.

“Animals are colored by Nature as in A, the sky lights them as in B, and the two effects cancel each other, as in C. The result is that their gradation of light-and-shade, by which opaque solid objects manifest themselves to the eye, is effaced at every point, and the spectator seems to see right through the space really occupied by an opaque animal.” Illustration of the inverse coloration scheme from Abbott Thayer’s lushly illustrated “Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom” (original released in 1909).

Thayer elaborates further on the two ways in which nature erases contrasts. One way is by blending. The natural coloration of birds, mammals, insects and reptiles mimics the creatures environment. The second way is by a disruption. Strong, elaborate patterns of color break outlines and flatten colors. So as to trick the mind by using a repetitive motif. This we are also familiar with in design, when we see a patterned surface and anticipate that its sameness will stay unchanged. In our anticipation we miss what might be lurking underneath the surface 2. Going back to Reserva, another film by Ortin shows a still shot of trees and bushes. It’s a bright day. The video-frame is perfectly still, almost like a photograph if it weren’t for a faint wind blowing through the branches. The visitor has time to absorb the scenery, as the wind synchronizes with the breath of the viewer, and the image evokes an uncanny presence. This is the presence of a figure that sits in the tree, right at the center of the frame. A spastic movement happens, a change in posture on top of the tree-branch. And from the moment we spot the figure, our gaze will not leave it. Let’s say that before we noticed, there was a pattern that covered the entire image-frame – a pattern of forest landscape. Like a design, the strong patterns of color flatten contrasts and break up outlines, so that the figure disappeared in to it or seemed to be something other than what it is. When the figure moves, a visual break occurs. We find something we can identify. The cover is blown by a sudden movement. To cover a person is to camouflage her. That person is not only hidden to the eye, but also, embodies the environment. Just like the bird blending in to branches of a tree.

Blending in

Harry Potter wearing his Cloak of Invisibility. A magical fabric produced to render anyone who wears it or whatever it covers invisible to the outside world. Screenshot taken from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In our day to day experiences, we often think to blend in, to act natural, to be as if not there. Covering is a way of becoming invisible, so in order to become visible, the question becomes; how do we break these flattening patterns? A body can be represented identical to a surrounding surface, but having a totally different essence. Let’s imagine ourselves as a fabric with such an intense and complex pattern that its appearances fluctuate as we move around. The fabric is capable of producing all kinds of gestures, creatures and figures. Our fabric is a make-shifter with countless possibilities and mirrors the way we are seen and see ourselves in the multitude of roles that the part-time worker (artist) has. Similarly to seeing an abstract silhouette in the dark. Each time you see it, it appears as something else compared to the night before. A fabric like that creates form and meaning as it moves and is watched. The forms in themselves formulating meaning after meaning after meaning. The inexhaustibility of the fabric’s surface as something not so different from the creativeness of shadow imagery or camouflage in itself. An inexhaustibility brought about by this game of hiding and revealing. I ́m talking about a flexible fabric that unfolds and generates meaning in a performative manner. In this way, and going from blending in, to cover can mean to become the other. The goal here is to obliterate fixated identities, which already shift around so much in our day to day experiences. With this fabric, we gain the aesthetic agency to shift and convert in to a multitude of objects by means of pattern, posture and movement.

LOIE FULLER: Research by Ola Maciejewska a performance report

The limits between the active agency of a performer and the agency of such a fabric are investigated in Ola Maciejewska’s project LOIE FULLER: Research. In a performance I was fortunate enough to witness in December 2017, Ola constantly re-defined a Dancing Dress using her performing body to give it new forms and representations. Two dresses, one black, the other a yellow-white one. Each one appears as a cloud of never-ending possibilities for representations. In describing the practice behind it, she writes that “It’s a physical practice stimulating the movement of matter receiving form, a movement that emerges as a result of the relationship between the human body and the object […] it focuses on facilitating forms that make that relationship visible. 3” What becomes visible only exists for a brief time, as a real-time metamorphosis is allowed to happen. The distinctions between performer and matter, form and movement start to erase. Ola’s practice is inspired by Loie Fuller, author of the Serpentine Dance, a choreographic piece which played with lightning effects and movement to create its spectacle. Fuller discovered that there was movement outside the body, this extension manifested itself in the Dancing Dress. To obliterate its true form even further, Ola makes use of the design to investigate its possible implications today. The motivation of the work is to shed light on to this in- betweenness, being between the body and the fabric and to overcome simple binary codes implemented in our way of perceiving. The distinctions between background/foreground, body/fabric, human/non-human casually blend with each other to create a more holistic relationship. The artist, being immersed in this piece of clothing, joins a new type of body which rejects conventional recognitions as something one. The real body here, is in something that the performer shares with the fabric, something that plunges in to our preconceived notions of a/b relationships and disrupts it. The pattern of binary thought breaks when we realize that a performer and an object have a more complex relationship. They might become the same, at least temporarily. Together they take on many shapes as the performance escalates and unfolds. The historic object (the dancing dress originally designed by Fuller) is recreated (more than a century later) and used as the generator of new meanings. This generates a longing to dwell in the in- between states of the mysterious relationship we can have with matter. Covering, in the way I perceive Ola’s work, not only refers to becoming other or enhancing an artist’s material relationship, but also has an agency in the way it pays a tribute to an existing art work. The Dancing Dress is not merely a small footnote in the work, but it is to continue the work. Appropriation is way to pay homage to, and seeing the possibilities that a work has today. A double rupture can happen when we trace the bigger history of a work like this. Ola presents a rupture for the now and the echos of a rupture that was created more than a century ago (when Fuller started performing with her Dancing Dress). The intention is to break the understanding of what it means to see things, and to experience them as constantly shifting in their identities and appearances. Of seeing them as they appear and disappear, making visible and blurring boundaries between objects and humans, assigning agencies to both of them.

Promotional image of Loïe Fuller: Research by Ola Maciejewska Photo credit: Martin Argyroglo.

My way

In music, a cover is a new performance of a previously released song by someone other than the original artist (Wikipedia definition). This means an artist appropriating an already existing song and delivering it with her own interpretation. This has to be done with utmost care and has layers of intentions; homages, tributes, alternative versions… What I see in the cover is a temporal rip in time, a way to seize something that exists and wrap it in the fabric of another type of music. But this fabric has some tear in it. Unlike the dancing fabric that helped describe the make-shifting dances and representational silhouettes caused by constant movements and patterns, this fabric is tubular. Tubular in the way we can see in to it, and through it. When artists weave this fabric of covering, there must be something they leave behind that references the original. Original here means the previous cover, or the song as performed by the previous artist. A cover is nothing without its revealing supplement. Revealing something about the past, or something about passions, interpretations. Any interpretation comes with layers of temporalities, voices, meanings, intentions, relevancies… Improvisation is possibly the only gate-way out of this binary between covering and revealing. Something of a freer sort, something that spins its own fabric, in real-time, in the making, in the moment.

Screenshot from a YouTube karaoke version of My Way by Frank Sinatra.

Let’s look at what happens when a song is covered. Listening is learning through sound. Learning in the way you get to know someone, of repeatedly listening and gaining an understanding that way. I like to believe that an obsession with a song is behind every cover. And that obsession turns in to an active sharing made possible with the making of a cover. A song increases its territorial domain with each sharing, made possible by all the performing bodies. The performers make choices on the way as to how much of the original is left in there. Karaoke can be a way of covering. When somebody is on the stage performing Frank Sinatra’s My way, the performer embodies an image of Sinatra for that brief time. And in that time, the territory of a song increases, even if it disappears again when another song is performed. This temporal embodiment and voicing involves a reference to the real thing inside a staged event. Their distinctions lose their relevance. T h e My way contamination reaches new territories as it is brought out of the music industry and enters the karaoke bar via a performing body. To sing karaoke is to temporarily bring a spirit in to the space and increase a songs territory by means of simply sharing a passion.

One last example of covering I can give is one from myself. When I was younger, I used to enjoy pretending to be other people. People I looked up to, rock stars, actors… I’d try to get similar clothes, haircuts, attitudes from images or knowledge that I had of these people beforehand and just go for it. Stand in front of a mirror, imitating, going out, imitating. Not as to think that I was literally them, not up to the point where I was introducing myself as them, but more as a curiosity who I could become. To see how I’d feel experiencing myself as him/her. I would remain me, but I realized I could switch between identities. The image of the teenager holding a hairdryer in front of a mirror comes to mind. An embodiment that actively performs a duality but includes only one audience. The self splits in two, the image is in the mirror, the self becomes the one who gazes there and adores what he sees. This way, the adorer is the adored. A one-person show, one-person audience. Being immersed in the other, temporarily, is an act of covering. And there is a subliminal level of fandom. Whatever the circumstance (be it singing in front of a mirror with a hairdryer, singing Frank Sinatra in a karaoke bar), it offers a meeting of two realities. Becoming the other and seeing oneself as the other, simultaneously. The uncanniness brought about with seeing yourself and experiencing yourself seeing as an other brings about a radical self-referentiality in perceiving 4. In this sense, covering is felt in its utmost immediacy.

Being tucked away in a private space where this embodiment, in all its intimacy is possible. I ́m talking about covering as a breaker of boundaries between self and other. About it giving a multi-perspectival agency to the self, in a practical, artistic way. Try it out, an example would be re-interpreting Robert DeNiro’s famous performance from Taxi Driver… “You talkin’ to me?”

Bergur Thomas Anderson

Featured image: Gerard Ortín, installation view. Photo credit © Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona.
Foto: Pere Pratdesaba.

http://www.mascontext.com/issues/22-surveillance-summer-14/abbott-h-thayers-vanishing-ducks-surveillance-art-and-camouflage/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-painter-of-angels-became-the-father-of-camouflage-67218866/
https://olamaciejewska.carbonmade.com/projects/5685373
Brian Massumi, The thinking-feeling of what happens: A semblance of a conversation page 6

Visual art experiment wins the Berlinale

by Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir | Miðvikudagur.03.2018 | artzine in english

Visual art experiment wins the Berlinale

The Berlinale film festival is the first international film festival of the A-level status in the festival calendar each year. This year it took place during the 15^th to the 25^th of February. Judging from mainstream media pictures and coverage one might think that the festival is all about glamour and red carpet. That is however not the case for film and video art enthusiasts and artists who look at the festival as an important hub on the German and international expanded film and video art scene. The films in the main competition for the prestigious Golden Bear take very different positions and can partly be looked at as a showcase of the many festival sections.

This year an experimental film, that could easily be said to be a representative of the Forum section, won the award. This is the film Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie. It should not be overlooked that this decision has an important cultural-political significance. It is a decisive statement from the international jury about where they would like the festival to head after the director Dieter Kosslick quits in 2019. It is a statement that is very important for film artists, especially in the light of a public letter signed by the most established German film directors last November, calling for more bigger names, more glamour, rather than the festival emphasize on investigation on different positions and expanding cinema. Head of jury, Tom Tykwer, explained the jury´s decision by stating that they did not want to award what cinema could already do but where cinema could head in the future. He is talking about the possibility of cinema. The direction is the one of the experiment.

Installation view from ‘A Mechanism Capable of Changing Itself’. From left to right: ‘Strange Meetings’ by Jane Jin Kaisen, ‘Pink Slime Ceasar Shift’ by Jen Liu and ‘Café Togo’ by Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper

The Forum is mostly dedicated to the feature length, however, and it was in 2006 that a chairperson of the Arsenal Institute, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, together with independent film and visual art curator, Anselm Franke, founded ‘The Forum Expanded’ side section where shorter films and videos together with installation work and performative works could join the debate. The position of Forum Expanded is to provide a critical perspective and expanded sense of cinematography. It takes the shape of an installation group exhibition and row of cinema screenings of clusters of films. The Forum has from the beginning been dedicated to experimental narrative forms, regardless of genre labels, where more creative risks have been taken than in the other sections of the festival and emphasize is put on an alternative cinematic canon. What makes the expanded section special is that it is a platform where documentary, fiction, experimental, hybrid, single-channel and multi-channel works and installation film and video works are categorized and viewed in context with one another. The platform is however not only unique, in defying conventional genre categorization and labels by screening formats, but rather in that it takes a curatorial position under an investigative title and does include both world premiers and older works of significance for the curatorial question each time.

Still from ‘Today Is 11th June 1993’ by Clarissa Thieme.

In 2018 Forum Expanded still runs as a collaborative effort of the Berlinale film festival and the Arsenal institute under the leadership of Schulte Strathaus but Anselm Franke has taken on a consultancy role while heading the film and art program of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. In addition to Schulte Strathaus the curatorial team consisted of Syrian filmmaker/video-artist Khaled Abdulawahed, German experimental film curator Ulrich Ziemons and artist and curator and co-founder of ‘Contemporary Image Collective’ in Cairo, Maha Maamoun. They made a team which constellation told a story about a drive for a diverse position but also cultural-political position of Germany.

This year the curatorial title was a direct quotation of Maya Deren´s 1947 marginal note on Marxism: ‘A Mechanism Capable of Changing Itself’ referring, in the case of the program, to cinema that is not only capable of change but also holds capacity to create new form of perception and additionally according to Schulte Strathaus refers to the institutional framework within which the works are being shown. Film theorist Ute Holl gave a speech at the opening reception of the Forum Expanded exhibition about the theoretical background of the title. “As Maya Deren assumed that every form of reception in the movie theatre also transformed the receptors at the same time, her concept of cinema characterized a cybernetic aggregate whose technical, sensory social and aesthetic elements were permanently changing in reciprocal fashion: A mechanism capable of changing itself.“, she continues: “It was Maya Deren´s wish that cinema should place us in a relationship with the unknown rather than subjugate us to a norm’‘, a sentiment echoed not only in the programming of Forum / Forum Expanded this year but the motivation behind the decision of the main international jury.

Filmmaker and visual artist Clarissa Thieme.

As for the past years the exhibition took place both as a group exhibition at Akademie der Künste on Hansetenweg and cinema screenings that also took place at the Arsenal Institute. Judging by the exhibition the curators seemed to be, as the main international jury, searching for a new take on the past and a way to transforme it into a new vision for possibilities for the future where the key is focus on the future possibility of cinema and video art rather than rewarding tried out gestures. The artists that were invited were 58 in total. The new works were usually by the younger generation while the older works where a chosen selection from the canon of avant-garde cinema, usually from the mid 20^th century scene in the United States. When looking at the achievements of the younger artists it became very clear that they had been spotted by their participation at significant German or Berlin art institutions by means of exhibition or being grant recipients or receiving a higher degree or being represented by a gallery. Few of the works had been spotted at major international biennials.

One of the artists was the well known video artist Anouk de Clercq that enjoyed a world premier of her latest work It at the Arsenal institute. The work is a collaboration with photographer Tom Callemin. It like her previous works shows a strong aesthetic position in darkness and light and what happens in between. De Clerq, who is based in Berlin, is very visible on the Berlin art scene but at the same time she was showing video works at two different prominent venues in Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg and ACUD galerie in Mitte. Some people in Iceland might know de Clercq´s work but she was a recipient of SIM residency award in 2006 and took part in an exhibition at the Reykjavik edition of Safn collectors room of Petur Arason and Ragna Robertsdóttir with curator Birta Gudjónsdóttir. Since then she has travelled eight times to Iceland and even made works inspired by her time and travels there. De Clercq is one of the founders of Auguste Orts a Belgian production and distribution platform for audiovisual art projects in between genres and formats. Her works are produced by this company and funded mainly by the Flemish Audiovisual Fund but also commissions of research funds at the School of Arts University College Ghent to which de Clercq is affiliated.

Anouk de Clercq chatting with colleagues outside Akademie der Künste.

I met her briefly a day before the premier and asked her about what the Forum Expanded platform meant for her as an artist: “It’s absolutely brilliant to see works of my colleagues in a curated context, which is quite rare for big festivals. Usually a festival focuses on the newest of the new, premieres, etc. but here they combine new work with old work, and look for a flow in each program. And to conclude, my film friends and colleagues live all over the world so here we get chance to see each other again and exchange about the films we’ve seen, the films we are preparing, etc.“

The feeling of living in two worlds is certainly an issue for all artists that work with film and video art. There is difference of funding, of labelling, of context, discourse and expectations. I ask her how it has been for her to belong to two different worlds: “I started off in both the visual arts and in film but indeed in a parallel way: the two worlds rarely met. Since recent years though, there’s a label for what I and my colleagues do: artist film or artist moving image and so the flow between the two worlds works more easily since a couple of years. There’s a scene now which is growing stronger and it has a foothold in both film and visual arts.

Museums have become more open and curious about film and video, film festivals are looking for new ways of cinema making and so artist film came into view. It seems that this scene of artists making films, is bridging both worlds more and more.“ De Clercq herself has been very active in bridging those worlds but in the years 2015 -2017 Auguste Orts organised the project ‘On and For Production’, an initiative that was a series of meetings across Europe where issues of artists’s film production and funding were discussed with participation of leading professionals and funders of both worlds.

Christina Nord, former film editor at the Berlin newspaper ‘die tageszeitung’ and currently one of the heads of Goethe Institute´s cultural program, indeed quotes, in her article about hybrid films in the Forum / Forum Expanded catalogue, the words of filmmaker Marcin Malaszczak regarding this issue. “For filmmakers, for the work itself, the distinction doesn´t matter. These categories are only necessary when you’re applying for funding, when you want to work in the system. Then everything has to be labelled. The same applies to most festivals.“ This is the motivation for why de Clercq is bringing together financiers in the artist and the cinema film worlds, to initiate a dialogue and exchange, to bridge these two worlds.

The curatorial team of Forum Expanded 2018. From left to right: the director Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, curator and co-founder of ‘Contemporary Image Collective’ in Cairo, Maha Maamoun, Syrian filmmaker/video-artist Khaled Abdulawahed and German experimental film curator Ulrich Ziemons.

Another artist who premiered a single-channel work in the Akademie´s cinema hall is German experimental filmmaker Clarissa Thieme, a former assistant professor at the UdK and since recently a research fellow at the Berlin Center for Advanced Studies in Art and Science (BAS). Her film Today Is 11th June 1993 was developed in the frame of her artistic research fellowship at BAS that deals with the video footage contained in the Library Hamdija Kresevljakovic Video Arhive in Sarajevo. The film is one output of the research project and more artistic outputs are coming soon, a performance and video installation.

The archive consists of video footage shot during the four years of the siege of Sarajevo, both by the Kreševljakovic brothers themselves and collected from the people that lived in the city at the time. In Thieme´s film a translator sits in a booth in front of a projection of an archive footage of a homemade science fiction film in which a group of young people imagine fleeing the siege of Sarajevo by means of time machine. It is some kind of future utopia fantasy and thus an original resource for a political and social discourse. In the Q&A after the screening Thieme points out that the archive shows a perspective that is in stark contrast to the mainstream media coverage of the time and thus can serve as a window to this time.

Akademie der Künste – one of the Forum Expanded venues at the Berlinale Film Festival

How to show and experience archival footage is a rich field to experiment with and Thieme does this in a very interesting way creating a bridge between then and now by echoing the intentions of the original filmmakers. The film, that appears as a simple presentation, is multi-layered and provokes connections and reflections, not only about how the Sarajevo siege was presented in generic stereotypical terms during 1993 and later but also about how current sieges are portrait in the mainstream media of today. “Forum Expanded is a hybrid platform. It´s an intercrossing of cinema and art. And this meets very much my own practice. In a very interesting way it is an artistic experiment in itself asking what cinema means nowadays and what it could be.

This emerges not just from the shown works but also from the people attending. It is a very precious think tank and laboratory“, Thieme answers when I ask her about what makes it important to show her work at the festival. “I find it very interesting that Forum / Forum Expanded is embedded in Berlinale, an A-level Film Festival with so many other sections and with a Film Market at Martin Gropius Bau of thousands of films not even listed at the regular catalogue. In a way Forum Expanded and the Film Market are two extremes. And simplifying one could say it is of course the difference between art and commercial cinema. I think we can’t ignore the fact that the different formats of distributing and financing works has a huge impact on our works. I don’t see it black & white. I have for instance a huge sympathy for distribution in the film world that aims for as many as possible people to watch your work. That is a very different approach to the exclusivity you invent by 5 editions only in which you sell an art piece.

There are positive and negative effects coming with both options in my opinion. I like to study these very carefully. Most often we don’t have the complete free choice how we produce and launch our work. But of course as an artist or filmmaker you should know the different scenarios very well to aim for what is best for the very piece you are working on now. Let’s say there are very different film bubbles under the roof of Berlinale.

For ten days people tell you they do film and they all do. But it’s like a meeting of different galaxies. Since I enjoy the edgy parts of exchange and since you find in every of these film bubbles people who truly love film and art as much as they burn for what they do Forum / Forum Expanded inside of Berlinale is a very inspiring and surprising venue for me.“

Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir

Featured image: Installation view from ‘A Mechanism Capable of Changing Itself’. 2-channel video installation ‘Third Part of the Third Measure’ by The Otolith Group.

Photos: Courtesy of the Artist

The Scale of It All

by Erin Honeycutt | Miðvikudagur.02.2018 | artzine in english

The Scale of It All

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erin Honeycutt

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

Exhibition duration: 19.01.18 – 11.03.18

Photos: Vigfús Birgisson

The diverse positions of curator Solvej Helweg Ovesen

by artzine | Fimmtudagur.02.2018 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

The diverse positions of curator Solvej Helweg Ovesen

In the years 2013-2017 Grosses Treffen, a networking event for visual artists, took place once a year at the Nordic embassies in Berlin. It included a careful selection process where few artists from each Nordic country were handpicked to meet ‘the makers and shakers’ of the German art scene, the curators and the museum directors. The founder, curator and organiser of Grosses Treffen was Solvej Helweg Ovesen. She is currently associate curator of the new Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) and also artistic director and curator of the communal Gallerie Wedding-Raum für Zeitgenssische Kunst in Berlin contracted by the City Of Berlin.

When we met she was in the midst of executing a large performance festival in Berlin titled ‘Songs of a melding iceberg – displaced without moving’ as part of Nordwind 2017. This version of the festival brings together artists from Africa and the Nordic and Arctic countries around the theme of understanding de-colonisation in combination with ecological changes. Grosses Treffen is currently at a crossroads and therefore it was ideal to meet Solvej and ask her a few questions about her experiences and motivations.

Nordwind Berlin 2017

Solvej, you are an curator from Denmark, based in Berlin. You have in recent years focused very much on the African art scene but also the Nordic and Arctic art scene and curated projects that bring those two scenes together. Why?

The connection to Africa came about in a private way because my sister lives in Nairobi and through her introduction to the African continent I started to get to know a lot of very interesting African people and probably noticed the ones in my own environment in Berlin much more. In 2014 Bonaventure Ndikung and I started to collaborate and we have done many shows together since. Through the African artists I work with I came to understand both myself differently and also the issue of de-colonisation that is also very relevant in the north, in for example Greenland, at the moment. I´m actually looking at Scandinavia and the Arctic through Africa somehow and that gave me another entrance to art scenes that I thought I already knew. One of the core interests and themes in my curatorial practice is how ecological changes that we are experiencing also change our culture. There is a lot of geopolitical interest in Greenland and lot of opportunities at the same time as some very strong images come from there that tell us about the landscape and our future, let´s say, in a dimension that we cannot handle as humans. It is a very interesting place the Arctic – what the melding of the ice really mean for the people there and here? It might also change our relations a lot. It already does. And it is interesting to see how humans react to the changing weather. In the Arctic people also react with nomadism, following the resources. The Nation-States try to keep the people in place. Therefore the second part of the title of the Nordwind programme, “Displaced without Moving”. If you have huge changes and can´t move to follow the resources then the historical way of solving of the problem is suddenly not at hand.. and you are displaced without moving.

Could you elaborate further why de-colonial situation or experiences are a relevant topic on the Nordic scene? How would you see it as a relevant topic for Icelandic artists?

The people I encounter from Iceland are quite aware of the former Danish occupation. It is the same if I go to Estonia. Of course it is more happening there in connection to the Russian situation. But Denmark has occupied Iceland and Greenland. I grew up not feeling at all like my nation had done anything wrong. I was told by my mum that “Denmark was the best and safest place you could possibly live”. Then at some point late I could see the ‘bodies’ that Denmark had left behind historically in England, Iceland, Greenland and Estonia for example –Danish imperialism has had quite some violent consequences that was brought to my consciousness though the awareness of post-colonialism in general. I think the concept of the de-colonial it is relevant in relation to how Icelanders have been occupied by Denmark. From a small nation position it is always important. Obviously Iceland is dealing with it’s past as well as other nations. But from my perspective it doesn´t seem to be such a big wound anymore, just the human understanding of the effects of colonialism as such is there. I´m interested in the work of Icelandic dramaturg Arnbjörg María Danielsen who I work with in connection to Nordwind at the moment.

Performance by Arnbjörg María Danielsen og Qudus Onikeku

Her current work has to do with de-colonisation of Greenland and at Nordwind she collaborates with world famous dancer Qudus Onikeku from Lagos, Nigeria. She has previously invited him to Disko arts festival in Greenland. The festival was founded by her in the Disko Bay area in Greenland and is based on de-colonial values and is for Greenlandic artists to develop a position independently in and out of Greenland – without Danes involved! Arnbjörg takes a very strong position in her work and with this festival. Danes have been very busy speaking about our colonization of Greenland and now it is time for Greenlanders to talk amongst themselves and with artists from other places where de-colonisation is important part of artistic practice since decades such is the case in Lagos and with the work of Onikeku.

Now when Grosses Treffen is at cross-roads could you tell us what you consider the most valuable outcomes of the project so far?

The network between artists from the North. Berlin has been a hub where up and coming and established artists, from also distant places, have been united. Berlin is and has been a place for these people to meet each other. When Grosses Treffen opened its doors in the morning at Felleshus, The Nordic Embassies in Berlin, it was almost like an army of young people coming in. An amazing sight.

Installation by Dafna Maimon ‘Orient Express’ í Gallerie Wedding.

It is a great gift that these people, artists, now know each other, that the Nordic Embassies and I know them. These are people who are creating important statements in the here and now and they have been brought together. And as always the traces will become even more visible way further in the future. So there is still much to happen. Also for myself I will probably be working with these people for the rest of my life? I’m already working with them – for example Dafna Maimon that is now opening here at Galery Wedding with the solo show “Orient Express” as part of Nordwind.

From Grosses Treffen in Felleshus at The Nordic Embassies in Berlin.

Her work takes a point of departure in reenactment of her fathers kebab restaurant in Helsinki as a space to discuss transcultural family relations. I met her through Grosses Treffen and there is now an online archive of 800 artists more for curators all over the world to work with.

Now you have been close to the Icelandic art scene for some years. When you compare it to the art scene in Denmark, Berlin, Germany, Riga, Latvia, or internationally is there something that you have noticed that might be be improved? Something that the Icelandic art scene should consider in order to get ahead and become stronger on the international scene?

First of all you cannot categorize, but speak about generic tendencies. If you go to Denmark you see a lot of formally and technically interested artists. If you go to Estonia you might see more political aesthetic practises. When you go to Latvia you may see more existentially interested aesthetic expressions. In Iceland it is often very poetic and fictive artwork. Strong imagination. What the Icelandic art scene like any other smaller art scene could consider is to generate more diverse positions – both aesthetically and content wise. I think it is important that the artists are more diverse in their expression; with their subject matter; with their knowledge; and with their ambition. You have Olafur Eliasson and that is a certain model where there is only one from every continent that is on that level. I strongly appreciate the work of Egill Sæbjörnsson. It is a very generous and invigorating position and has historical roots in Iceland, but he also generates new sustainable communities abroad. He is working with an imaginary universe that is very very entertaining and funny and obscure and thus approachable from many sides. So I would say more of those different, consequent and outstanding positions.

Is there anything that you would want to add?

First of all I think it is important for all artists from wherever they come from not to represent their country unless they want to. Maybe it is also important to add that the country itself can do a lot to avoid the brain drain, the fact that the best brains – no matter where in the world they come from – leave the country, by welcoming bigger art-productions and supporting them directly. That is how the artists of the scene can develop diverse positions and audiences become resensibilized to aspects of life that are not prioritized in a certain political culture at a certain moment.

Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir

Mynd af Solvej Helweg Ovesen: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir.

In the Garden of Anna Run

by artzine | Laugardagur.01.2018 | artzine in english

In the Garden of Anna Run

Íslenska

It can be said that “Garden” (“Garður”) by Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir is, to a certain extent, watercolor art. Fourteen bottles, hanging upside down, mechanically release droplets of water color onto rocks treated with salt and plaster. Each droplet then reacts with the surface, transforming it, coloring it, crystallizing it, so that the work is never the same from day to day. “Garden” is watercolor art in which each color scheme is isolated and removed from its context; its effects are to be studied almost scientifically, as in a laboratory. Each drop exists in solitude. Someone looking at the work sees the original surface gradually destroyed, while simultaneously something new is created. And though the work is really a process, it makes us think about nature because it utilizes natural forces—so that anyone who views the work on a daily basis cannot say that one day it is “right” and the next day “damaged.” The piece is always as it should be, and “Garden” demonstrates through its manmade processes that the natural world does not have a single “right” state.

The artwork is ever-changing; it is constantly erasing the existing state and at the same time creating something new. There are no correct interpretations. In fact, the work demonstrates the paradox that figures—from the goddess Kali to the economist Schumpeter—have articulated: the theory of creative destruction. Creation and destruction, life and death, are not contradictory but rather interwoven concepts. Thus, the work actually engages with nature rather than painting a picture of nature. In fact, such a work is just a snapshot of an ecosystem at a particular moment in time. “Garden” captures the essence of nature, the chemical reactions and the breakdowns, wherein nothing in nature is “right.” The beach is the way it should be, just like the mountain and the river, the forest and the desert, the valley and the canyon. All this was something else before the droplets fell from above and transformed the landscape. The gorge was a mountain slope, the glacier drifted down to the plateau and carved a valley under the sea. Everything is subject to continual transformation, continual flow, continental drift, continual decomposition, continual reactions, interactions and destruction.

It’s not until Man walks into the picture that some kind of imbalance occurs. The valley will be a landfill, far from being the „correct“ existence, a river will be lifeless, or the hill will become a city, and when it comes to man, nature’s continual transformation—the dual creation and destruction—suddenly are not so obvious or accepted. We stop seeing nature and our life seems to be aching to fight it the destructive side and they become „unnatural“. An old car, a broken television, an unused cabinet, a scratched CD, an old, sick or dead person: these things are ineffective and unnatural in our eyes, we do not see anything new, we only see an imbalance and decay. Suddenly it’s as if the understanding of the duality has been lost. The death side, the destructive side of nature becomes decay, damage, pollution.

Once one form has changed to another that is really nothing. Thus what man leaves behind is out of balance and it takes more time to understand how the droplet carves the stone and finally reaches a second equilibrium. But if we look at it, “Garden” helps us analyze and evaluate nature’s transformations: the rust that swells on the car’s windowpane, the silicon in the sink, white spots on the battery. It’s like Man has placed himself outside and above this intersection of creativity and destruction, thinking he can devote himself to be only on the side of growth and creation: he lives out a struggle with the destruction, finds material to work on the silicone in the bath, tries to keep the lawns neat and square, keep the destruction and the mess at bay, as if individuals and mankind could build, fix and improve these eternal droplets that fall and clear and carve the stones.

Good artwork helps us understand the world again and thus has always brought us new eyes or tools to handle the world—to perceive it and understand. They sometimes reveal the everyday, the quotidian—whether it is the everyday lava that Kjarval captured, or the Reykjavík that Tómas Guðmundsson captured in his poems, or the packaging that Warhol captured, or how Ragna Róbertsdóttir captured gravel, stones and salt. In Anna Rúnar’s garden, she captures and uncovers what is native to all works of art and all material. She captures the world’s creation but shows us that it is by no means transient, that there is no beginning or end to anything. She facilitates the process so we see it clearly, then perceive and think about the world again with a new perspective.

All our work will be the destruction and the transformation of what is temporary: a watercolor that captures forest and mountain has only taken a snapshot of time, grabbed one droplet in the whole process and captured it, but eventually the painting will yellow, the forest will be transformed and the mountain will erode slowly because of the droplets in the hollow stone, and lines of verdigris flows down the face of the nation’s hero and pollution stains the world’s marble statues, because everything is always in a process of becoming something else, the way it should be and has always been.

Andri Snær Magnason

Translated by Gabriel Dunsmith.

Photocredit: Courtesy of the artist.

Website: www.annaruntryggvadottir.net

Anna Julia’s Serenade

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

Anna Julia’s Serenade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think you capture that really well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

artzine would like to thank Anna Júlía for the interview.

Erin Honeycutt

Installation photos: Vigfús Birgisson. Portrett: Helga Óskarsdóttir

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

Playlist:

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

« Older Entries

Next Entries »