Suðsuðvestur, Keflavík, Iceland
We would like to find out about the video work that you are showing. During the singing parts the camera always moves horizontally. There is a feeling of security there that brings one home. Is this something that you recognise? Where is home?
The video piece is based on a dream I dreamt last winter. I don’t remember the exact songs that were being sung in the dream, but the choice of music and how the singing is performed expresses the atmosphere in the dream. I am not sure where home is but probably the search for oneself is the way home. That journey is terrifying and one is all alone. I think the feeling I experienced in one of the dreams I had as a child describes this journey very well. I was at a place somewhere in outer space where I experienced the Universe. I was scared, but at the same time I wanted to stay out there. It is frightening to think of outer space as ones home, its size and time is unfathomable. Singing as well as other forms of cultural expression helps to ground one to life on Earth.
You build walls and erase boarders simultaneously, why?
The wall in SSV is soluble. It is made from wax. Wax has the quality of being able to create a mass but at the same time to be immaterial. It is somewhere between a material mass and liquid, it melts and burns easily. I build walls I believe in order to clarify where I am at, and who I am, and at the same time I need to erase borders so that I can continue the journey.
In the video piece there are a few scenes that pull one away from the sense of security expressed by the singing? Why is this disturbance necessary? Why not just let us enjoy the singing?
The disturbance in the dream-sequence is the condition created when the wall disappears and one comes face to face with the Universe.
In your works we see the world at different stages the worlds that you show us can be categorized as chaos and systems, dream-reality and reality as you have pointed out. Where does the singing lead to? Does the singing bring one to an altered state of mind?
It is important for the atmosphere in the dream that those performing the songs know neither the melody nor the lyrics fully. This causes the singers to experience chaos and systems, mass and a sense of immateriality, dream-reality and reality, the outer eternity and the eternity within. This creates a rift between worlds.
A) Is there a difference between the subconscious and dreams? Are dreams an altered state? How do you prepare yourself to reach an altered state of mind?
B) Do you lay down laws or create rules in your works? Is the use of geometry a law or a variation on a theme to bring you along? Is repetition important to you?
Jung writes that dreams are a way for the individual to be in touch with the subconscious. Leading on from that, dreams can help a person to reach a sense of being whole. The geometry and the cosmology is my way to get around and contain the thought of the immensity of the Universe. When working on an exhibition I always use geometric drawing as a starting point, whether I later display the drawings at the exhibition is another matter. This is my way forward to reach a state of mind I need to be in when creating my exhibitions. I see repetition more as copying, such as my letters about the loop movements of the planets, geometric drawings that are printed on clothes etc. With that sort of copying, information is spread to people in a simple way, information that normally is not a part of people’s everyday life.
A) What part does time play in your works? Is it somehow compressed?
B) You sometimes use objects in your works, we can remember used shoes in the Living Art Museum, wax in Kling og Bang, knitting, clothes etc. What qualities are important to you in your choice of material?
Time is relative, depending on where we are at. Emotionally, subjectively and physically. For instance a conch carries within it a whole cosmos and can be experienced as such. From it can be read different time-spans, it tells a growth story the story of weather conditions and much more. The same can be said about shoes, textiles and clothes. The difference between the conch and the latter is that the conch refers to the universal, while the shoes the textiles and the clothes make references to the personal.