Ellen Ringstad, Hélène Førde, Sofia Eliasson, Emily Ilett, Moa Franzén
Limen – exhibition opening this Friday 20.00 at Premiss, Damsgårdsveien 35.
There will be a performance at about 20.30.
The exhibition will also be open Saturday and Sunday 12.00 – 18.00.
For more information see www.prmss.no

It is not enough to think happy thoughts. The flames die eventually, as dreams fade out, night becomes day, but the smoke still lingers in the air. The smell comes from the window but is concentrated in my bedroom. It must be the neighbours, firing up in the cold. There is no wind to transport it elsewhere. I am condemned to live in your chimney, and someone else in mine.

There’s something absurdly beautiful in a graffiti-bombed wall. Perhaps it’s the post-industrial, apocalyptic and dystopic I am attracted to. It’s certainly an acquired taste, most likely influenced by my ex, a «legendary» spraypainter:

«What do I think of tags? I can enjoy the beauty in a bombed wall or a bombed subway, although I understand that people dislike it (…). A bombed wall looks chaotic, but if you examine each tag, you might find there are aesthetic qualities. Writers often put a lot of effort in creating their tags. There’s also an element of rebellion to it, which may explain people’s disapproval – it’s something they cannot control. The way I see it, writers create something; that is a positive thing.»

- Interview with ‘Sean’, in ‘Gategallerier’ by Cecilie Høigård, 2002. Oslo: Pax Forlag (p. 50) (my translation).

Of course, the whole debate about graffiti and tagging is too complicated for me to discuss now, so I won’t go into it any further.

I will, however, write about the wall depicted in the photograph above, captured this week-end inside the Freetown Christiania. I felt triggered by it somehow; Interesting how layers upon layers with graffiti render the individual tags and texts unreadable, an abstracted soup of texture and hidden meaning. If these walls could talk. They scream in fact. I wonder if the first person to write his signature on this wall is still alive. There is a sad symbolism to it: we all want to make a mark upon the world before we are replaced and blend into the chaos. For what purpose, really?

A fellow-artist studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, complained to me about feeling alienated by today’s art world, calling it superficial and meaningless. She had recently been criticised by a colleague who disliked the use of auto-biographical elements in her artworks: «what makes your life so special we should bother to listen?» he asked her.

I go through my possessions, and find a box of crayons I have kept stored for 25 years, and attack the big sheet of paper with the same joy as one childhood friend, aged 4 or 5 at the time, who proudly offered me his abstract expressionistic drawing, as a gift; a token of our friendship. My preferences at that age were figurative castles, princes and princesses, and being a person of brutal honesty from an early age apparently, I told him his drawing was «ugly». That episode actually haunts me to this day. Who was I to judge? The moral, I guess, there is something valuable to learn from another person’s genuine attempts, in life, in art or in-between.

Youtube has given new life to Claude Shannon’s ‘Ultimate Machine’. One of the videos, seen by 6.499.191 viewers as I write, showing a reconstruction of Shannons invention, has been nicknamed «The most useless machine», a dysphemism I disagree with.

Nothing could be simpler. It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath it emerges a hand. The hand reaches down, turns the switch off and retreats into the box. With the finality of a closing coffin, the lid snaps shut, the buzzing ceases and peace reigns once more. The psychological effect, if you do not know what to expect, is devastating. There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing — absolutely nothing — except switch itself off.

- Arthur C. Clarke, The Ultimate Machine, Harper’s Aug. 1958 ⁽¹⁾

Shannon (1916-2001) was an American mathematician, elctronic engineer, and cryptographer, known as the father of «Information theory» ⁽³⁾. The ‘Ultimate Machine’ was inspired by Marvin Minsky, a cognitive scientist in the field of Artificial Intelligence ⁽⁴⁾.

How can someone possibly think this useless when, with the simplest visual and mechanical language, it manages to touch upon so many existential subjects; the human condition vs artificial life, freedom of choice, fatality, life death? And yet, it is such a humoristic little thing. I especially enjoy the video above (minus the title), which is a more abstracted version of Shannon’s original (but you can find a whole bunch of different re-designs on youtube if you’re interested).

Sources:

(1) Arthur C. Clarke, The Ultimate Machine, Harper’s Aug.1958, quoted in Scott Horton. 2008. Clarke’s ultimate Machine. Harper’s Magazine Online: March 19, 2008. Available from URL http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002682 [Downloaded 2011-11-29].
(2) Kevin Kelly. The (Unspeakable) Ultimate Machine. Available from URL http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/the_unspeakable.php [Downloaded 2011-11-29].
(3) Wikipedia.org. Claude Shannon. Available from URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon [Downloaded 2011-11-29].
(4) Wikipedia.org. Marvin Minsky. Available from URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky [Downloaded 2011-11-29].

My exhibition mon-uh-lawg opened on friday. It’s a performative installation in a small space with huge windows facing one of the main pedestrian streets is Bergen. The space lies outside the Bergen National Academy of the Arts, right next to the train station, and gets a fair amount of attention from passers-by. The installation is meant to be seen only from the outside, but it is lit day and night, thus being «open» and «public».

The nice thing about art in public spaces is that whomever wishes can experience it. There are no gallery guards telling you you’re too close, no one to guide you towards the correct interpretation. Once it’s out there, it’s out, for a broader audience to own.

I wish I could be a fly, listening in on all the reactions (or lack thereof). It pleased me, for example, to find a charcoal-graffiti in front of it saying «cool art!» or that the animal-rights activist group NOAH started their demonstration on precisely this spot yesterday, thereby interpreting and recontextualizing my work. Here are some images:

“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of interrupting him,) “I’ll give him sixpence. I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.”

- Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1865.

Ellen Ringstad: mon-uh-lawg. Opening 11.11.11 @ 18:00. Galleri Bokboden, Marken, Bergen. Open day and night between 11-23 November. See Map.

Here’s the Philippe Genty play, by the way, from youtube:

My first thought this morning was, no wait! That was not my first thought. My second thought this morning as I looked at the watch on my almost transparent wrist, lit up by the purple light outside signalling another rainy morning (Don’t get me wrong, I love rain), was not that the watch wasn’t there, on my wrist, anymore, but that I had an alien tattoo on my forearm. No, wait again, I had a thought before that: «I think my head is aching». I think my head is aching. My head IS aching.

Fuck. A Tattoo? I, who cannot handle commitment? How did this come about? And WHAT is it? The face of an anarchist? A lemniscate and a circle? – Isn’t that, what Norwegians, literally translated, call «butter on grease»? The symbol of Infinity within a circle? – Isn’t that a contradiction? And what is that nose? A minus sign? Minus infinity? Does subtracting infinity from infinity leave you with zero? These questions are too demanding and my head is still aching.

…but I cannot protect my overactive brain from itself. It persists and insists, rejects, rephrases, until it geniously tilts the symbol ninety degrees. Ahh! It’s an eight. Minus Eight, (Oh no, here comes another digression), reminding me of a couple of my school colleagues from LFO with dyslexia who always ended up on the opposite side of the grading spectrum. Even though the lowest grade was 0, in dictation, or Dictée, as it is called in french, the grading of a dyslexic is a bottomless pit. At one point, this unfortunate individual reached -98 (or maybe not exactly -98… I have a vague feeling of the number getting minus bigger each time I tell the story). Me, I, Moi, on the other hand, was a proud «excellent». Perhaps I wasn’t as strong in other subjects. But it doesn’t matter, really, I was excellent in french orthography; there is no point in recollecting too much of the negative stuff. My hypothesis is therefore: Yesterday was great!

So, here I am, it’s Saturday morning and pain is only psychological. Somewhere in my purse, there should be a camera. Maybe there are pictures. There are. Two. These two. I recognize the guy on the right, bathing in the red light like in a Wim Wenders movie: it’s my friend and fellow-artist Rasmus.

It strikes me as peculiar that the compulsive documentation-addict that I am only managed to capture two photographical testimonies of yesterday. I need to dig deeper into my memory. I start by digging deeper into my purse and find the program for The 8^th Ekko-Festival, a festival for electronic music and art. As I look through the pages, and compare it to the image above, left, I remember exploring the interactive sound pieces by Joyce Hinterding. The coal/gold lines, that constitute her minimalistic drawings, function as antennas picking up electromagnetic signals, which are then amplified (That’s what the above mentioned programme, which I now hold in my hands, depicted in the photograph below, tells me.)

There were already many fingerprints on the drawings by Hinterding, and no warning signs to keep a distance, so I allowed myself to touch the drawing, which apparently many others had done before me. It made a loud noise, like the banging on a drum. Funny. I played it a bit more. I don’t think people were meant to touch, but I guess that’s what happens when you place a semi-interactive piece of art in a room full of hedonists, without instructions on how to behave.

It comes back in chunks now: interactive art, silver balloons, drinking, music, smiling, drinking (- where did I get money to drink?) talking, talking some more, eating peanuts, carrying an umbrella, walking (- It must have been a gift.). Yesterday was great indeed.

Two more things stand out:

1. Watching a funny interview* with swedish writer Torgny Lindgren, who shared some views on memory and the failed attempts to reconstruct the past: «I am very suspicious of people who claim to remember this or that. I think they make it up. (…) I believe in the biography only as a literary form. There are examples of biographies which are marvellous to read, but we should not believe a single sentence.» says Lindgren.

2. Participating in the wonderful interactive performance Anarchiv #3: Songs of Love and War by the German choreographer-duo Deufert & Plischke, who “draw the most radical conclusion from the current state of affairs. Their belief is that, just as one can never reconstruct someone else’s work, one’s own work also defies reconstruction and even complete understanding. … even the spectator has an influence on it.” (Pieter Tj’ onck / De Morgen)

I’m realizing that reconstructing yesterday has taken most of today. Trying to mend the pieces together seems like an infinite process, a physical impossibility. My arse is getting old of sitting, my eyes are wrinckling from watching the computer screen, I need a shower. The tattoo half-heartedly disappears into the sink, leaving only a ghostly imprint. A reassuring sentence caresses my body: «You will not manage to see and hear everything. There is no over-view: you are in the ANARCHIV.»

From Anarchive # 3: Songs of Love and War. Borrowed with permission from the Deuffert & Plischke website. Foto: Anja Beutler

*(approximately 15:35 into the programme)

I’ve been checking out the possibility of re-constructing ‘the piece’ in different public spaces. Migrating from one spot to another, thereby changing the context of display, it will never be the same.

«If one accepts the proposition that the meanings of utterances, actions and events are affected by their ‘local position’, by the situation of which they are part, then a work of art, too, will be defined in relation to its place and position. Reflecting this notion, semiotic theory proposes, straightforwardly, that reading implies ‘location’. To ‘read’ the sign is to have located the signifier, to have recognised its place within the semiotic system. One can go on from this to argue that the location, in reading, of an image, object, or event, its positioning in relation to political, aesthetic, geographical, institutional, or other discourses, all inform what ‘it’ can be said to be.

Site-specificity, then, can be understood in terms of this process, while a ‘site-specific work’ might articulate and define itself  through properties, qualities or meanings produced in specific relationships between an ‘object’ or ‘event’ and a position it occuppies. After the ‘substantive’ notion of site, such site-specific work might even assert a ‘proper’ relationship with its location, claiming an ‘original and fixed position’ associated with what it is. This formulation echoes the sculptor Richard Serra’s response to the public debate, and legal action, over the removal of his ‘site-spcific’ sculpture Tilted Arc of 1981. Offering a key definition of ‘site-specific’ work, Serra concluded simply and unequivocally that ‘To move the work is to destroy the work’. To move the site-specific work is to re-place it, to make it something else.» (Kaye. 2000.)

Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc is «fixed in shape», as opposed to mine, which actually changes shape. If moved, Serra’s work is destroyed on a conceptual level, because the work is both the sculpture and its relation to the surroundings. My sculpture/structure/installation/intervention, then, explores adaptability and metamorphosis. To repeatedly build and break the tie between matter and site is, in fact, the work.

Sources:

Kaye, Nick. 2000. Site-specific Art. Performance, Place and Documentation. London & New York: Routledge.

“Is this the surprise? To see myself?” (- From the movie)

Are you a prisoner of the human condition? Do you feel like a hostage held captive inside your own shell, suffocated by who you are or what you’ve become? Then the auto-biographical memoir «The Diving Bell and the Butterfly» by Jean-Doninique Bauby might give you some perspective.

“Does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?” asks the movie character of ‘Bauby’, based on the life of former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, who, aged 42, suffers a massive stroke, leaving his entire body paralyzed except his eyes. The state is referred to as «locked-in syndrome». The ‘Diving Bell’ is a metaphor for his claustrophobic condition: he is intellectually healthy but physically impaired. The only way he can communicate with the outside world is by blinking his left eyelid. His therapist rearranges the french alphabet relative to the frequency of use (E-S-A-R-I-N-T-U-L etc), and Bauby blinks his eye when the correct letter comes up. Letter by letter, word by word, he is able to narrate his point of view.

“Other than my eye, two things aren’t paralyzed, my imagination and my memory” (- From the movie)

I just saw the film adaptation by Julian Schnabel twice and now I’m reading the book, recommended to me by my mother almost half-a-life ago.

“Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.” – From the memoirs of Jean-Dominique Bauby

The film is an absoloutely stunning piece of work (but don’t watch the trailer, it doesn’t do the movie much justice): I’m pleased that it was shot in the original language and that Schnabel learned french for the occasion. His background as a neo-expressionist painter surely influences the choice of dynamic visual qualities which enables the viewer to emotionally relate to Bauby from a first-person perspective. Despite the seriousness of his condition, Bauby maintains a delicate sense of humour, and Julian Schnabel successfully manages to balance the depressingly heavy against the lightness of a butterfly.

“Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter – when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.” – From the memoirs of Jean Dominique Bauby

The insight into Bauby’s misfortune brings my attention onto the pleasures of life, and, for a long time, relatively speaking of course, I am inspired with a volonté to do good, to enjoy life fully. I suspend not my disbelief but my belief. Gradually, as the ashes of empathy slowly emerge, my own mental diving bell drags me down again and I’m reminded that no matter the physical condition, it is impossible to escape yourself.

In loving memory of J.A. I hope you escaped.

“The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities (…) the women we were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner.”

- From “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Twice in two days I’ve watched julian Schnabel’s film adaptation of «The Diving Bell and The Butterfly», which has now become one of my favourite movies, one to watch before you die and one I hope to enjoy multiple times before I die. It features Tom Waits’ song «All the World is Green» which, well, speaks for itself.

Tom Waits wrote this song for Robert Wilson’s interpretation of the famous stage play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner; «The cut worm forgives the plow» is a William Blake quote.

PS: Sorry for the image of the ladybug on the green leaves in the youtube-video below. It makes it too cute for my taste. If I find another one without disturbing silly (in my not-so-humble opinion) romantic illustrations of this sort, I’ll change the link immediately. In the meantime, enjoy the music.

Last week, in the 7th floor project room of the Academy, I showed a big plastic sculpture, or installation. Call it what you want.

This complex structure is suspended with hooks attached to the ceiling and walls, constantly changing not only by adding or subtracting material, but through the displacement of my body in four dimensions (width, depth, height, time). The fourth dimension, time, allows for a mental displacement too: as I am influenced by all kinds of sensory inputs such as changes in daylight, music, mood, research and discussions, I gradually understand the contours of something else than what I first had in mind. Time, reflection and interaction sheds light on an intuitive way of making. Curiosity is my driving force. Surprise is my reward.

1. Interaction and performativity. The audience is encouraged to walk around and interact with the installation in any way they want. This allows for a certain dynamism, but the most dynamic part, the full working process, is unavailable to everyone but myself. Someone mentioned that they could imagine the structure growing by itself, but I replied that it would only be an illusion of growth, not actual growth of course. Perhaps I should start sharing the entire permormative ephemeral process of making and not only the static end result.

2. Site-specificity. I wish to observe how certain materials transform in different spaces/contexts, and to resolve how I can adapt accordingly. This time my focus was more on the formal/aesthetical/sensual aspects and less on taking satisfactory advantage of the limitations/possibilities within this particular space. A colleague asked what would happen if I switched the synthetic yellow lights off, using the external light source in stead. That is why, throughout the second half of the exhibition, ceiling lights were turned off, which served its purpose much better.

Sscreenshots from the live-stream seminar on street art at NHH (Norwegian School of Economics) 2011-09-06.

What happens if you mash an elitist academic institution like the Norwegian School of Economics with the anti-authoritative counter-cultural street art movement? Seminar on street art at the Norwegian School of Managament NHH – it was live streamed here (but is now unavailable). More information on capitalism.no.

Some screenshots taken from a live web-broadcasting from the 7th floor projectroom of the Academy, where I am currently trying to install some plastic. Underneeth is a snapshot of the process, somehow reminding me of the explosive wild-style graffiti. Sculptural graffiti.

«I bring them to our River Lethe (…) from which, as soon as they have drunk down a long forgetfulness, they wash away by degrees the perplexity of their minds, and so wax young again»

- Desiderius Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly (1515)

Ellen Ringstad. Intitled.

I collect everything and so I am bound to reincarnate as a squirrel-like creature. I am a puzzle composed of my personal and collective memories. The loss of a piece of memory may prevent me from depicting the whole image, the cartography of who and why I am. Looking through an old notebook from secondary school, for example, I totally recall how I was caught by the teacher’s transparent, blue eyes, weary sweater (red, knitted), having the same incorrect answer as my classmate. I sense the smell (Disappointed, nauseatingly sweet; like sour milk). I had forgotten….or apparently not. All I needed was that notebook with mathematic formulae to remind me. How has this humiliating episode and every other little episode paved the road of my life, consciously, subconsciously? The memories persist apparently, chaotic as my basement storage, waiting to be unlocked and cleaned; waiting, only, for a key. That’s why I collect little keys. I don’t want to forget. I’m not ready to die yet. What’s the point in becoming a squirrel?

Does it worry you how much we rely on the computer to memorize our past life? How does this affect our own capacity to remember? Mine has deteriorated for sure, bit by bit. And so, to further ilustrate my point, my harddrive crashed recently of course, teaching me a lesson of early Alzheimers. I foresaw it would happen, but too lazy to take proactive measures, my last back-up was in 2009. So I might reincarnate as a sloth instead. What’s the point in becoming a sloth? Our actions have consequences; lack of actions also.

Interestingly, the information is still there, on the disk, but the deciphring key is lost or perhaps simply misplaced. So what, really? Sometimes bad things yield good results. Do I really need all that stuff? I’m being held captive by nostalgia. It’s claustrophobic! I want out. Funny how secrets travel, sings Davis Bowie in the last scene of David Lynch’s Lost Highway.

The dynamic sculpture Intitled (see above) is a roll of my private documents glued together, gradually increasing in diameter until the day I die. The title refers the (un)fortunate unplanned incident when I glued the working notes and title suggestions for this particular sculpture inside itself. Intitled is a compromise, rendering the information unavailable but reminding me it’s there – it’s real. It happened! It cannot be undone. There is no future without a past, but the past has no future. Nostalgia sucks. Get over it. I’m ready for something better.

Note: This text is partly based on «Glemme å Glemme», a text I wrote in 2010.

«The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.»

- From George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Part I, Ch.1.

No more bullying! I woke up this morning to birds still singing, but with emptiness in my gut, sensing the presence of a mare.

«Kanskje du spør i angst,
udekket, åpen:
hva skal jeg kjempe med
hva er mitt våpen?»

(Fearful your question,
Defenceless, open
What shall I fight with?
What is my weapon? )

- Nordahl Grieg «Til Ungdommen» (1936), [English translation by Rod Sinclair (2004)] {ref}

This verse repeats in my head as I recall the memorial service for the «2011 Norway attacks» at the Oslo Cathedral in Norway on sunday. The atmosphere in my home country has been of despair, fear, sorrow, apathy, anger. It seems for now that we are united «more in sorrow than in anger». But let’s not undermine our aggressive feelings either. I’m fearful of a future, after life has normalized, where repressed sentiments might resurge under that seemingly controlled surface, where dialogue and communication is yet again strained, giving nutrition to escalating conflicts. Please! Let’s respond to «hate» with intelligence. Love. Hate. Do we even know what these words mean? Let’s discuss difficult subjects with openness, honesty and self-insight.

Our prime minister Jens Stoltenberg and youth camp leader Eskil Pedersen have encouraged  people  to «meet terror and violence with more democracy and will continue to fight against intolerance» (ref). The crown Prince delivered a speech on monday, encouraging freedom of expression.

«Etter 22.juli kan vi aldri tillate oss å tenke at våre meninger er uten betydning. Vi må møte hver dag rustet til kamp for det frie og åpne samfunnet som vi er så glad i. Kjære unge, dere er (…) vårt håp. Det er dere som skal forme og bestemme hvilket Norge vi skal ha fremover. (…) Vi står overfor et valg. Vi kan ikke gjøre det som skjedde ugjort, men vi kan velge hva dette skal gjøre med oss som samfunn og som enkeltmennesker. Vi kan velge at ingen skal måtte stå alene. Vi kan velge å stå sammen. (…) Sammen har vi en jobb å gjøre. Det er en jobb som må gjøres rundt middagsbordet, i kantina, i organisasjonslivet (…). Vi vil ha et Norge hvor vi lever sammen (…) i frihet til å mene og ytre oss.»

- H.R.H Crown Prince Haakon Magnus of Norway. Speech delivered 25.July 2011, after the bombings of the Government Quarters and shootings at Utøya. {Ref}

I mourn with those who have lost their loved ones. I mourn for my city of birth and for a country in turmoil. It depresses me to read, for example, facebook-groups wanting to change the death penalty laws (Norway does not have Death Penalty) or articles saying that «there is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer».And yet I also understand the frustration of the vindictive.

Although I don’t believe in dogmas or absolute truths, I can nonetheless find guidance in religious texts of all sorts. These two verses from the Bible offer me hope, in this vindictive world we live in, hardened by fear and ignorance, of which we are all guilty.

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44).

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:17-21).

Am I really awake? Then why do I fear the mare’s presence growing stronger? Breathe, don’t panic. Breathe, don’t resign. I need to understand the mind of Breivik.

«It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.» Sun Tzu – The Art of War {Ref}

My intuition tells me that the problem lies much deeper than in the symptomatic violent actions of this single individal. The «Face of Evil», now personified by Anders Behring Breivik, might not be the exception to the rule in this supposedly idyllic society. In my opinion, the waters have been treacherous for quite some time, but we have turned a blind eye to it. Breivik writes in his manifesto that resorting to violence was his last option. Why does he feel this way? Labelling him a madman doesn’t help me understand, to the contrary.

«To use the word “monster” of Breivik is only an attempt to distance ourselves from the worst aspects of our own human nature. Those who are honest with themselves know what crimes they could commit behind the lace curtains» {Ref}

We cannot escape nightmares by hiding under the bed or by sweeping difficult subjects under the carpet. I write these words not to provoke, not to support, not to comdemn. I need to understand. To me, life is meaningless without honesty, without self-insight, without reflection. My bleak hope is that the ideology of dialogue and genuine openness will prevail. We must not bully or exclude those with controversial ideas, but meet them with counter-arguments, otherwise the bullied at some point will become the bullier.

I have long felt that certain subjects cannot be openly discussed in the Norwegian democratic society without being publicly ridiculed. To withdraw from a discussion is both the fault of a powerful bullier as well as the cowardice of the bullied. Let’s be brave enough to discuss these questions honestly, openly, and in a serious manner, without fear or self-censorship, so we don’t end up the totalitarian, paranoic and dystopian world that George Orwell’s warns us about in his book 1984. Without honesty, there is no hope.

“To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings”

- From the protagonist of “Nineteen eighty-Four” by George Orwell.

References:

Breivik, Anders Behring. 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. Available from ULR http://www.kevinislaughter.com/wp-content/uploads/2083+-+A+European+Declaration+of+Independence.pdf [Downloaded 2011-07-23].

Daily Mail. 2011-07-26. Face of Evil: Killer Gunman Tells Judge his Terror Network has Two more Cells and Says he Acted to Save Europe from Islam. Available from URL http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018506/Norway-bombing-Anders-Behring-Breivik-acted-save-Europe-Islam.html [Downloaded 2011-07-26].

Facebook.com. 2011. Support Group: Ja til Dødsstraff for Anders Behring Breivik. Available from URL http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ja-til-d%C3%B8dsstraff-for-Anders-Behring-Breivik/209944629057705 Downloaded 2011-07-27]

Grieg, Nordahl. 1936. Til Ungdommen. Available from Wikipedia.org on URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Til_Ungdommen. Translation to english by Rod Sinclair (2004). [Downloaded 2011-07-24].

Johnson, Boris. 2011-07-25. There is Nothing to Study in the Mind of Norway’s Mass Killer.Available from URL http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fcomment%2Fcolumnists%2Fborisjohnson%2F8658872%2FAnders-Breivik-There-is-nothing-to-study-in-the-mind-of-Norways-mass-killer.html&h=sAQCb9Ars [Downloaded 2011-07-26]. 

Orwell, George. 1948. Nineteed Eighty-Four. Available from URL http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html [Downloaded 2011-07-28]. 

Phillips, Francis. 2011-07-27. To Call Anders Breivik a Monster is to Distance Ourselves from the Worst Aspects of Human Nature. Catholic Herald.co.uk. Available from URL http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/07/27/anders-behring-breivik-and-the-mystery-of-evil/ [Downloaded 2011-07-27].

NRK. 2011. Kongen og Dronningen Gråt av Sang i Domkirken. Available from URL http://www.nrk.no/video/kongen_og_dronningen_grat_av_sang_i_domkirken/A4B052A38D6A34DA/ [Downloaded 2011-07-28]. 

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In Act I, Scene 2. Available from URL http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=1&Scene=2&Scope=scene [Downloaded 2011-07-25].

Stoltenberg, Jens. Sjokkerende og Feigt. Speach by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, 2011-07-22. Available from URL http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/smk/aktuelt/nyheter/2011/sjokkerende-og-feigt.html?id=651774 [Downloaded 2011-07-24]

Sun Tzu. Art of War. Quoted in Wikiquote.org. Available from URL http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu[Downloaded 2011-07-28].

Townsend, Mark and Tracy Mcveigh. 2011-07-23. Utøya, the Island Paradise Turned Into Hell by Anders Behring Breivik. Guardian.co.uk. Available from URL http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/23/utoya-mass-murder-anders-behring-breivik [Downloaded 2011-07-24]

Wikipedia.org. 2011 Norway Attacks. Available from URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks [Downloaded 2011-07-28].

“Who sleeps with me at night is my secret/But if you insist on knowing I will reveal/Fear sleeps with me (…) Scream if you can help me/From what is within/I wished to die/But I know that he will be waiting anyway/Near the foot of the bridge” (my translation of Amalia Rodrigues’ famous interpretaion of Reinaldo Ferreira’s poem Medo. Music by Alain Oulman)

Quem dorme à noite comigo
É meu segredo,
Mas se insistirem, lhes digo,
O medo mora comigo,
Mas só o medo, mas só o medo.

E cedo porque me embala
Num vai-vem de solidão,
É com silêncio que fala,
Com voz de móvel que estala
E nos perturba a razão.

Gritar quem pode salvar-me
Do que está dentro de mim
Gostava até de matar-me,
Mas eu sei que ele há-de esperar-me
Ao pé da ponte do fim.

Have you ever been (mentally) disturbed by loud people outside your hotel room? Did you ever slam the door in their face to shut them up? Here’s a slightly more polite way to encourage them to keep their voices down. You might even get enough sleep so that you’ll arrive in time for the hotel’s delicious breakfast buffet.

Please Don't Disturb in the corridors of Rica Airport Hotel Stavanger

Monochromatic Panorama in Stavanger

The first signs of summer finally reached Stavanger city today and the centre has been boiling with sun-thirsty people and animals. Except from a poor Chiwawa dressed in red and white-striped wool nickers, most had seized the opportunity to show off some of their frail skin, bleached after a long, grey winter.

I’ve never been particularly fond of large concentrations of people, and reading George Orwell’s 1984 enhances my necessity for space and privacy (which may seem paradoxical as I publish this stuff for anyone to read whilst panoptically sitting in front of a low light optimized webcam dressed only in my underwear happily unaware that some idiot with potentially foul intensions might easily hack ito my computer and capture me pondering on the keyboard without any make-up on. Or worse.)

I decided to grab some fast take away food from Burger King. To ease my conscience, I chose a healthy burger, to match my sporty clothes, but had to wait three whole minutes amongst human pheromones and oil stench, then grabbed the burger, quickly turned around, and noticed a man standing behind me. It was the same man who had handed me a plastic bag at a supermarket on the other side of town earlier! Naturally I decided to hurry back to my hotel without looking back. Could he be a burger-spy?

The huge panorama window in my room on the 11^th floor framed the city like a picture-perfect postcard, but the urban view only reminded me of all the cacophonous ant-like colonies in the streets below I was trying to escape from. I jumped into bed, and stayed low, so no one would catch me eating a burger. Ants have a tendency to get in everywhere whenever they smell food. Did you know that they may form 15-25% of the terrestrial animal biomass?

The first bite indicated why the above mentioned burger is so-called healthy, and I’ll tell you why: it tastes like shit, which discourages you from eating it (Is it really chicken? Tastes more like Soylent Green-stuff). I aimed for the garbage bin and scored (YES!) but for some freaky reason, the TV (or perhaps telescreen?) turned itself on automatically. I repeated my Tinker Bell mantra («Think happy thoughts») three times. When I looked out the window, the panoramic postcard had been replaced with a soothing Pihlesque monochromatic painting, although not in the same harmonic 4:5 ratio as Thomas Pihls’ Prearticulation series, hinting that the panorama/paranoia was still there should I accidentally lift my head from the pillow.

 The title Pre-articulation «suggests something like a pre- or extra linguistic state» (1).

 «I am interested in the “place” or “moment” – I don’t know what to name it – where senses are challenged to be heightened. For instance: Did the doorbell ring? – The question will make you more alert as a listener. It is an attempt to grasp delicate and frail phenomena. Due to the information culture and the aesthetic invasion of our senses – this quality is often not activated as a source of awareness and wish for insight. This microscopic “opening” has extraordinary potential to cultivate sensitivity and alertness both personally and communal. Because awareness is an inactivated and unguarded deep need, this opening to our “soul” is also discovered, occupied and bombarded by the contemporary aesthetic overproduction.» (1)

 The outside world fades away into a monochrome silence as I gradually slip into a transcendental state. But just like Pihls paintings, the sky outside is hardly monochrome: although it reminds of a smooth surface of a painting,  it is in constant change. In our hyper-visual world, the slow and subtile offers a place for reflection (2). The blue-grey surface gradually fades to black as I drift into a time-space-existence-bubble.

Little luminous dots move around against the black contrast now and suddenly the telescreen turns itself on once more. Another coincidence? Clearly one cannot completely escape this imposing world, but it is possible to find occasional time-outs.

Thomas Pihl standing in front of a painting from his Prearticulations-series. Photo: Rasmus Hungnes

PS: Read more about my teacher Thomas Pihl, who will show works at the exhibition entitled Personal Structures Space Time Existence at Palazzo Bembo during the Venice Biennale 2011 (La Biennale de Venezia), on the following links.

• http://www.newyorkartworld.com/reviews/pihl.html
• http://www.personalstructures.org/index.php?page=203&lang=de&item=56&n=0
• http://www.nattogdag.no/kunst/artikler/4927/en-estetisk-nytelse-med-etisk-innflytelse

Sources:

•  Burger King. Fedon King Chicken. Available from URL: http://www.burgerking.no/produkter/king-delight/fedon-king-chicken/  [Downloaded 2011-07-13].
• Goddard, Donald. 2001. Thomas Pihl: Paintings. New York Art World. Available from URL: http://www.newyorkartworld.com/reviews/pihl.html [Downloaded 2011-07-13].
• (2) Hugnes, Rasmus. 2011. En Estetisk Nytelse med Etisk Innflytelse. Natt og Dag Nettutgave.  Available from URL: http://www.nattogdag.no/kunst/artikler/4927/en-estetisk-nytelse-med-etisk-innflytelse [Downloaded 2011-07-13].
• (1) Lodermeyer, Peter. 2003. Thomas Pihl: Interview from the publication “Personal Structures”. Available from URL: http://www.personalstructures.org/index.php?page=203&lang=de&item=56&n=0 [Downloaded 2011-07-13].
• Wikipedia.org. Ant. Available from URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant [Downloaded 2011-07-13].

The city of Haugesund is, except for a short strip next to the strategically important sound Smedasundet, not an exceptionally beautiful town, according to a colleague of mine that is. I suspect it depends upon which filter of expectation one navigates by, and so, that particular Saturday, I decided to apply an open-minded filter. I took a stroll over a bridge without name to the small island Hasseløya, og Hazel Island, but found no Hazelnuts. Perhaps it had dematerialized in the strong gale which blew across. Rather I avoided colliding with a newspaper, which, given my quick reactions, hit a local bush instead, as you may observe in one of the images below. I wouldn’t want my face covered in trash. I looked around, proud as a peacock, but no one was there to witness my eminent dodge, which may have reminded an attentive by-passer of that famous Matrix-scene. I was even dressed in black and had cool sunglasses on. I may, if not mistaken, even have had a cool expression on my face, but it is hard to tell, as I cannot see myself from the outside, even though I also play the honourable dual role as the narrator of this particular story. What I could see though, was how the neighborhood reminded me of a nuclear no-go-zone. Perhaps I had missed a warning-sign on the way? The front-door lying in the middle of the street certainly felt alarming enough. On the other side, it was a place to breathe, as the wind was supplying my lungs with high-pressured oxygen. I was enjoying this substitute dimension for an indeterminable time lapse, when a black car pulled over and three males, all at once, asked me for driving directions to the place “where the young people go”. As I showed the Cerberus off, I remembered that there was still time to cross the bridge.

“Pourtant il nous reste à rêver
Pourtant il nous reste à savoir
Et tous ces loups qu’il faut tuer
Tous ces printemps qu’il reste à boire
Désespérance ou désespoir
Il nous reste à être étonnés
Pourquoi faut-il que les hommes s’ennuient”

- Jacques Brel, “Pourquoi faut-il que les hommes s’ennuyent”

Jacques Brel sings “Pourquoi faut’il que les hommes s’ennuyent“, translated: why must mankind be bored? Curiosity is the best remedy against boredom and one way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge is to watch documentaries. Here’s the place to find some of them online: Documentaryheaven.com. Entertainment AND food for thought. Perfect.

Plastic installation in the making

I was working on this plastic sculpture/installation, and a colleague tipped me off about a video (see below) in which long, heavy field plastic covers gets sucked into a whirlwind. I recommend you to turn off the red speech bubble, or else the annoying pop-up text might disturb the experience.

Yes well uhm. Some recent images from my atelier for all your eyes only.

Foto: Rasmus Hungnes

The end (of the semester) is near already. Time to clean up, sort out, throw away.   Throw away? No way! While everyone else is emptying their workspaces, I roam around in the container located outside the Academy building for materials I can use. Unbelievable what people discard! I don’t really have any storage space for it, but for now I’m just as temporarily happy as I might have been if my parents had bought that My little Pony when I was a kid. Apparently all that lego I inherited from my cousins have done me much more good, and besides that pony might not have been allowed to keep its pretty little tail anyway.

The Organizers of the Sofia Paper Art Biennial 2011 and myself at the National Art Gallery Sofia

I had the opportunity to  visit the capital of Bulgaria for a few days in early May to experience the 2011 Sofia Paper Art Biennial, where I am exhibiting a paper sculpture at the Sofia National Gallery for Foreign Art.  If you are an attentive reader of my blog, you may already know that there were some transportation confusions, but let’s not dwell on the past. The sculpture and the exhibition finally had its vernissage this  Saturday, May 21,  and sources say that The National Gallery had a staggering 6000 visitors on that day alone!

I  did not get to see my sculpture installed unfortunately, but I saw some of the other exhibitions in connection with the Biennial (see slideshow below).

Daniela Todorova and Todor Todorov, the organizers of the event, were great guides and taught me that Bulgaria is famous for three things: Golden Treasures, Rose Oil and Yoghurt. In fact, the bacteria that transforms milk into yoghurt is named “Lactobacillus Bulgaricus“, which reminds me of an encounter with a local taxi-driver who claimed to work for the Bulgarian secret service and who thought it would me impress me enough to marry him.  Chaperoning might be a thing of the past, but it felt very comforting to have my mother there with me.