Malmö Art Academy Yearbook 2009–2010

Malmö Art Academy 

Yearbook 2009–2010

2009–2010 Yearbook 2009–2010 Yearb0ok 

Table of Contents Foreword MFA2 

Elin Behrens 

Andreas Nilsson 

Per Kristian Nygård 

Hans Scherer 

Julian Stalbohm 

Agneta Strindinger 

Dea Svensson 

Ella Tillema 

Thale Vangen 

Fredrik Værslev 

Sara Wallgren 

MFA1 

Emil Ekberg 

Celie Eklund 

Karen Gimle 

Sarah Jane Gorlitz 

Jorun Jonasson 

Ingrid Koslung 

Ove Kvavik 

Juha Laakkonen 

Eric Length 

António Martins Leal 

Olof Nimar 

Pauliina Pietilä 

Titas Silovas 

John Skoog (exchange student) 

Asgeir Skotnes 

Susanne Svantesson 

Gunnhild Torgersen 

Lars Andreas Tovey Kristiansen 

Örn Alexander Ámundason 

2 3 

BFA3 

Søren Aagaard Jensen 

Majd Abdel Hamid 

Zardasht Faraj 

Malin Franzén 

Tim Hansen 

Nina Jensen 

Tomas Lundgren 

Stine Midtsæter 

Isis Mühleisen 

Max Ockborn 

Niklas Persson 

Danilo Stankovic´ 

Maiken Stene 

Johanna Stillman 

BFA2 

Daniel Peder Askeland 

Martin Berring 

Matilde K Böcher 

Nathalie Fuica Sánchez 

Tiril Hasselknippe 

Susanne Johansson 

Stine Kvam 

Henning Lundkvist 

David Nilson 

Maria Norrman 

Eva Roel 

Jessica Sanderheim 

Julia Stepp 

Stine Wexelsen Goksøyr 

BFA1 

Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard 

Jóhan Martin Christiansen 

Marten Damgaard 

Cathrine Hellberg 

Elsine Hoff Levinsen 

Arvid Hägg 

Helena Olsson 

Michael Rold 

Emil Rønn Andersen 

Ihra Lill Scharning 

Jesper Weileby 

Madeleine Åstrand 

PhD 

Julie Ault 

Matthew Buckingham 

Mats Eriksson 

Frans Jacobi 

Simon Sheikh 

Apolonija Šušteršič 

Courses

This yearbook, like all yearbooks from the Malmö Art 

Academy, contains visuals and texts by students at the 

BFA and MFA levels, as well as by the six participants 

in the doctoral research programme. The Malmö 

Art Academy is proud to be part of Lund University, 

Scandinavia’s largest, and the yearbook is one 

important tool for fulfilling our commitment to what 

is usually called the ‘third mission’ of the universities: 

actively staying in contact with the society that embeds 

and nurtures us. Our first two missions are of course 

education and research. Other important tools for 

making the Academy accessible to the general public 

is our gallery, KHM, in which all graduating students 

exhibit their work, and our Annual Exhibition in the 

middle of May, when the entire Academy is turned 

into a public art gallery. It is only natural that many 

of the images in this book document installations at 

KHM from December 2009 to May 2010, and from the 

Annual Exhibition in May 2010. 

This year, like all years at the Academy, offered good 

examples of both continuity and change. The so-called 

Bologna System, the new two-tier organisation of higher 

education throughout Europe that also includes the 

fine art academies, has been in place at the Malmö Art 

Academy for a couple of years already. Yet in April 2010 

the KHM gallery hosted our first-ever group exhibition 

of an entire class of third-year students in the BFA 

programme. I wish to thank our two Senior Lecturers 

Maria Hedlund and P O Persson for their supervision 

of the graduating students and for organising their 


Foreword 

attractive and thought-provoking group exhibition. 

This exhibition will become part of the Academy’s 

yearly events calendar, since all BFA students now 

graduate after three years and then re-apply to the MFA 

programme at our Academy or elsewhere. 

The most significant change at the Academy during 

this year is that we have recruited three extraordinary 

artists as new faculty members. In the autumn semester 

2009 Danish artist Joachim Koester and Korean artist 

Haegue Yang joined us as part-time Professors of 

Fine Art, and at the same time Swedish artist Viktor 

Kopp became our new Junior Lecturer in Fine Art. 

Another addition to the list of teachers affiliated with 

the Academy is Swedish artist Andreas Eriksson, who 

started working as Visiting External Tutor of Fine Art, 

also in the autumn. I am very pleased that we have 

managed to attract such experienced, dedicated and 

internationally visible artists to our Academy, and I 

wish them the best of luck in their new roles. Judging 

from this first year, their future as teachers looks bright 

indeed. I also wish to thank the four distinguished 

art professionals in the External Experts’ Panel who 

helped us recruit the two new professors: Lynne Cooke, 

Chief Curator and Deputy Director at the Museo 

Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid; Olav 

Christopher Jenssen, Professor at the University of Art 

Braunschweig in Germany; Jan Kaila, Professor at the 

Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and Annica 

Karlsson Rixon, Doctoral Candidate in Fine Arts at 

Gothenburg University. My thanks also go to the staff 

at the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts and 

to our Dean Dr Håkan Lundström for facilitating the 

complex selection process and supporting the Academy 

in every possible way. 

This academic year also saw the inauguration, on 

19 May 2010, of Inter Arts Center in Malmö, a new 

state-of-the-art interdisciplinary facility set up and 

managed jointly by the Academies of Art, Music and 

Theatre, which all belong to the Malmö Faculty of Fine 

and Performing Arts at Lund University. IAC, which 

has been in the making for several years, will become 

a very significant resource for art practitioners in the 

region and internationally. Please visit www.iac.lu.se 

for updated information about the programming and 

various ways to use the facility. 

There have also been changes in the Academy’s 

administrative and technical staff during this academic 

year. Charlotta Österberg joined the team as our new 

Economist in August 2009. Sven Yngve Oscarsson, 

our Technical Manager, has been scaling down his 

engagement at the Academy during the year, and 

will eventually make the full transition to his new 

function as Site Manager of Inter Arts Center. Annika 

Michelsen, our Departmental Secretary, is leaving the 

Academy during the autumn semester 2010 to join 

the staff of our sister organisation, the Malmö Theatre 

Academy. I thank Sven Yngve and Annika for their 

professionalism and their long-standing dedication 

to the Academy, and I welcome Charlotta in her new 

position, in which she has shown herself to be a highly 

Anders Kreuger 

Editor of the Yearbook, Director 

of the Malmö Art Academy 

until July 2010 

4 5 

qualified and much-appreciated colleague. 

I myself left my position as Director in July 2010, 

to continue pursuing my career as a curator of 

contemporary art at Lunds konsthall in Sweden and at 

M HKA, the museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, 

Belgium. Professor Gertrud Sandqvist, my predecessor 

as Director, will now become Artistic Director of the 

Academy, and the Silvana Hed will become the new 

Administrative Director. I want to use this opportunity 

to thank all my colleagues at the Academy for the 

efficient and cordial collaboration that I have enjoyed 

during my three years in the job. It has been a privilege 

to work for the Malmö Art Academy – with the faculty, 

the staff, and not least our students, who are the main 

characters in everything we perform together as an 

Academy. I am confident that the Academy’s future will 

be bright, and that the future of those who graduate 

from it will be even brighter. 

The yearbook is meant to reflect the prime 

importance of our students and doctoral candidates. 

Their work, their development, their achievements are 

the Academy’s most important resource and its raison 

d’être. It is my hope that this book will show that the 

Academy has every reason to be proud of its students. 

I wish to thank them for their contributions to the 

yearbook, and at the same time I also wish to give 

credit to those who have helped me to edit and produce 

it, notably Fiona Key, our excellent English language 

editor, and Povilas Utovka, the gifted graphic designer 

who has now made his second yearbook for us.

2009–2010 Yearb0ok 

MFA 2 

7

2009–2010 Yearbook 

Properly prime your lips to ensure that your lip 

makeup will last longer. Apply your foundation 

or concealer over the lips and lip contours. 

Use a synthetic brush to meticulously reach 

smaller areas. Afterwards, fix your base with 

powder before you add colour from lip pencil 

and lipstick. 1 

Approaching the end of my formal education 

in fine art, I have come to wonder: when did it 

actually begin? Or rather, when did my training 

in painting begin? At kindergarten? In school? 

Or when, as a young teenager, I was studying the 

make-up tips of glossy women’s magazines? These 

magazines contained all possible knowledge about 

the art of make-up: how to lay a good foundation, 

which brushes to use and which color shades to 

buy. Perfect concealer, powder puff, cherry red… 

These were terms familiar to me long before I had 

ever heard about fine art painting supplies such 

as gesso foundation, squirrel brushes or cadmium 

red. Suppose this was where I acquired my basic 

knowledge in painting, then, what did I actually 

learn? I learned the craft, of course, I learned 

precision – but most of all, I learned the art of 

covering up. Covering up reality, creating a new one. 

As I moved on to fine art, this was what I brought 

with me. The make-up was replaced by oil paint, the 

face by canvas, but the act remained the same: I was 

covering up. 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Elin Behrens 

All Made Up 

Today, imagining paint as make-up allows me 

to focus on this particular aspect of painting, that 

is, painting as a concealing activity. Covering a 

surface with paint corresponds to a profound human 

tendency to manipulate the viewer, to present an 

image to the world in the same manner as make-up 

can be used: as a mask. A mask behind which one 

is protected from the eyes of others – and free to 

be whoever one prefers. In the thinking of French 

psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, this is how the artist 

uses painting: as a screen to ward off the gaze of the 

spectator. He calls it dompte-regard, to ‘tame the 

gaze’. But what is this gaze? 

According to Lacanian theory, there is a split 

between the eye – that is, ourselves, looking at the 

objects of the world – and the gaze, which is the 

imaginary ‘eyes’ of the objects looking back at us. In 

other words, it is the tendency to see ourselves ‘from 

outside’. Inevitably, we also try to adapt to this gaze, 

which is not necessarily the gaze of a specific object 

or person, but what Lacan calls the objet (petit) a. 

This ‘little other’ is closely related to desire. Desire 

is always a desire for someone else to desire us: to 

be loved or recognised. As infants, this is what we 

demand from our mother. When faced with the fact 

that she cannot give us the undivided love we crave, 

we start to search for it elsewhere. This is the objet 

(petit) a: an object which we imagine could supply us 

with that which we lack. But this object can never be 

attained, primarily because it is not an object at all. It 

is merely a reflection of our own ego, our own lack. 

Nevertheless, we keep searching for it through all our 

lives: in lovers, art etc. In the field of the visible, the 

objet (petit) a is experienced as the gaze: a feeling of 

being seen. We can imagine this gaze as being friendly 

or as being hostile. All the same, we form ourselves in 

relation to it. 

Returning to painting: why, then, would the painter 

want to ward off this gaze? Could it be because it 

is experienced as an avid, demanding gaze full of 

hostility? If so, the natural response would be to 

try to pacify the gaze and to protect oneself from it. 

Protection may be accomplished through hiding – or, 

as in warfare, by the use of camouflage. Following 

Lacan, camouflage is linked to the phenomenon of 

mimicry in the animal kingdom. Mimetic activity 

is deployed in three major areas: travesty, in the 

charades of sexuality; intimidation, as showing one’s 

teeth to scare off enemies; and finally camouflage, to 

make oneself invisible. At the human level, mimicry 

is also manifested through painting, most obviously in 

the technique of trompe l’œil, to ‘fool the eye’. When 

painting an image so illusionistic that the beholder 

for a moment thinks it is real am I not, in fact, 

presenting the painting as something which it is 

not? Is it not a deceitful object, as the verb ‘to fool’ 

implies? But as Lacan points out, this deception is 

also revealing something: 

What is it that attracts and satisfies us in 

trompe l’œil? When is it that it captures our 

attention and delights us? At the moment 

when, by a mere shift of our gaze, we are 

able to realize that the representation does 

not move with the gaze and that it is merely 

a trompe l’œil. For it appears at that moment 

as something other than it seemed, or rather 

it now seems to be that something else. The 

picture does not compete with appearance, 

it competes with what Plato designates for 

us beyond appearance as being the Idea. It 

is because the picture is the appearance that 

says it is that which gives the appearance that 

Plato attacks painting, as if it were an activity 

competing with his own. This other thing is the 

petit a, around which there revolves a combat 

of which trompe l’œil is the soul. 2 

In the Mirror 

In my work Mirror, Mirror I address these issues by 

the use of three-dimensional, illusionistic painting. 

A canvas cloth is mounted upon a stretcher – the 

traditional support of painting – but instead of 

creating a flat surface the canvas is folded like a 

curtain. Upon this surface, an illusionistic painting of 

a curtain is made. A bright light falls on it, as if lit up 

8 9 

by two invisible spotlights, or, as the illusion fades, 

made-up with a shimmering highlighter. At a closer 

look, even the pink painted cloth is reminiscent of 

greasy pancake make-up. 

On the opposite wall a two-dimensional painting 

is placed, representing the curtain, but reversed, as 

if seen in a mirror. The mirror is, of course, closely 

related to Lacan’s notion of the gaze. In front of 

the mirror – whether it is an actual mirror or the 

experienced gaze of the world around us – we form 

our identity. By the use of different masks – as in 

the very concrete example of make-up – we adjust 

ourselves to our surroundings. 

When putting on make-up, we simultaneously 

create a new appearance and hide another one. If we 

are successful, people believe our new ‘face’. If not, 

however, the make-up is experienced as concealment 

– as a mask – triggering the question of what may 

hide beneath the surface. What we do not see 

becomes the center of our attention, allowing us, as 

it does, to project our own fantasies upon it. This is a 

phenomenon commonly used in horror movies: the 

most horrifying scenes are not when the ‘monster’ 

is shown but when it is not shown. Through small 

hints, we are led to create our own monster, rooted 

in our own fantasy, far more terrifying than anything 

else. In a similar manner, when faced with a painting, 

it is that which is not shown in the picture, that we 

actually experience. Maybe this is what Lacan refers 

to as the objet (petit) a: an inner truth triggered by, 

and projected onto, the outside world. In this sense, 

painting itself functions as a mirror, reflecting our 

desire as well as shaping it. 

The tendency to assume there is something 

behind, beneath or beyond the appearance, seems 

to be an important part of our culture, and maybe 

even of our nature. Perhaps this was also Plato’s 

experience when he separated Idea from appearance 

in his famous metaphor of the cave? Here, the 

appearances of the world – trees, horses, buildings 

etc – are but shadows of the true, superior world: 

the world of Ideas. Painting is also rejected as being 

mere appearance – a copy of reality – and as such 

unable to depict the truth. This is what Lacan is 

referring to in the passage quoted above. But Lacan 

seems to hold a different opinion: ‘the picture is 

the appearance that says it is that which gives 

the appearance.’ 3 In other words: painting is both 

appearance and Idea, simultaneously. 

When ascribing painting a higher value, as 

Lacan does here, appearance too becomes a subject 

of importance. In fact, what would a painting be 

without its appearance? Maybe similar to a human 

without identity – without a mask? When writing 

about the different roles we enact, in love and war, 

Lacan claims it is through our masks we meet life in 

the ‘most acute, most intense way’. 4 If this is so, is it 

not in the mask we have to look for the very essence 

2009–2010 Yearbook


of a person? Contrary to what Plato says, this 

suggests a kind of truth in appearance itself. 

What the subject conceals and the way in 

which he conceals it, is also the very form of 

its exposure. 5 

Just like the mask can reveal the essence of a 

person, the ‘fake’ of trompe l’œil can reveal a hidden 

‘truth’, a truth which can only be expressed indirectly. 

If approached directly, it is lost. Only by concealment 

can it be found. Consequently, in my paintings, my 

aim is to show something – by hiding it. My challenge 

is to hide it in a proper way, giving the exact amount 

of information needed to let the observer’s mind 

interact with mine. 

I Am You 

When searching for a proper ‘hiding place’ for what 

I want to express, a motif to paint, I often choose 

everyday objects like parts of interiors, furniture, 

provisions. These objects seem discreet enough to 

shelter something else. In fact, this is also how I 

experience them: as something else. I can never 

quite accept that, for example, my bookshelf is only 

a bookshelf consisting of wood, glue, screws. It is 

always something more. For a long time, I thought this 

was just my own, silly imagination. Clearly, nothing 

was there except a bookshelf. But then I realised that 

quite a few thinkers had pondered this subject. One of 

them is of course Lacan with his theory about the gaze, 

claiming: ‘the spectacle of the world, in this sense, 

appears to us as all-seeing.’ 6 Above all, however, this 

is an area explored by the phenomenologists. 

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a phenomenologist 

engaged in analysing how we, as subjects, experience 

the objects of the world. He argues that the borders 

between the subject and the object are not definite. 

The objects we surround ourselves with are, in fact, an 

extension of our bodies. An example of this is the blind 

man’s cane, which is not just an object for him, but an 

extended part of himself. It is important to Merleau- 

Ponty that the body is not simply a ‘shell’ for our 

conscience to inhabit, as in the body/mind dualism, 

but conscious in itself. Everything we experience, 

everything we think is founded in our bodies. This is 

how, when expanding our bodies to include objects 

around us, we also expand our consciousness, our 

subjectivity, and consequently, our vision: 

[…] vision happens among, or is caught in, 

things – in that place where something visible 

undertakes to see, becomes visible for itself by 

virtue of the sight of things; in that place where 

there persists, like the mother water in crystal, 

the undividedness of the sensing and the sensed. 7 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Does this mean, when relating to my bookshelf as to 

another subject, I am actually relating to myself? That 

the bookshelf is me, and conversely, that I am the 

bookshelf? Mirroring each other, creating the notion 

of self? Moreover, is this not a basic function of 

empathy – to see oneself in others? A kind of empathy 

born from perception rather than thought, and 

therefore belonging to painting rather than language. 

The same phenomenon enabling me, when I look at a 

painting, to experience it as a physical sensation in my 

own body, and in that sense to become the painting. 

In-Between Dimensions 

The presence of the object, that is another reason why 

I am interested in the three-dimensionality of painting. 

Like the minimalists of the 1960s who transformed 

painting into object, I want the painting to be a 

physical presence in the gallery room, something to 

relate to with the body. But if the minimalists tried to 

achieve this by eliminating all traces of illusionism, I 

go in the opposite direction. 

For me, the imaginary world of classical painting 

has always been intriguing. In this world, seen 

through the ‘window’ of the painting, anything 

could happen. But still, this has never been quite 

enough. I have often experienced it like a fairytale, 

enacted somewhere else, in a two-dimensional 

universe. Instead, I have wanted it to happen here, 

I have wanted fantasy realised. This wish is strongly 

connected to my interest in the uncanny, a concept 

developed by Sigmund Freud. The uncanny is, 

according to him, when repressed memories suddenly 

reappear and are projected onto the outside world 

as a way of protecting ourselves from them. We 

then experience them as something real, external: 

something foreign yet strangely familiar. Our reaction 

is fear, as the uncanny threatens our identity and our 

worldview, but also fascination. It is this fascination 

that has guided me in my search for a visual language. 

If the uncanny exists in a kind of borderland – as an 

external materialisation of our inner mind – then how 

could I translate this into painting? 

With this in mind I have tried to bring together 

the three-dimensionality of minimalism, representing 

external reality for me, with the illusion of twodimensional 

painting, representing fantasy. By 

combining them I have endeavoured to make 

artworks both present, like objects in the room, and 

absent, belonging to that other world of painting. A 

kind of transitional objects: both real and illusory. 

Fantasy realised, but also reality fantasised. 

My first attempt at this was the work Through the 

Wall. The piece consists of eleven MDF boards shaped 

as wooden planks of different widths. Together they 

form a painting of a sauna wall seen in perspective, 

with a strong light coming from the right. This 

work could be seen in many different ways. On one 

hand as a traditional painting: a two-dimensional 

represention of a wall concerned with light and depth, 

a window showing us an imaginary world beyond the 

surface. On the other hand, we might see it as threedimensional 

objects, as real planks. In this case, there 

is no depth – no world beyond – but merely objects 

present in the gallery room. This oscillation between 

absence and presence seemed parallell to the border 

condition of the uncanny, and I imagined the wall as 

being transferred from a room inside a painting into 

the actual gallery space. An immaterial object. 

But there is also a third way of looking at this piece. 

If we do not notice the illusory depth of the painting, 

but do notice the illusory light, then we apprehend 

the piece as a real object, lit up by a light source that 

does not exist. Or rather: a light source that exists 

only in the world of painting. This world of painting 

seems, then, to be situated outside the painting itself, 

casting its light on the planks. As if it were floating 

around in the gallery space, invisible to the naked eye 

but possible to glimpse in the mirror of the painted 

planks. This is what the work becomes: a mirror, not 

a window, reflecting the invisible presence of what is 

often said to be dead: painting. Almost like a ghost. 

Through the Wall came to be as much concerned 

with the nature of painting as with the exploration 

of the uncanny. In fact, to me they even seem to 

be related. Think upon the way time functions in a 

painting. It is not a time which passes as in real life, 

nor a moment of time as in photography, but a time 

composed of several moments condensed into one. 

When a portrait is painted, the nose is painted one 

day and the cheek another day. Together they form 

a painting where all this time exist simultaneously. A 

parallel world, hanging on our living room wall, where 

the notion of time is more similar to eternity than to 

our ordinary chronology. 

The juxtaposition of painting and reality – 

whatever they are – has become a way for me to 

approach them both. In this sense, combining 

illusionism and minimalism is not just an act of 

joining opposites, but it also a way of making visible 

the character of painting itself as something both 

illusory and real, both absent and present, both 

immaterial and material, both depth and surface – all 

at once. 

The Word and the Image 

Maybe this is the reason why I hold on to painting: 

that it seems to unite all those things that language 

separates. Indeed, my interest in images has been 

developed as a kind of complement to language, as an 

investigation in what might be their unique, distinctive 

character. In comparison, it appears language is 

ascribed a higher significance in our culture. Not 

10 11 

least it is held to be the structure organising the self, 

enabling us to become subjects. Words construct us, 

they create meaning and provide us with a sense 

of control. But what about the image? Although I 

am constantly surrounded by images they remain a 

mystery to me. And as with all mysteries they are both 

frightening and fascinating. I cannot help trying to 

verbalise them. Still, they are always something else. 

They carry a meaning, but of a different kind. May this 

be the meaning experienced through intuition? In that 

case: What is intuition? 

Accumulated experience that is not immediately 

accessible to language, but which does affect 

our consciousness, is usually called intuition. 

An intuitive choice is thus as conscious as 

a considered choice, it simply uses aspects 

of consciousness that are not accessible to 

language. It cannot say, but it can show. 8 

It appears that intuition is a kind of non-verbal 

knowledge, a bank of experiences acquired through 

our bodies. Our senses connects us with memories 

in a way that language alone would fail to do. For 

example, a certain purple colour may bring back a 

memory of our mother’s nail polish. Such memories 

often have a strong emotional quality and a deep 

sense of meaning, and when we look at an image – 

or more specifically at a painting – they come into 

play. A painting may cause us to hallucinate a certain 

smell; it can make us strangely afraid or simply happy. 

The very lack of words to express or explain these 

experiences only seems to make them stronger, as if 

we could not protect ourselves from them. Maybe this 

is also why painting can be so demanding, as if this 

lack of verbal categorisation posed a threat to us. 

In this sense language seems to function as a kind 

of protection. When we name something we separate 

it from something else – and create a meaningful 

order. In this text, for example, I have separated 

object from painting, fantasy from reality and word 

from image, although I suspect, in fact, that they are 

closely intertwined. But this is how rational language 

functions: it separates. Poetic language, on the other 

hand, has another dimension: instead of separating, 

it seems to join together different meanings into 

one. This is how poetry has become, to me, far more 

related to painting than to rational language. And this 

is how poetry, as well as painting, can be so disturbing 

– and liberating. It shows reality in another, more 

complex, fashion. 

Another Kind of Meaning 

Why, then, do we need this protection? Why do we 

strive to separate, to create order? According to Julia 

Kristeva, another French psychoanalyst, our tendency 



to separate is deeply rooted in our early childhood. 

As infants our ego is borderless, and we imagine 

ourselves as being one with our mother. But as 

development proceeds we lose this sense of symbiosis 

and start to develop as separate subjects. This is the 

first act of separation: to distance ourselves from our 

mother. In order to accomplish this we repress our 

longing for her, which turns into repulsion. In this 

way, we protect our fragile ego from being drawn back 

into the borderless condition – which, at this point, 

would mean psychosis. From now on, this is how we 

preserve our ego: by separation. 

In the same manner, as adults, we need to 

separate ourselves from certain things that pose 

a threat to our ego. These things are, in the 

terminology of Julia Kristeva, the abject. It may 

appear as a dead body, as excrement or as socially 

unacceptable behaviour, and we react to it with 

aversion, because it reminds us of what we are 

repressing in ourselves: death, dissolution, psychosis. 

These are all conditions in which the borders of our 

ego are annihilated, where we merge with the world 

around us. A part of life, for sure, but a part we need 

to repress in order to survive. 

But there is also another dimension to this. Just 

like the child is both repulsed and attracted to the 

mother, the abject provokes both repulsion and 

fascination in us. The feeling of being ‘one’ with the 

surrounding world is not just something we abhor, 

but also something we strive to attain – as, for 

example, in the mystic practices of different religions. 

The mystic experience of being ‘one with the world’ 

is even interpreted, by some psychoanalysts, as a 

regression back to the mother–child symbiosis. It 

seems, apart from being the thing we fear deepest, the 

abject could also be what we desire most. Apart from 

dissolving meaning, it could also create meaning, but 

of a different kind. 

A Certain Kind of Glow 

The ambiguity of the abject leaves us with a 

challenge: to approach it without being lost in it. 

Maybe this is the challenge of the mystic? And 

maybe, this could also be the challenge of the artist? 

Kristeva suggests art can function as a purification of 

the abject, as catharsis: 

The various means of purifying the abject – the 

various catharses – make up the history of 

religions, and end up with that catharsis par 

excellence called art, both on the far and near 

side of religion. Seen from that standpoint, 

the artistic experience, which is rooted in 

the abject it utters and by the same token 

purifies, appears as the essential component of 

religiosity. 9 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

But how, then, could the abject be uttered? If 

we meet the abject directly, we are repulsed by it. 

If we analyse it rationally, we are protected from it. 

But maybe, through art, we are able to repeat it – 

to fictionalise it – and thereby experience it? As a 

kind of sublimation: a way of saying what cannot be 

said. Perception, words, may bring it about, but our 

experience is always something more. Once again, it 

seems as if we could never bear to meet this kind of 

reality directly – only indirectly: 

What is most irrational about the affective 

response to the near encounter of the uncanny, 

abject, Real is pointed to by Bryson when he 

suggests that the putative stimuli, the apparent 

object of horror underlying these affects is 

in fact ‘inadequate to the affective charge 

it carries with it: the horror is never in the 

representation, but around it, like a glow or 

a scent’. 10 

The horror is never in the representation, but 

around it, like a glow or a scent – just like the 

meaning of a painting is never in the representation, 

but glowing around it. Maybe this is the glow we 

apprehend through intuition – connecting us with 

hidden parts of ourselves? Maybe this is the glow we 

call the sublime? 

The Reality in Illusion 

We have reached the point when the different 

thoughts of this essay come together. To me, they are 

all related, they all revolve around the same core: a 

kind of present absence. Something residing behind 

the mask, inside the object, beyond rational language, 

and something which can only be experienced in this 

manner: behind, inside, beyond. 

The final work I would like to introduce concerns 

many of the subjects touched upon in this essay. 

Diptych, the title of the work, is to be read as literary. 

The work consists of two objects: a sofa and a painting 

placed above it. Hanging on the wall, the painting 

depicts a section of the sofa, and on the corresponding 

area of the sofa a painting has been made, resembling 

the painting on the wall. Looking at the piece from 

right in front, the painting on the sofa is perceived as 

having an identical shape and size as the painting on 

the wall. From another angle it is distorted, and we 

learn that this is an anamorphic image. 

This piece could be read as a comment on how 

painting is perceived. Is it just a decorative object 

made to match the living room sofa? Or could 

painting be something more, even a model for reality? 

Diptych provokes the question of what actually comes 

first: our fantasy about reality or reality itself. Does the 

painting resemble the sofa, or does the sofa resemble 

the painting? We are caught in an endless circular 

movement. This is, for me, the problem of dualism, 

the impossible choice it presents me with. I do not 

really want to choose either of the options, or maybe 

I would like to choose both. As Slavoj Žižek puts it, 

discussing the sequence in the film Matrix when the 

main character is presented with a choice between the 

blue pill of illusion and the red pill of reality: 

But the choice between the blue and the red 

pill is not really a choice between illusion and 

reality. Of course, the matrix is a machine for 

fictions, but these are fictions which already 

structure our reality. If you take away from our 

reality the symbolic fictions that regulate it, you 

lose reality itself. I want a third pill. So what 

is the third pill? Definitely not some kind of 

transcendental pill which enables a fake, fastfood 

religious experience, but a pill that would 

enable me to perceive not the reality behind the 

illusion, but the reality in illusion itself. 11 

And finally I am back where I started – in illusion. 

Not the platonic illusion, but an illusion of deep 

meaning, or even truth. It is, of course, a subjective 

truth, and as such the kind of truth artists are involved 

in. In fact, is this not exactly what artists are trying to 

do: telling lies so well they become true? Or better: 

giving the world a proper make-over, enabling us to 

meet it in its true appearance: all made up. 

12 13 

Notes 

1. Make Up Store Magazine. Stockholm: Make Up 

Store, Issue 13, no 1, 2010, p.36. 

2. Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental 

Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York/London: 

W W Norton & Company, 1998, p.112. 

3. Ibid. 

4. Ibid, p.107. 

5. Miller, Jacques-Alain, quoted by Renata Salecl 

in En liten bok om kärlek (‘A Small Book about 

Love’). Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings 

Bokförlag Symposion, 1997, p.19. 

6. Lacan, Jacques, op. cit., p.75. 

7. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, ‘Eye and Mind’, in 

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, edited 

by Thomas Baldwin. London/New York: 

Routledge 2004, p.295. 

8. Sandqvist, http://www.kaapeli.fi/-roos/ 

gertrude.htm 

9. Schelling, Friedrich von, quoted by Freud in The 

Uncanny, New York: Penguin Books, 2003, p.132. 

10. Hook, Derek W, ‘Language and the Flesh: 

Psychoanalysis and the Limits of Discourse’, in 

Pretexts: Literary & Cultural Studies, Vol.12, 

Issue 1. Abingdon: Carfax Publishing Company, 

2003, p.61. 

11. Žižek, Slavoj/Fiennes, Sophie, A Pervert’s 

Guide to Cinema. DVD, P Guide Limited, 2006. 



Bibliography 

Douglas, Mary, Renhet och fara (‘Purity and Danger’), 

translated by Arne Kallrén. Falun: Nya Doxa, 1997. 

Elkins, James, The Object Stares Back. San Diego/ 

New York/London: Harcourt, 1996. 

Evans, Dylan, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian 

Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge, 1996. 

Freud, Sigmund, The Uncanny, translated by David 

McClintock. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. 

Hook, Derek W, ‘Language and the Flesh: 

Psychoanalysis and the Limits of Discourse’, in 

Pretexts: Literary & Cultural Studies, Vol.12, Issue 1. 

Abingdon: Carfax Publishing Company, 2003. 

Kristeva, Julia, Fasans makt (‘The Powers of Horror’), 

translated by Agneta Rehag and Anna Forssberg. 

Gothenburg: Daidalos, 1991. 

Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of 

Psychoanalysis. New York/London: W W Norton & 

Company, 1998. 

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, ‘Eye and Mind’, in Maurice 

Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, edited by Thomas 

Baldwin. London/New York: Routledge 2004. 

Salecl, Renata/Žižek, Slavoj, En liten bok om kärlek 

(‘A Small Book about Love’), translated by Maria 

Fittger and John Swedenmark. Stockholm/Stehag: 

Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1997. 

Sandqvist, Gertrud: On Intuition (http://www.kaapeli. 

fi/-roos/gertrude.htm). 

Sjöbom, Greta, ed., M Magazine. Stockholm: Make up 

Store AB: Issue 13, nr 01, 2010. 

Žižek, Slavoj/Fiennes, Sophie, A Pervert’s Guide to 

Cinema. London: DVD, P Guide Limited, 2006. 

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18 19 



I strive to find my way in the world, in their world, 

through my own artistic vision. To find my place 

in the world, in society, among my friends and my 

family. Which is something I believe you do, and 

intend to do, when you find your ‘own’ space, and 

ignite a flame, a passion, and try to excel within that 

area. Art, in my case. I got involved in art by chance. 

Once I realised what you can accomplish with art, 

how it fits in with my ideas about life in general, then 

the passion came along as well. But this passion has 

a very limited scope. I very rarely read books about 

artists, and I never ever read about art history. For this 

reason, I don’t know much about different periods 

in art history. I can’t tell yet whether this helps or 

hinders me in my work. Of course, things sometimes 

get embarrassing and awkward when my creations 

reveal my ignorance of ‘obvious’ references. On the 

other hand, perhaps this provides me with a different 

perspective on my own art, which I would otherwise 

never have discovered. Either way, I’m incredibly 

passionate about my own work. Because I know I 

have found my place. I know that it is through my art 

that I will be able to find my own place in the world. 

I strive for recognition through my art. It is 

incredibly important to me for somebody to see and 

notice my art. I used to deny this, and try to convince 

myself that I made art for my own sake, for my own 

enjoyment. Not to get attention, whether positive or 

negative. To have what matters to you the most in 

life, the thing you put all your efforts into, be ignored 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Andreas Nilsson 

I Strive 

would shatter and humiliate me. I want to show 

people what I do, even if I have to do it anonymously. 

Because I’m not an artist out of a desire for fame or 

fortune. But if nobody was to see, hear or feel what I 

create, or if it didn’t matter to me, then I could just as 

well limit my art to sketches, fragments and ideas in 

my mind. 

I strive to be generous in my art. For people to 

see, hear, and feel my art, and so on. I want the 

viewer to experience something. I understand that 

our brains are different, because of differences in our 

lives, environments and so on. For that reason, it’s 

impossible to give different people the exact same 

experience of a single work of art. But most of all, I 

want the experience or thoughts to continue to affect 

them – whether consciously or subconsciously – for 

the rest of their lives. A lasting impression. 

I strive to make my art personal to me. Sticking 

to the things I know and feel passionate about as 

subjects for my art. I don’t believe I can create good 

art about things that fail to fire me up and make 

me passionate. And just because I find something 

interesting, like war, politics, or a footballer’s 

biography, for instance, that doesn’t necessarily mean 

I’m passionate about it. (Naturally, I’m passionate 

about some things within those areas, as well.) I 

always try to find something in my pieces to give the 

viewers a sense of my personal attitude towards – or 

passionate feelings about – the subject or idea I am 

trying to illuminate. 

I strive for control. Control over the world I 

create. To know what the viewer’s experience will be. 

Even if the experience is to be just a small, confusing 

fragment that I ‘control’ by intentionally giving up 

control of my work. 

I strive to create feelings in my art that are 

otherwise unattainable to me. I’m usually a very stoic 

person. If something or somebody actually affects me 

in some way, I tend to brush it off right away. This 

goes for both happy and unhappy emotions. It doesn’t 

matter how wonderful or how awful I feel, I get it out 

of my head in a hurry anyway. No matter how big a 

deal it is, I consider it a trifle and toss it aside. And if 

it’s a problem that’s too big to get rid of right away, 

there’s always some way or other to detach myself 

from it, to forget about it for a while. And when the 

feelings related to this problem reappear later on, 

they have faded to some degree. If this procedure is 

repeated a sufficient number of times, the problem 

becomes so insignificant that I can easily forget or 

ignore it. But some feelings transform into something 

else instead, something I can’t feel unless I sit down 

and look for it. This is the kind of emotional change I 

want to effect through my art. 

I strive to be poetic. Fragility, beauty, roughness, 

ugliness. Anything can be poetic. It’s all about 

the unpredictable sensations that the viewer can 

experience. Keeping my expressions subtle. Even 

when I’m as straightforward as I can be. 

I strive to be basic. To keep elements that confuse 

the pieces to a minimum, without making them too 

obvious. I want to make art that is approachable 

and easy to relate to. And I want to do these things 

without telling anybody what to think. It makes for 

a difficult balance between talking down to your 

audience by making your expressions too obvious, 

and mistakenly assuming that the things you’ve spent 

months working hard on inside your mind are easily 

grasped by others. I start off with my own ideas, and 

try to be objective and imagine myself in the position 

of a viewer of my own art. 

I strive never to compromise in my art. Even 

though the viewer is extremely important to me 

in my role as an artist. Even though the viewer’s 

appreciation is extremely important. Despite the fact 

that I want the viewer to grasp my intention or idea, I 

won’t compromise to make it so. I’d rather scrap the 

whole idea and start over. Because the most important 

thing, after all, is that I need to be able to commit fully 

to every piece I show. 

My Creative Process 

I often use a downward spiral to find inspiration in 

life. This spiral consists of sloth, egoism and alcohol, 

and is contributive to degeneration. This is the state 

where I often find the starting points for my work, 

20 21 

and it also contributes to the time-consuming nature 

of my process. I do these things without romanticising 

decadence. I do it because I think that in difficult 

times, even difficult times you brought upon yourself 

on purpose, you can grow a lot from getting yourself 

out of the difficulties. When I come up with an idea 

that relates to a particular subject, I start dwelling on 

different ideas, going back and forth in my mind. I try 

to keep them in my thoughts for months. If the ideas 

still feel good enough after all that scrutiny, they are 

worth a try. Then it becomes a matter of finding the 

right medium, it doesn’t matter if it’s performance, 

sculpture, photography, or film. As long as it is the 

best fit for what I am trying to express. 

Music/Blues 

To me, music is without any doubt a great source 

of motivation and inspiration for art. For inspiration, 

I mostly listen to old blues singers like Lightnin’ 

Hopkins and Howlin’ Wolf. They use simplicity, 

maybe just a harmonica or a guitar and some simple 

lyrics, along with repetition and emotion to create 

something incredibly moving and thought-provoking. 

The blues has been described as bad poetry made 

good by means of repetition. I don’t think it’s bad. 

But I do think that the blues, the way I like it, is 

often a very direct and simple kind of poetry. And the 

repeated phrases make it easier to get into the song. 

Which in turn makes it all feel more real, genuine 

and honest. 

Lightnin’ Hopkins: Trouble Blues 

Trouble, trouble, trouble. 

Trouble is all in the world I see. 

Trouble, trouble, trouble. 

Trouble is all in the world I see. 

Yeah you know I often wonder, 

What in the world gonna become of me. 

Now when I wake up in the mornin’, 

Blues and trouble all ‘round my bed, 

When I wake up in the mornin’, 

Blues and trouble all ‘round my bed, 

Yeah you know I never will forget. 

Last what I heard my baby said… 

What did she say, boy? 

She said: ‘Lightnin’, I’m leavin’ you in the mornin’, 

And your cryin’ won’t make me stay.’ 

She said: ‘I’m leavin’ you in the mornin’, 

Lightnin’, your cryin’ won’t make me stay.’ 

I just said: ‘I hope, little girl, 

Po’ Lightnin’ll meet you again some day.’ 



And she got sad, and I did too; we had to 

moan a little. 

Well, I had to tell’r: ‘If you just gotta go, 

Hope I’ll meet you again some day. 

If you just gotta go, 

Hope I’ll meet you again some day. 

Yes, when I do, little girl, 

You’ll be done, changed your evil way.’ 

The blues is often about unrequited love, longing, 

death, money troubles, or other hard things in life. But 

there is just as often a more humorous side to things 

as well. Like in Howlin’ Wolf’s I Asked for Water. 

Here, he asks for water from a woman, who gives him 

gasoline instead. Which is very funny, at least to me. 

Or rather, tragicomic. I try to reproduce this in my 

art. Give the viewer a comical point of entry to the 

piece. On the other hand, I don’t want this to be too 

large a part of the artwork. It is just a way to attract 

the viewer’s attention and make him or her ‘listen’, just 

as it is in the blues. But as you make your way through 

the artwork or song the comedy disappears and the 

real subject, or feeling, takes hold. 

Howlin’ Wolf : I Asked for Water 

Oh, I asked her for water: she brought 

me gasoline. 

Oh, I asked her for water: she brought 

me gasoline. 

That’s the troublingest woo-hoo [woman], 

that I ever seen. 

The church bell tollin’, the hearse come 

driving slow. 

The church bell tollin’, the hearse come 

driving slow. 

I hope my baby, don’t leave me no more. 

Oh, tell me baby, when are you coming 

back home? 

Oh, tell me baby, when are you coming 

back home? 

You know I love you baby, but you’ve 

been gone too long. 

Repetition 

My works often contain an element of repetition. It 

is already present at the stage where I formulate the 

idea, when I keep asking myself: ‘Is this good enough, 

is it essential?’ over and over again. It becomes 

manifest in different ways. Sometimes in a purely 

physical way, like in my performance 191.4 (One 

Metre Higher than Turning Torso) where I feed out 

all 191.4 meters of a cord, one arm’s length at a time. 

At other times, what is repeated is the artwork itself, 

like Contaminated Thoughts, where a mirror illusion 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

reflects and repeats its own mirror image infinitely. 

Contaminated Thoughts 

The piece Contaminated Thoughts is a cube made 

of square one-way mirrors (50 x 50 cm) that houses 

a light bulb. The whole thing is on a platform made 

of wooden boards. The subject matter is thoughts – 

thoughts that are repeated and enlarged infinitely. 

A thought that never makes its way out, but that 

can be seen and felt from the outside. By letting the 

thought ‘see’ its own thought, its own self-image, but 

never really see anything else, it is made to grow in 

proportion. It creates its own universe, which becomes 

beautiful or dangerous, and sometimes both at once. 

Although this sculpture is made out of glass, you 

can’t see through it, so even if there is another viewer 

looking in on the other side of the cube, you both 

see nothing but the piece. This produces a sense of 

loneliness during the act of viewing. I want the viewer 

to be drawn into this feeling, sealing him or herself off 

from the world outside. In Contaminated Thoughts, I 

also use contrasts, like the contrast between the hard, 

rigid, and sterile material of glass, and the flexible, 

living, and rough wooden boards. There is also an 

inner contrast within the glass cube, between the 

claustrophobic actual space and the infinite illusory 

space created by the mirror. The claustrophobic mood 

I want to invoke, which is then contrasted within the 

illusion. That is how I feel when I subject myself to, 

or when I am subjected to, the kind of loneliness that 

you get from feelings like anxieties that have grown 

too strong to be handled. 

Two Sides of the Coin 

Two Sides of the Coin is a tunnel made from beams 

and chipboard, measuring 8.80 metres long and 2 

metres wide. The tunnel is divided into two 4.40 

metre sections by a 195 by 195 cm square of mirror 

glass. Two 15 W working lights are mounted in the 

top corners on either side of the glass. One half of 

the tunnel has been plastered, sanded and painted 

white. The lights in this section are always on. This 

means that this section is almost dazzlingly bright, as 

the walls and ceiling are white, and all you can see is 

yourself, your own mirror image. 

The other section of the tunnel is dark and rough, 

and the chipboard inside is left untreated. The lights 

in the corners of this section are turned off. And what 

you see here is not yourself, but the other section 

of the tunnel, which is visible through the glass. 

However, every 27 seconds the lights in here light up 

too, for just a second. And for that short moment, the 

people on both sides see themselves, but also see right 

through themselves, into the other section, through 

to the other person. The reflections are grey, almost 

spectral images. 

Seeing yourself, looking at yourself and your own 

mirror image can be good for you. I don’t mean that 

vanity is a good thing, I mean that you should see 

yourself objectively as the person you are, and not as 

the person you think you are or wish you were. When 

you are standing there, looking at yourself in this 

square mirror, and suddenly see that brief moment 

of suspecting that there is something there behind it. 

Maybe there was somebody else there? Maybe it was 

all in my imagination? Maybe I saw through myself? 

If you are standing on the other side of the piece 

you are looking at people who are not aware of you, 

seeing them standing there, looking at themselves, 

trying to understand. That gives the viewer a sense 

of power. A power that stays with you as long as you 

remain anonymous. And then goes away when the 

lights are turned on and you are blinded, seen and 

exposed. The disquieting sensation of not knowing 

just what is about to happen is strengthened when 

you are given a hint of light on the other side, or 

blinded by the bright lights and exposed in your 

position of power. 

22 23 



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26 27 



MFA 2 MFA 2 

Per Kristian Nygård 

Communication Breakdown 

It’s Always the Same 1 

My point of departure as an artist is being able to say 

something with my works, and that this something 

can be perceived or read through my works. More 

specifically, there must be something that can be 

decoded/interpreted or experienced in my works that 

gives the observer an inkling of what I want to say. 

In his Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious 

Sigmund Freud examines the way in which jokes 

work from a purely technical perspective. I see several 

similarities between works of art and jokes in terms 

of methodology, technique and psychology. Freud 

emphasises that a joke makes a point of something, 

and that this is achieved through the technique used 

to tell jokes. In his book, Freud examines different 

techniques that jokes employ to arrive at this point. 

If Freud’s theory about jokes is to have any relevance 

when transposed to works of art, then there must be 

something in art, too, that corresponds to this ‘point’. 

This is not contingent on whether the creative 

process is rational or irrational, because there is 

something strictly rational in attempts to work in an 

irrational manner. It is commonly assumed that an 

irrational way of working is linked to the emotions, to 

sensibilities. But this ‘something’ is not necessarily a 

feeling. 

I’m not an expressionist, I have nothing 

to express. 2 

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. 3 

I work in an artistic tradition where the artist 

himself can talk about his works. This means that the 

artist has a dual role, as both the architect of his work 

and as the commentator. 

Underlying all Western modes of analysis 

is a very strong rationalistic tendency – 

an assumption that everything can be 

accounted for. 4 

Thus begins a lengthy reply from the Dalai Lama 

to a question about a psychiatric case. Where his 

reasoning leads is of little interest in the context; he 

simply takes for granted that certain things cannot 

be explained and are too complex for any cause-andeffect 

relationship to be divined. However, this is a 

point of departure that is of no use to me and that 

tends towards a romantic tradition where the artist is 

merely a kind of medium in the creative process. 

The Problem of the Axiom? 

An axiom is a mathematical concept: a value or 

something else that must be accepted as being 

self-evident in order for the rest of an arithmetical 

problem to be correct, to be calculated successfully, 

or to be meaningful. Useful, right or wrong, an 

axiom will nevertheless provide meaning because it 

is accepted as being true or relevant. For example, if 

you accept that 2 + 2 = 4, no further demonstration 

is needed to define the properties of 2. The modality 

of 2 is of no significance for the result, and neither is 

it in any way decisive for the result if 2 is inspired or 

uninspired or depressed, etc. What is decisive in the 

context, however, is that we accept 2 as a valid value 

or modality, etc. 

By starting with a set of axioms it is thus 

possible to infer and prove so called theorems 

with the help of logical conclusions. 5 

The example above from the study of mathematics 

is a good example. With the help of this methodology, 

mathematics has succeeded in achieving quantifiable 

results. But what happens when a thought takes on an 

axiomatic character? The thought, for example, of the 

death of an author or the death of political art? 

Political Art 

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has had 

a great impact on the visual arts in recent years. His 

philosophy is multi-faceted, but here I would like to 

focus on his critique of political art, which has been 

widely discussed over the past few years. He continues 

in the footsteps of post-structuralist theorists, asserting 

that, since aesthetic experience is subjective, it is 

impossible to predict how it will move or affect the 

observer. In other words, there is no scientific proof 

to suggest that a radical, left-wing work of art will 

influence the observer to adopt a more socialist frame 

of mind. 

In the 1960s and 1970s the consensus was that 

art could indeed influence the observer. In the Soviet 

Union and the dictatorships of Eastern Europe this 

was an assumption that was beyond discussion. 

One has only to look at Ceaus¸escu’s propaganda in 

Romania or the many portraits of Saddam Hussein 

in Iraq. Consider also the intrinsic radicalism of 

printmaking, a radicalism that first and foremost was 

to be found in the medium itself. Printmaking enabled 

artists to mass-produce ‘art for the people’, and it was 

through this art that the people would be enlightened. 

In a nutshell, the idea was that political art would 

influence the observer in the direction that the artist/ 

dictator wished. 

The point that Rancière seeks to make is that, 

as art is a sensual, heterogeneous experience, it is 

impossible to calculate what reaction this subjective, 

aesthetic experience will trigger. 6 Art cannot 

work instrumentally. Art can never be a collective 

experience, so, if it affects us at all, it will affect us 

in different ways. What happens when this thought 

assumes the character of an axiom? In other words, 

when it is accepted without question or no longer 

needs to justify its existence? 

28 29 

I have nothing to say and I’m saying it. 7 

Inherent in Western thinking is the idea that it 

is possible for us as individuals to communicate the 

body of our thoughts to others. This assumes that 

the body of thought is something good, and that 

others are willing to accept it and to embrace it as 

their own. In philosophy this is known as a logical 

fallacy – assuming that others, regardless of their 

circumstances, will act as we would do in a given 

situation. Even so, the belief that we can communicate 

is fundamental for the way we see the world. 

For instance, you have the constraints of the 

idea that everything can be explained within 

the framework of a single lifetime, (and you 

combine this with the notion that everything 

can and must be explained and accounted for). 8 

Equally fundamental is the idea that we 

are understood. It seems obvious to us that 

misunderstandings are nothing more than 

misunderstandings and are not ideological in 

character. Equally fundamental is the assertion that 

this project may be said to have failed. Consider, for 

example, the attempt to introduce democracy to Iraq. 

Somewhere along the line something went wrong… 

At the same time it feels like utter defeatism to indulge 

in the thought that communication is impossible. 

(Although anyone who has been in a long-term 

relationship will probably recognise themselves in just 

such a situation.). 

So, how do we communicate? 

A Work of Art – Borderline Design? 

Meaning and understanding in a work of art or an 

installation is established first and foremost through 

the work’s aesthetic frames of references and its own 

expression. Baby talk, for example, has no frames of 

reference to anything we recognise and so we perceive 

it as babble in which the communicative aspect is 

minimal. Alternatively, we can see it as a very basic 

form of communication that is able only to express 

two polarities – satisfied or dissatisfied. This makes it 

ill-suited to articulating more complex opinions. 

Art is an aesthetic experience, and here I am 

thinking primarily of aesthetic references. In other 

words, the way in which visual expression refers to 

an art-historical style, to popular culture/fashion, 

or to a historical era, for example, black-andwhite 

photographs that document performance 

art or installations. Take Gordon Matta Clark’s 

documentation of Splitting, for example (a split, 

two-storey house), or the works of Joseph Kosuth. 

What was once a contemporary standard (analogue 

35mm, black-and-white photography) has become 



an aesthetic standard for us that now refers to this 

period. If we see a nicely framed black-and-white 

photograph today, we may say (depending on 

the motif) that the aesthetics refer to minimalism 

or conceptual art or feminist art, etc. This effect 

is achieved through the aesthetic references, the 

presentation and the aesthetic first impression – antispectacular, 

anti-monumental and/or anti-aesthetic, 

as it is sometimes described. 

Minimalism ended up as a traditional object of 

taste – it just had a cooler taste. 9 

Joseph Kosuth says of the photograph in his 

work One and Three Chairs, which someone else 

had taken as a practice shot, that ‘this style lent a 

distance to the works that showed that it wasn’t a 

matter of compositions but of systems of meaning 

that I myself had constructed.’ 10 I came across 

an example of how well-established this idea has 

become in a review of the book Kjartan Slettemark 

– Kunsten å falle (‘Kjartan Slettemark – The Art 

of Falling’), which says that ‘large numbers of 

the photographs in Kunsten å falle are in black 

and white, which makes the transition to colour 

photography towards the end of the book seem both 

abrupt and unconsidered.’ 11 In this example, the 

argument is that the colour photographs in the book 

mar the overall aesthetic. 

There are numerous references to what we 

often call minimalism and/or conceptual art in 

contemporary art. Exquisitely framed black-andwhite 

photographs act as a new Rococo frame. 

Another characteristic of conceptual art is that it is 

not open to interpretation. It is what it is: closed. 

One example is Sol Le Witt’s ‘instructions’ for wall 

drawings, which have nothing at all to do with 

interpretation, but are simply what they say they 

are – instructions. But these works refer only to the 

aesthetics, not to the content. 

Neo-Conceptualism/Borderline Design 

The assertion is that the idea is the most important 

thing, but what we often see is an aesthetic 

statement, a visual product where the underlying 

ideologies are no longer visible for us. The visual 

has taken over, establishing the standards to which 

we must now relate. It is this that is also referred to 

as ‘borderline design’. But this is only the aesthetic 

aspect of the work of art. Is there a method that with 

good reason leads there? Or are form and content 

inextricably interlocked? And, if so, will the form 

itself provide its own content? On the other hand, 

ceramics, for example, are not known for being 

particularly rich in content from a conceptual point 

of view… 

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At its core, the meaning of art consists in 

transposing communication to the field 

of perception. 12 

Methodology 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as 

Mahatma Gandhi, is famous for his development of 

the concepts of civil disobedience and non-violent 

protest. The entire array of his action is pacifist. It 

is based on non-violence, civil disobedience, and is 

non-antagonistic. This form of action is based on a 

fundamental and highly detailed understanding of 

the system within which one acts and which one 

opposes. An example: When Gandhi’s followers 

on the Salt March were met by cavalrymen, they 

lay down on the ground. 13 Horses are trained never 

to ride over bodies lying on the ground, and this 

applies equally to military mounts so that soldiers 

do not risk being trampled to death by their own 

horses. By using and exploiting a tiny detail in the 

greater system of things and by offering resistance 

without violence, the marchers were thus able to 

put an entire detachment of mounted soldiers out of 

commission. It is a method that is based on detailed 

knowledge of a system. 

I mention Gandhi in this context because this 

fundamental knowledge of the system within which 

one operates feels relevant. It has a kinship to many 

of my works, which I would describe as responsive. A 

work of art can be a concrete response to a situation. 

One example is the housing situation in society as 

in my Split-Up-Family House, 2007, is a proposal 

for a home where the children’s room is placed 

centrally between the two separate apartments, each 

identically mirroring the other. Another example 

is endless encounters with bureaucracy as in my A 

Social Sculpture for a Social Democracy, 2007. 

Methodology – A Joke? 

In Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious 

Sigmund Freud writes about the techniques whereby a 

joke signals that it is a joke. Jokes make use of a point 

and throughout the book he investigates what this 

point is, from a purely methodological perspective. He 

examines the technique that enables the person telling 

the joke to emphasise the point he seeks to make, and 

thus make it apparent that this is a joke and not a 

digressive narrative. 

Freud points out that the amount of information 

in two stories can be almost the same, but that it is 

technique that determines whether or not the point 

is made. In one of the jokes that Freud examines, 

two Jews meet. We shall now look at two stories that 

contain the same amount of information. 

One Jew asks another Jew if he has taken a 

bath, to which the second Jew answers: ‘No.’ 

Alternatively: 

One Jew asks another Jew if he has taken a 

bath, to which the second Jew answers: ‘No. Is 

there one missing?’ 

The two stories contain the same amount of 

information, but the second of the two stories makes 

a comical point of a misunderstanding, when the 

respondent misunderstands the nature of the question 

that has been posed. 

In another joke Freud examines the use of the 

conjunction ‘and’ 14 that functions as a technical aid 

and then as an additional numerator that breaks 

up the logic in what has just been said: ‘Speaking 

generally, the inhabitants of Göttingen can be divided 

into students, professors, philistines and donkeys.’ 15 

Freud calls this technique ‘joking enumeration’. 16 It 

is the juxtaposition of words and, more specifically, 

how this juxtaposition is engineered that lends a new 

meaning to the utterance and renders it humorous. 

It is a meaning that, in this instance, deviates 

from custom and logic. In another technique – 

‘representation by the opposite’ – Freud says that it is 

necessary to make use of a ‘but’ that is linked to the 

‘yes’ in such a way that ‘yes’ and ‘but’ are equivalent in 

sense to ‘no’. 

An example: Frederick the Great summons a 

man who, he has heard, can speak to the spirit world 

and asks him: ‘You can conjure up spirits?’ The 

man replies: ‘At Your Majesty’s command. But they 

don’t come.’ 17 

Technique = Form + Content 

Condensation of information is perhaps the most 

fundamental aspect in any joke. And it is also the most 

relevant link between jokes and art. A joke cannot be 

long and has no room for digressions or non-essential 

information. Take the example of the Jew who asks 

another Jew if he has taken a bath, and then add, for 

example: ‘It’s such a long time since I did so last, (Has 

he taken a bath himself? No? All right!), but soap has 

become so expensive and, by the way, how are things 

with your mother’s sister’s child? Still got a bad back, 

eh?’, before finally getting round to the answer: ‘No.’ 

If we undo the technique of a joke, 

it disappears. 18 

The joke disappears in the digressive example 

shown above. It’s quite simply not funny any longer. 

This shows us that the condensation of information 

is a crucial factor for being able to stay within the 

30 31 

format of the joke – concise, precise and concrete. 

We see here that making a point is crucial in choosing 

the form of the joke, if indeed the point of the joke 

is not innate within its form. Provided that we are in 

agreement, the consequence of this logic is that form 

and content are inextricably interwoven. The joke, or 

the potential for communicating a point, is dependent 

on the form in which it is presented, and whether 

or not it succeeds would appear to depend on the 

technique being used. 

As far as works of art are concerned, we can 

consider the amount of information that is contained 

within a work of art in relation to how readily it can 

be deciphered. We can also test the thought that, in a 

work of art, the choice of the appropriate aesthetics 

plays a crucial role for the content of the work – if, 

indeed, it is not also the form. It’s all about peeling 

away as much non-essential (digressive) information 

as possible. 

People without Humour? 

What if we make use of a technique that seeks to 

communicate, but fails? If we employ one of the 

techniques of jokes, we presuppose that it will 

function as communication. I’m not thinking here 

simply of understanding something as amusing, but of 

understanding it at all. Surely, we’ve all experienced 

telling a joke that no one has laughed at. Recently 

I heard a story about a person with Asperger’s 

syndrome. Things were working out well as far as his 

IT job was concerned, but he did have some problems 

in his social life, particularly in terms of relationships. 

He turned up for his first date wearing a ball gag. 

(This is a leather gag used by the submissive partner in 

sadomasochistic role-play; it is not dissimilar to the bit 

in a horse’s mouth, but is designed so that the wearer 

must hold a ball in his or her mouth.) His female date 

was deeply insulted by his wearing the mask, while 

he himself could not understand how this could be 

construed as anything to get so worked up about. So 

what was it that actually happened here? 

The Logical Fallacy 

We are now approaching an important point. As I 

have shown in the joke about the man who asks if his 

friend has taken a bath, the question of whether this 

is true or not is irrelevant. The important thing is how 

form and content work together. Freud says that the 

processes that come into play in a joke (condensation 

and the formation of substitutes, etc.) also point 

towards a relation with the creation of dreams and are 

almost identical with the way in which a dream comes 

into existence. In a joke – as in a dream – we make 

use of a kind of logical fallacy. (See the episode about 



the Asperger’s syndrome sufferer’s ball gag above.) 

Freud points out that jokes and dreams share many 

of the same techniques or mechanisms – displacement, 

faulty reasoning, absurdity, indirect representation and 

representation by the opposite (irony). Displacement 

gives a dream its air of strangeness, its incongruity 

and absurdity. In a dream – as in a joke – criticism, 

morality and the laws of logic have long since been 

renounced. A kind of free zone is established. 

The similarity between dreams and art may be the 

frequently fragmentary character of these two modes 

of expression, because the totality is quite simply 

too great to make any true overview possible. We 

retrospectively build up a totality by reconstructing a 

meaning based on the fragments with which we are 

presented. It is all these techniques that distinguish 

our dreams from our thoughts in our conscious 

waking life. 19 Can we deduce, therefore, that illogical 

juxtaposition or the exaggeration of an obvious fallacy 

is perhaps one way to emphasise what is realistic 

and what is right? In short, we can say that a logical 

short-circuit provides us with a path to understanding 

something. Or is misunderstanding an essential 

prerequisite for understanding? 

Laughter – Meditation – Orgasm 

What does laughter seek to do? There are certain 

similarities between what jokes, meditation and 

orgasm seek to achieve. Freud compares humor to a 

valve on a steam engine (the ‘Ventilation Theory’) – in 

other words, something whose function is to release 

pressure – to make sure the engine does not explode 

in a social context. The ventilation metaphor also 

renders jokes absolutely essential. 

The moment when we laugh at a joke or 

comprehend something is also the moment when 

everything falls into place. When meditating, we 

attempt to enter into this state for a prolonged period 

of time, seeking a more consummate totality in which 

everything is in harmony. Orgasm also contains 

this kind of climax and this, in addition to the selfpreservation 

instinct, is an objective in itself. Another 

similarity with meditation is that the joke is an end in 

itself; it exists for its own sake, it exists for what it is. 

Freud observes that jokes are often conceived 

when our brain is idling and ‘working of its own 

accord in the direction of pleasure, seeking to derive 

pleasure from its own activity’. 20 We can also see 

here Freud’s conviction that desire – especially the 

desire for pleasure – is the driving force behind all 

that we do. According to Freud, there is a connection 

between what he calls the perception of pleasure and 

the techniques of the joke. Freud maintains that the 

actual technique employed to create the joke, be it 

condensation, displacement, indirect representation 

or whatever, possesses the power to evoke this 

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perception of pleasure. 21 As far as art is concerned, 

I think there is something in saying something in a 

new way, and that this corresponds to a perception of 

pleasure. 

Tendentious Contra Innocent 

Freud differentiates between tendentious and nontendentious 

jokes, characterising the non-tendentious 

variety, which includes many jokes that play on words 

and alliteration, as innocent. 22 ‘The character of a 

joke […] resides in the expression.’ 23 As I have already 

explained, a change in the form of expression can 

mean that not only does the joke lose its humorous 

character, but also its playfulness. Many of my titles 

take this form, as a mildly amusing string of words 

– preferably with an academic twist. I use the word 

‘academic’ here because it often involves namedropping 

concepts that originate in another academic 

discipline. For example, my picture At the End of 

Suburbia, a Suggestion for a Final Solution for a Post- 

Everything World or the sculpture A Social Sculpture 

for a Social Democracy. 

The Perception of Pleasure – and Tedium 

Freud maintains that the innocent joke is unable to 

unleash the same explosive laugh as the tendentious 

joke, even when the techniques employed are 

identical. There must be something else that 

precipitates this roar of laughter. As the name 

suggests, the innocent joke is innocuous, while 

the tendentious joke is not an end in itself. The 

tendentious joke presents itself as a hostile joke; a 

joke that works in the service of aggression, satire or 

defense, or a dirty (indecent) joke that serves to reveal 

and expose. 

It is a combination of society’s taboos and our 

faculty for repression that makes a dirty joke funny. 

Freud ascribes society’s standards for what is and 

what is not acceptable to civilisation and higher 

education: 

The repressive activity of civilisation brings it 

about that primary possibilities of enjoyment, 

which have now, however, been repudiated by 

the censorship in us, are lost to us. But to the 

human psyche all renunciation is exceedingly 

difficult, and so we find that tendentious jokes 

provide a means of undoing the renunciation 

and retrieving what was lost. 24 

Sexual jokes belong to the category of dirty 

stories or ‘smut’, and possess the ability to arouse and 

excite the listener, make him or her feel ashamed 

or embarrassed. Freud also describes such jokes as 

manifest or latent attempts at seduction. They are 

also designed to touch upon one of the most private 

spheres of life and, in addition, possess an underlying 

agenda or intention. 

A person who laughs at smut that he hears is 

laughing as though he were the spectator of an 

act of sexual aggression. 25 

Although little attention is paid today to Freudian 

theories that all desires arise out of suppressed 

sexuality that has its origins in childhood, his analyses 

of jokes and the techniques behind them, on the other 

hand, seem to me to be highly relevant. What is most 

relevant for me practically in my work as an artist is 

how readily the technical aspects that Freud draws 

attention to can be applied to the relation between the 

picture, and the idea that the artist is communicating. 

Or, as Freud maintains, where communication is more 

or less unconscious and where the intention has to be 

divined by psychoanalysis. It may seem rather bizarre 

and would ascribe an underlying attempt at seduction 

to every dirty joke, but, even so, there is something 

here that is not as bizarre as it may first seem. One 

interesting observation is that: 

By the utterance of obscene words, [smut] 

compels the person who is assailed to imagine 

the part of the body or the procedure in 

question and shows her that the assailant is 

himself imagining it. It cannot be doubted that 

the desire to see what is sexual exposed is the 

original motive of smut. 26 

In other words, by exposing someone to an 

obscenity, you force the person concerned either 

to visualise what is described, or to consider where 

they stand in relation to it and whether or not it is 

indecent. In 2006 the following two drawings were 

exhibited together: With Gorilla Gone, Will There 

Be Hope for Man? and At the End of Suburbia, a 

Suggestion for a Final Solution for a Post-Everything 

World II. The first of these, a drawing of the man on 

the beach, raised many a laugh and lots of different 

comments. It was almost exclusively regarded as, and 

interpreted as, my own sexual fantasy. 

Ideas are, on the one hand, a fatal admission. 

They bring to light not only the best in us, but 

also to the same degree our great inadequacy 

and abjectness. 27 

One observer set about bowdlerising my sexual 

perversions by referring to the male figure in the 

picture as ‘the blind man’ – as if were not possible to 

draw a picture of a man pushing his walking-stick into 

the genitals of a woman on the beach. At the same 

time, we cannot disregard the fact that there may be 

32 33 

a concrete motive behind an action, or in this case, a 

picture. After all, the picture has not drawn itself. For 

the time being we must leave open the possibility that 

the artist is a brute. Jacques Rancière writes: 

The distribution of the sensible reveals who 

can have a share in what is common to the 

community based on what they do and on 

the time and space in which this activity is 

performed… it defines what is visible or not 

in a common space, endowed with a common 

language, etc. 28 

It may also be of interest to look at this in the light 

of what Rancière calls ‘the distribution of the sensible’. 

Rancière explains that we share a kind of consensus 

about what can be said, as well as where and when 

it can be said and, perhaps even, whether or not it 

can be said at all. This is, of course, nothing new, but 

Rancière raises it to the level of aesthetics. 

You can therefore say that my own sexually 

charged example from the drawing of the man on the 

beach collides with this consensus for several reasons. 

It moves within a sphere of (male) fantasy that cannot 

be openly expressed (in most social strata) and it also 

demonstrates something of a politically incorrect 

character. An extension of post-structuralist theory 

toys with the idea that sex is a social construct, etc. 

Or, to borrow Freud’s words about dirty jokes and 

their purpose, namely: 

They make possible the satisfaction of an 

instinct […] in the face of an obstacle that 

stands in its way. They circumvent this obstacle 

and in that way draw pleasure from a source 

which the obstacle had made inaccessible. 29 

Freud emphasises that a dirty joke is dependent 

on being sufficiently smutty so as not to fall into the 

category of what we might otherwise call sexually 

offensive. Transposed to art, perhaps it may be said 

that something must be sufficiently artistic not to fall 

into the category of what we might otherwise call 

craftsmanship, illustration, etc. The obscene must be 

sufficiently obscene. What is interesting is that we 

often react as Freud describes in meeting these ‘smutty 

jokes’ at the same time as we do all we can to deny 

that we fall into one of his categories. It is perhaps 

unnecessary to say that I was not attributed with a 

fetish for architecture, a fetish for fences, or any other 

sexual perversions as a result of the second drawing. 

The quotation from Freud above is also interesting 

when considered together with my picture At The 

End of Suburbia, a Suggestion For a Final Solution 

For a Post Everything World II. We can see that, on a 

purely technical level, this makes use of representation 

by the opposite (irony), where safety has become so 

exaggerated that it no longer fulfils any function. It 



is presented as safety, but in truth it more resembles 

the very opposite of safety; a caricatured arms race. 

All the security facilities are exaggerated: these are 

the safety features of a prison, or a military barracks 

transferred to a suburban domestic setting. This 

juxtaposition elucidates a number of paradoxes in 

structures like these. By showing how the illusion of 

safety and security is immanent in certain structures 

such as fortresses, watchtowers and the like, we see 

just how ineffective and vulnerable these structures 

actually are. 

This picture also employs the form of the comment, 

another feature that is far from unproblematic. Taken 

to its logical conclusion, art that passes comment 

risks becoming moralistic. In the worst-case scenario, 

it can become nothing more than a prime example 

of antagonistic or pedagogic or moralistic criticism – 

finger-pointing art in line with emo-conceptualism. 

But, in its most sublime form, it can work – provided 

it is sufficiently well formulated. Another problem 

with a so-called humorous approach is the widespread 

conception that humor leaves no room for earnestness. 

It can be taken seriously, but not in earnest. 

Genuine Nonsense and Aimless Action 

There is something truly liberating in the absurd. 

Freud asserts that we bear within us the urge to 

act ‘absurdly and aimlessly’ 30 and that this is borne 

of a genuine love of nonsense. The work A Social 

Sculpture for a Social Democracy is a metal barrier for 

organising a line of people. The project was originally 

presented with the subtitle: An Attempt to Create a 

Sculpture the Swedish People Will Love. 

We are inclined, quite generally, where a 

characteristic attaches only to a small or 

insignificant part of a whole, to extend it in our 

estimation to the whole itself. 31 

The sculpture was made in Malmö Sculpture Park 

in 2007 and placed in the city’s main square without 

any obvious connection to a particular purpose. The 

fencing was painted in the same shade of grey that 

Malmö City Council uses for similar installations in 

the public space. Its apparent lack of function lent it 

the character of something superfluous, thus rendering 

it an aesthetic object. As the form is characterised 

by simplicity, so too is the content. I believe that it 

is reasonable to contend that the form supplies the 

content. The title is a play on words of Joseph Beuys’ 

concept of ‘social sculpture’. Beuys’ line of reasoning 

was that every living being (human or animal) 

not only can be, but also actually is, an artist. The 

alliterative title has something of the enumerative 

joke-technique about it, while the sculpture itself is 

nothing but a structure for controlling queues. 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

An Attempt at a Conclusion 

As I said by way of introduction, the departure point 

for my work is the belief that I can say something. 

To take this a step further, I believe that I can say 

something that is of interest, and – further still – 

something that is of interest to other people. Through 

my works I want to formulate thoughts, ideas or 

provocations that illuminate or expose the ideological 

fabric in ingrained patterns of thought and social 

structures. 

Writing this text has given me the pleasure of 

researching Freud’s ideas about jokes and dreams. 

To start with, I thought that the sexual aspect of 

Freud’s writings was highly inappropriate, but it is 

interesting to consider how one should relate to 

the problem of subjectivity. We can never start with 

anything other than ourselves, no matter how skilled 

we are at retrospectively rationalising our actions and 

contextualising them within the environment of art. 

Recently a friend of mine said to me that ‘the problem 

with Freud is that he writes so darned well, it’s hard 

not to agree with him.’ 

What Freud has to say about sexuality, infantile 

desires and their conflict with the reality 

principle, about incest and things of that 

nature, can be regarded as the truest expression 

of his own personal psychology; it is the 

successful formulation of his own subjective 

observations. 32 

Jung’s criticism of Freud seems both accurate 

and rather cheap. When faced with an idea you 

do not like or find it difficult to relate to, it is a 

standard retort that it is simply the projection 

of the other person’s own thoughts and ideas. 

Subjectivity is always a problem since it cannot be 

analysed objectively or in scientific terms. By and 

large, my work takes two forms: the proposition 

and the comment. Both types make use of the same 

techniques, but the propositions may have a more 

constructive character. Jung contends that the origin 

of all Freud’s analyses are Freud’s own traumas and 

that they are thus subjective in character. Whether 

the author is dead or not may be significant; in other 

words, can we reach the artist (autobiographically) 

through a work of art or a book. 

Desire – The Joke as Social Progress 

and the Subjective Conditions 

In the final section of his book, Freud reflects on how 

different forms of desire constitute the basis for our 

actions. There are often question marks surrounding 

the motivating force behind an artist. Why has he 

produced this particular work of art? 

I doubt if we are in a position to undertake 

anything without having an intention in view. 33 

In purely logical terms it seems reasonable to 

acknowledge that an action is always predicated on 

an intention. But how does communication take place 

through the techniques I have outlined above? Are 

they merely unconscious? If we see art as a conscious 

action, then this cannot be so, even if the motivating 

factor can sometimes be unclear, if not also irrelevant. 

Talking about Jewish jokes, Freud writes that ‘the 

significance seems to lie in the fact that the person 

concerned finds criticism or aggressiveness difficult 

so long as they are direct, and possible only along 

circuitous paths. 34 The joke and its techniques thus 

become a form of communication that expresses 

something by showing us something else or saying 

something else – ‘along circuitous paths’, as Freud 

expresses it. 35 For me, there is a clear parallel to art 

here, for the methodology seems fairly similar – not 

being able to express something in terms that are too 

direct, lest (to take a very obvious example) such overexplicitness 

shifts the result from art to illustration. 

Absurd Tool 

The techniques of absurdity that are employed in 

a joke correspond to a source of pleasure. It is a 

pleasure that is born of ‘an economy in psychical 

expenditure or a relief from the compulsion of 

criticism’ 36 but ‘Pleasure in nonsense […] is concealed 

in serious life to vanishing point.’ 37 This joy will be 

obliterated in the serious, adult life. Childish joy at 

rhyme and empty prattle will and must be destroyed 

in later life. Freud points out that absurdity makes 

learning fun, but as we enter adult life demands for 

logic and common sense make our former sources 

of pleasure inaccessible. 38 In other words, the absurd 

bears within it something that is lost to us, a sense 

of nostalgia. Play is an important tool in art and in 

the act of creation, as it provides a medium through 

which we can test ideas and characters and other such 

things. 

The actual work of art itself can also be pleasurable 

and may even employ the same mechanism as a 

joke, inasmuch as most of us experience a sense of 

pleasure in creating something and it is thus a source 

of joy. But the consequence of this line of thought can 

also be masturbation – or therapeutic. The absurd 

or an absurd character then becomes something of 

a technical device in art, a form of communication 

that says something in a roundabout way. But this 

circuitous route also creates new experiences or 

opportunities for other interpretations of a work. 

Adorno is said so have used terms that recall 

Freud’s ‘ventilation theory’, indicating that common 

sense can only survive in desperation and an 

34 35 

overwrought state; it needs absurdity to prevent it 

from succumbing to objective insanity. The logical 

conclusion of this mode of reasoning is thus a 

dualistic pattern of thought where absurdity becomes 

a kind of yin to the yang of rationality. 

The Completion Criterion 

There prevails an idea in society that everything 

has to be finished. There is a general consensus 

that finished is good, unfinished is bad. How many 

permanently unfinished roads and buildings are 

there out there? We always have to put a full stop 

to what we are doing. Yet, at the same time, I have 

found that finishing a work – completing it – can kill 

my interest in it. You stifle all the potential that was 

there while it was still unfinished, when the work still 

had an opportunity to progress in so many different 

directions. For me, all the excitement might just as 

well evaporate. 

My exhibition for my master’s degree, The One 

Thing after Another, was an attempt to avoid finished 

works. And here, when I say ‘finished’, I’m thinking 

of the finish that is applied and the over-polished 

expression that has, in many ways, characterised the 

art scene in Malmö. I’m thinking of the contrast to 

the young scene in Copenhagen where ‘trashy’ is the 

dominant idiom. I’m not claiming that this joy in 

mixing every different style and expression in one and 

the same painting necessarily adds anything to a work 

of art; I am merely pointing out the differences. 

The title for the exhibition is a quotation from 

Donald Judd referring to the repetitive qualities of 

Frank Stella’s painting: ‘The Order is not rationalistic 

or underlying, but is simply order, like that of 

continuity – one thing after another.’ 39 I added a ‘the’ 

to remove the quotation from its context and to make 

it something of my own. My thought was that this 

formalistic quotation would add a certain ambivalence 

to the content of the exhibition, where all the works 

deal with late Modernist architecture. By making 

use of ‘unfinished’ materials – untreated plywood, 

particleboard, woodcuts on the very cheapest paper 

(wastepaper) and untreated steel – I endeavored to 

inject a different kind of energy into the works. I 

wanted to finish the works, but I didn’t want them 

to die. At the same time I attempted to peel away 

as much ‘non-essential’ information as possible. By 

choosing not to apply the final layer of polish and not 

giving them a final finish, I tried to retain the energy 

that is inherent in what is unfinished. And all in an 

attempt to arrive at an essence or a kind of ‘point’. 

In works such as Untitled Arc or House, form and 

materiality are – for me – inextricably interwoven. The 

choice of material follows a kind of logic of form and 

content. Steel for the fencing and wood/plywood and 

cheap building materials for the high-rise tower. 



My experience was that, in taking away, I achieved 

greater precision in my work. Greater precision in 

the form and with more points of entry for possible 

interpretations. The works I have previously referred 

to as ‘responsive’ have their opposite pole in what is 

frequently a material desire. For example, I can feel 

a strong longing for plywood or polyester – and to 

build something with these materials. Every now and 

then we suppress our desires. Occasionally I have 

this desire to strip naked when I’ve drunk a lot of 

alcohol. More often than not, I manage – rationally 

– to suppress this desire by telling myself that I won’t 

be thinking along the same lines when I wake up 

the following morning. No doubt about it, this is an 

irrational desire that besets me when I’m under the 

influence of alcohol. 

A desire to build something can dictate a work that 

will subsequently be subjected to a process of stringent 

retrospective rationalisation. (So that I can make it 

appear as if the works are the result of something 

that resembles a rational process. This is particularly 

effective in relation to presenting the works and when 

writing applications, but as a way of setting about 

creating something it is a destructive. This process of 

retrospective rationalisation cannot be reversed to 

become instrumental.) 

The creative process is a constant battle and 

the idea of consensus is a destructive utopia. The 

‘responsive’ work process presupposes that you are 

in contact with reality (or with what we call ‘the Real 

World’) and also that you are a part of that world. 

The Necessity and Problems of 

Retrospective Rationalisation 

The retrospective rationalisation of a work of art is 

necessary for the artist himself to be able to complete, 

contextualise and present his work. Artists often seek 

to validate their ideas by borrowing concepts from 

spheres of science. The advantage of using concepts 

with an axiomatic character is that these bear within 

them an intrinsic truth. The use of concepts from 

(natural) sciences or sociology – for example from 

biology or philosophy (rhizome, strata, nomad, etc: 

see Gilles Deleuze, Manuel Delanda, etc.) – is that 

these serve the function of truth machines that give 

credence to vaguely formulated speculations through 

the use of terms from a language that operates within 

a black-and-white world (namely, natural sciences), 

where true and false are real factors. There is, 

therefore, no possibility of – nor any point in – putting 

up any resistance. 

By making use of these concepts, we are 

intermixing the most concrete substantiations that 

we can muster – natural sciences – with the most 

uncertain we possess – art. The result is a glorious 

mishmash of different ideas and concepts from various 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

other sciences, preferably with axiomatic attributes. In 

the wake of this, we talk about art as the production 

of meaning or knowledge; again the underlying idea 

is that art has a contribution to make to whatever the 

debate may be: that art has something new to say. 

I’ve served only a short time in academic circles – 

sufficient to study to intermediate level (two years) for 

a History of Art degree – because I felt that I wasn’t 

really cut out for this sort of thing. Especially, perhaps, 

since I could never manage to remember names, and 

a student of art history who’s not very good at namedropping 

is pretty much a waste of space. I noted how 

difficult it was to make any impact on the hierarchies 

between humanities and the sciences. Mathematics 

was constantly lauded as the nec plus ultra and was 

the subject that received the most resources above 

budget. In a way, this Deleuzian annexation of 

technical terms can be seen as an attempt to infuse art 

with a new authoritativeness. 

Art’s annexation of terms from other sciences 

has a parallel in the idea of the genius. It places the 

artist in a position that is difficult to attack, where the 

artist can wrap up his works in the fine vocabulary 

of retrospective rationalisation, with the borrowed 

authority of whichever science he chooses. Where 

once the genius stood as the link between the sublime 

and the human, today’s artist risks becoming a quasiscientific 

charlatan. 

I prefer to bring the artist a little more downto-earth. 

Artists seem to be somewhat less exotic 

characters when they are the only people you associate 

with on a daily basis. Dysfunctional people are 

charming only when you don’t have to relate to them. 

Still we are all dysfunctional in some way or another… 

The End 

You can do better Per Kristian! (Andrea Geyer) 

I would like to round up by quoting a few of 

the comments and quotes that have followed me 

throughout my studies and to which I often return. In 

moments of uncertainty I have been reminded time 

after time of this quotation from Joseph Kosuth. 

Deep in the soul of every artist is this fear that 

what they are doing is nothing but a bluff. 40 

I don’t think I will ever become totally certain 

about what it is that I am doing. Perhaps this 

uncertainty is the motivating force that keeps me 

going. Art seems to be a way of thinking. And a very 

visual way of thinking. 

Thinking is always unacademic. Organising is 

always academic. Art is unwritten thought… 41 

In my text I have endeavored to understand and 

to sift through the thoughts that have influenced me 

over the past five years. Ad Reinhardt is said to have 

claimed on one occasion that ‘In art the end is always 

the beginning’. 

36 37 

Notes 

1. Led Zeppelin, Communication Breakdown. 

Atlantic Records. 1969. 

2. Francis Bacon quoted in Peppiatt, Michael, 

Francis Bacon – Anatomy of an Enigma. 

London: Skyhorse, 2008, p.110. 

3. Winston Churchill, http://en.wikiquote.org/ 

wiki/History, accessed 12 October 2010. 

4. Cutler, Howard C, The Art of Happiness. A 

Handbook for Living. New York: Riverhead 

Books, 1998, p.15. 

5. http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksiom, accessed 

5 January 2010. 

6. From the Greek, meaning dissimilarity or 

diversity. http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 

Heterogen, accessed 3 April 2010. 

7. Cage, John, Silence/Lectures and Writings. 

Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973, 

p.58. 

8. Cutler, Howard C, op. cit., p.15–16. 

9. Grøgaard, Stian, Det vage objekt – 12 

samtaler om kunst (‘The Vague Object – 12 

Conversations about Art’), Oslo: Unipax, 2001, 

p.18. 

10. Ibid., p.19. 

11. Billedkunst No. 1/2010. Oslo: Union of 

Norwegian Artists, 2010, p.42. 

12. Luhmann, Niklas, ‘Om Autonomi’ (’On 

Autonomy’), in UKS – Forum for samtidskunst 

3–4/2006. Oslo:Union of Young Artists, 2006, 

p.56. 

13. The Salt March. In 1930 Gandhi led tens of 

thousands of Indians on a 400-kilometre march 

from Ahmedabad to the seashore at Dandi. 

Having arrived at his destination, Gandhi bent 

down to pick up a handful of salt from the 

beach. This was a direct provocation against the 

British, who had imposed a much detested tax 

on salt. 

14. Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and their Relation to the 

Unconscious. London: Penguin, 1978, p.108. 

15. Ibid. 

16. Ibid., p.108. 

17. Ibid., p.109. 

18. Ibid., p.113. 

19. Ibid., pp.130–131. 

20. Ibid., pp.138–139. 

21. Ibid., p.138. 

22. Ibid., p.134. 

23. Ibid., p.47. 

24. Ibid., p.145. 

25. Ibid., p.141. 

26. Ibid. 

27. Jung, C G, Freud & Jung: Kontraster (‘Freud & 

Jung: Contrasts’). Oslo: Pax, 2007, p.192. 



28. Rancière, Jacques, ‘Aesthetic Separation, 

Asthetic Community’, in Art & Research, 

Volume 2. no 1 Summer 2008. Glasgow: School 

of Art, 2008, p.1. 

29. Freud, Sigmund, op. cit., p.144. 

30. Ibid., p.158. 

31. Ibid., p.126. 

32. Jung, C G, op. cit., p.194. 

33. Freud, Sigmund, op. cit., p.138. 

34. Ibid., p.194. 

35. Ibid. 

36. Ibid., p.177. 

37. Ibid., p.174. 

38. Ibid., p.42. 

39. Krauss, Rosalind E, Passages in Modern 

Sculpture. New York: The Viking Press, 1981, 

p.244. 

40. Grøgaard, Stian, op. cit., p.14. 

41. Skotte, Henrik, untitled essay in Marienborg 

Atelierfelleskap og Prosjektrom 2005–2010 

(‘Marienborg Studio Association and Project 

Room 2005–2010’). Trondheim, 2010, p.120. 

Bibliography 

Billedkunst (‘Visual Art’) No. 1/2010. Oslo: Union of 

Norwegian Artists, 2010. 

Cage, John: Silence. Lectures and Writings. 

Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. 

Cutler, Howard C, The Art of Happiness. A Handbook 

for Living. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. 

Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and Their Relation to the 

Unconscious, translated by James Strachey. London: 

Penguin, 1978. 

Grøgaard, Stian, Det vage objekt – 12 samtaler om 

kunst (‘The Vague Object – 12 Conversations about 

Art’), Oslo: Unipax, 2001. 

Jung, C G, Freud & Jung: Kontraster (‘Freud & Jung: 

Contrasts’). Oslo: Pax, 2007. 

Krauss, Rosalind E, Passages in Modern Sculpture. 

New York: The Viking Press, 1981. 

Luhmann, Niklas, ‘Om Autonomi’ (’On Autonomy’), 

in UKS – Forum for samtidskunst 3–4/2006. Oslo: 

Union of Young Artists, 2006. 

Peppiatt, Michael. Francis Bacon – Anatomy of an 

Enigma. London. Skyhorse Publishing 2008. 

Rancière, Jacques, ‘Aesthetic Separation, Asthetic 

Community’, in Art & Research, Volume 2. no 1 

Summer 2008. Glasgow: School of Art, 2008. 

Skotte, Henrik, untitled essay, in Marienborg 

Atelierfelleskap og Prosjektrom 2005–2010 

(‘Marienborg Studio Association and Project Room 

2005–2010’). Trondheim, 2010. 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

38 39 



Untitled Arc 

Welded steel, 100 x 650 cm 

Installation view, KHM Gallery 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

House 

Plywood, 290 x 80 x 70 cm 


40 41 



Futurum Combi; Type 64 

Woodcuts mounted on chipboard, each 40 x 50 cm 


MFA 2 MFA 2 

The Agreement 

Mixed media, metal, concrete, mirrors, screenprint 

Detail of mirror box 

42 43 



Memory 

I remember sitting on the back of a bicycle holding a 

friend’s and waist closing my eyes as in high speed we 

roll through a tunnel on a warm summer’s day. I also 

remember the light disappearing as the cool breeze of 

the tunnel closed around me. It’s cool, almost cold, 

one second, two seconds… Then flickers of intense 

warmth hit my face on and off, sun flickering through 

suburban trees. 

Our attempt at focusing must give way to the 

all-embracing stare. 1 

If someone was to fill my studio from floor to roof 

with burning lava, not only would it kill me but the 

person who was to find me would die too. It’s just the 

reality about how a space functions. 

Maybe the Last Studio Visit Ever 

Conclusion: Probably the most rewarding studio visit 

I had so far. I felt relaxed as time and pressure finally 

ended. The weird feeling of never having time. I really 

don’t know why. All through the years I tried my best 

to go where I wanted to in my work; all these years 

at the school it was not really me working my ass off 

in furious tempo spitting out my insides. I was trying 

to find a way of working that I could relate to and 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Hans Scherer 

Here to Go 

function with, this was always what I strove towards. 

This I think now, sitting in my studio writing this 

text, when the only thing that I would prefer to do 

is work, and evolve my way with the physical act of 

making art. I find pleasure in writing, but only on my 

own terms. Jimmie Durham once said if somebody 

should write about his work it should be somebody 

who is intelligent. 

Sometimes that was my problem, because in a 

way I kind of forced the idea that the practical side 

of making art was all and that’s it. But now I can 

gradually see through the mist of furious work and 

understand the great importance of the analysis, and 

reflection on my own work. I just chose to focus 

on the physical side of it, and probably there was a 

perfectly good reason for doing that. Analysis for me 

and no one else is one way of doing. For an objective 

observer it is something else; these different ways of 

describing is something that has to be included or at 

least considered in the presentation of one’s thoughts 

or ideas. 

Of course I was writing and using text in my work. 

But then again I was very sure of what I wanted to do 

and executed it, even though I felt insecure about the 

result sometimes. But that is a totally different part 

of the equation. I trusted my perception. Sometimes 

I insisted on carrying out without really knowing. 

That could sometimes end in a less satisfying result. 

Sometimes I felt that I was wasting my time on details 

for too long, but then again something inside me 

would not let me drop it. I don’t want to hand in this 

text; this text is a beginning of a text. 

When you look back at work you did long time 

ago, there is a weird feeling of not recognising it. 

Then there is a feeling that you want to understand 

the past work through the new work, connecting it to 

the present or maybe measuring now against then or 

vice versa. Now maybe I can understand how I could 

make a well-built structure or at least see it on the 

horizon, as a way for me to actually find a model that 

could function as my practice. Or my way of doing 

what I must. 

Now, finally done with one of the last thing 

of importance at this place, namely my Master’s 

exhibition, it felt like I actually was faced with all that 

I had done, and therefore could see all the different 

choices I had made in work and in life over the last 

five years. The same feeling I always had when I saw 

work or stumbled upon something I really liked and 

the question of why I did so was always put in front of 

me. Sometimes I knew why I liked or loved the things 

I encountered, and sometimes it could take years of 

not really knowing why. But always I eventually found 

a reason to love or like things out of my past that I 

have had an encounter of this kind with. Maybe a 

good way for me to work is not to interfere with my 

intuition. Let it be what it is; and that comes in all 

that I encounter, from physical to analytical. 

There is a song called Silence Is Sexy. It is by a 

German band called Einstürzende Neubauten. In 

the song there is a section which uses a high pitched 

peep, kind of like a dog whistle but less invisible, more 

irritating, it goes on like this for about one minute 

then the song goes back to normal. It seems as if this 

high-pitched sound enhances the composition. 

Apply to School 

Growing up, me and my twin brother Tomas were 

always forcibly moved from one place to another. 

We never stayed at one place for long enough to 

adjust to our new surroundings. As far back as I can 

remember it was always us. The first time we were 

apart from each other, or separated for more than a 

couple of days, was many years later at the turn of the 

millennium 2000. I remember it well. 

I had been saving money for a long time and went 

to backpack through India and the southeast of Asia. 

Not long after my departure, we were to celebrate our 

birthday apart for the first time. I called home and 

talked with friends and family, they sang on the phone 

and cheered. The phone was handed to my brother, 

we talked, he was saying that I should hurry up home 

but enjoy the trip and so on, then Hanne, my very 

good friend at that time, got the phone. We talked, 

and she said to me that all was well. Then she asked 

me if I wanted to know a funny thing. I said yes, of 

44 45 

course. She told me that my brother had set the table 

with a place for me and he had also made a special 

hat for 13 December (St Lucy’s Day) ceremony, called 

a stjärngossehatt (‘Star Boy’s Hat’), which he had 

placed where I was supposed to sit. 

We were raised going to one family after another 

all over the country; this was the structure of our early 

life. Moved here and there, to Mr and Mrs Whatever 

and then the crazy Miss doing good for society by 

having us as guests, but always in a pair, so all we 

ever had was each other. The time we spent at our 

real home with mom was in a not so idyllic area in 

Helsingborg called Drottninghög. All we ever endured, 

experienced, good or bad, was shared between the two 

of us. 

I don’t really have any early recollections of 

thinking, of the thoughts of an inner me from my 

childhood, because I had none. We just passed 

through time in a very floating, angry and unsafe 

way. It’s not that we weren’t loved, but our mother 

had huge problems of her own, and being in a very 

sketchy situation herself she couldn’t handle our early 

childhood rage, and I don’t blame her. 

I remember that I was so excited and proud, 

and my brother too, when we were issued German 

passports because of the nationality of our always 

absent father. (One of the reasons for applying for a 

German passport was of course in order to escape 

from military service.) We were German, or at least 

I was. 

I never thought when I grew up. My first even 

remotely serious thought was dated 25 December 

1989. We were constantly trying to make up some 

kind of established identity, as a substitute for all the 

mess in our surroundings. We created a joint one, 

which was one that included the two of us. An entity 

that could be a strength or safety, if you will, for the 

two of us. 

Throughout life I often, in anger or frustration or 

in emotional highs, pretended to know some weird 

language that no one knows. This language is of 

course based on sounds from my history, but since it 

is a language it takes the form and sound of already 

existing languages, sometimes Martian from a bad 

science fiction movie which actually was great. 

Another similar experience I noticed in another 

way when I was at a semester in Germany, at the 

HDK in Braunschweig, studying under Professor Olav 

Christopher Jenssen: I noticed that a certain disrespect 

combined with belief in oneself could lead you to 

almost understand a language. It was as if one could 

decode a language with a relaxed, patiently practiced 

way of actually listening. But with a different way of 

listening, like when you close your eyes halfway to see 

if for instance a painting works out. 

The idea I had about this way of decoding a 

language might be an illusion, in the sense that I 

believe in it, I obsessed about the actual reality of 



this way of going about it. Maybe it is just a fix idea. 

Or maybe the misunderstanding of logic that my 

conviction inhabits is real truth. Either way it cannot 

be anything else but movement of thoughts and ideas, 

and that for me is real activity. 

I always wanted to do a collaboration of some kind 

with my brother, and throughout the years there had 

been some attempts. These attempts always resulted in 

disaster and so we kind of gave up the idea of working 

together. But then we were invited to participate in a 

show called Authentic Forgeries in November 2009. 

The work had to be done fast and there was not a lot 

of time to really reflect and consider so we decided to 

try to work together and I think that the short amount 

of time that was at our disposal kind of helped us find 

a way of working together which was good for us. The 

work turned out to be a very important one, in the 

sense that it was so fast and so raw in a way that it 

represented a lot of different ways of finding or trying 

out the shape or format for an presentation of an 

idea, which I felt that my work could need sometimes. 

I had been feeling that I needed some kind of shift 

or change of perspective in my way of presenting, 

or the way I approach an idea when I work. This 

collaboration showed me new ground, which I was 

happy to enter. 

Consider Dressing Multiples in Different Styles, 

the result of our collaboration, was a 20 minutes long 

video. I think it was a way for both of us to return 

to something we needed to clarify or demonstrate to 

each other, as if we were verifying our own memories 

and stories of what had happened and was still 

happening. It felt as if this moment of making the 

film could become a moment of truth between the 

two of us. In the video we are having a conversation, 

or rather asking a series of questions about growing 

up as twins. The questions are written as if they 

were someone else’s questions to us, but they were 

put together by us before the film was shot. These 

questions are repeated throughout the film in various 

situations. The film almost becomes a theatrical 

or cinematic rehearsal. Some scenes function as 

a dialogue between me and my brother. In other 

sequences he is alone, or I am alone. 

Enter 

When I was applying for schools, I wanted more than 

anything to get accepted to all schools except for the 

one school where my dear brother had been carrying 

out his studies, and that school was here in Malmö. 

Funnily, I was sloppy with the deadlines for all the 

schools except for the deadline regarding Malmö Art 

Academy. The ironic result: me getting accepted to 

undergo my studies at the Art Academy in Malmö. 

The first day in school they had a welcome dinnerparty, 

at that party in the small hours a girl walked up 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

to me and slapped me in the face. Later on I learned 

that she thought I was my brother. 

Peter Can’t Dance 

In my late teens, entering my twenties, I invented 

an alter ego by the name of Peter. This persona I 

also used when I found it necessary to escape from 

interaction in various social spheres. This name I also 

used in a later sculptural work which I entitled Peter 

Can’t Dance. 

The idea for this work has its origin from one night 

in Malmö, we were going around the bars drinking 

beer, having fun, celebrating nothing. I ended up in 

a nightclub very happy and talking with friends just 

about everything, then I realised that my girlfriend was 

there, she was on the dance floor. I just sat peacefully 

observing her every move as she took and gave place 

in various rhythmic compositions. I smiled inside and 

felt a euphoric feeling of bliss within. 

After sitting observing her from a distance and as 

time passed my body slowly bit by bit felt the music 

surround me and of course I wanted to participate, to 

join her, I wanted to join. But something inside didn’t 

want to let me. The bliss and joy I had so intensively 

felt, transformed itself into dark weird feelings of 

outside-ness. The colour of my interior turned into 

cardboard. Maybe I was interested in making a 

very objective simple illustration of something very 

complex and intricate. 

I think many twins suffer from some kind of social 

disturbance. In me and my brother’s case it was quite 

severe. In my late teens and early twenties I travelled 

a lot, which my brother didn’t, and in these travels I 

slowly dealt with these issues. I think many of my later 

works are trying to establish a space, a thought about 

space and about me in relation to the space itself. 

And about how to co-exist within these given 

parameters and how to give an account to all that 

inhabits this space. 

I read an article about a German guy, and here are 

some excerpts: 

As he practiced the skill in front of the mirror 

at 10am he set himself into a deep sleep until 

3pm, when he was found by his wife. It was 

only after she phoned Dr Roberts and put the 

receiver to Mr Kichmeier’s head that he could 

be talked out of the trance. Mrs Kichmeier said 

her husband had looked just like a zombie 

when she came into the room to find him. 

She said: ‘He was just staring at himself in the 

mirror, his pupils were tiny, which I know is a 

sign of someone under hypnosis. I tried to ask 

him what was wrong but he didn’t answer and 

it was then I looked at the sofa behind him and 

saw a book called Hypnosis: Medicine of the 

Mind. It was opened on page 45 and a chapter 

named hypnotic anesthesia and I realised there 

was something wrong. At first I panicked and 

tried to talk to Helmut but he didn’t respond. 2 

Rhythm and Pulse Created from 

the Death of Something Else 

Once I thought that my work had absolutely nothing 

to do with history; now I know that my work is only 

about history. Just like the day when nothing matters 

and I sit down and look back at traces from my past. I 

realise all the important details of those seemingly not 

very significant actions from the past. I could look at 

something in my work that I thought was awful and 

realise its importance in another moment, and I can 

also look at the things I did not confront and want it, 

miss it. 

I used colour to describe all that is different, all 

that was given a name. Colour Chart was a small work 

I made last year, and its function was to describe what 

components a specific colour consists of. According 

to the system, there is red, yellow and blue, and from 

these primary colors you get secondary colors and so 

forth. The information in each color gets denser or 

packed with more information. This was a way for 

me to use a simple structure that would illustrate the 

content or history of anything, in this case 

using colours. 

Early Thoughts/Reflections 

Regarding Material 

I think that my work has always been of a very 

physical kind. Early on I always was fascinated by and 

interested in working with different materials, always 

looking for resistance and physicality in whatever I 

worked with. I made drawings on surfaces that could 

bend, turn or even destroy the drawing I was doing. 

Sometimes I felt as if I was trying to go through 

whatever I was working with, draw right through it. 

Just like cowboys branding cows but even deeper all 

the way through like I was trying to destroy a motif or 

even save it in the material itself forever. It felt like I 

wanted to destroy the technique or at least challenge it 

because I was fascinated. 

Gerhard Richter 

It felt as if all those colour chart paintings were a 

conclusion of all his painting until that point, and 

that they could somehow summarise a capacity or a 

condition, if you like. I started working with colour 

a lot, experimenting with different ways of uniting 

colour and form. I was using the three primary colours 

46 47 

in my works; they functioned as ground, or rather as 

a concentrate. That was all I needed to describe an 

infinite number of colour combinations. 

The combinations that these three colours stood 

for didn’t interest me as such. What interested me 

was the idea that three main components were the 

foundation of infinity, and I was also appealed by the 

fact that all three components were present in all the 

other combinations (colours). They functioned as a 

historical table of contents, As a kind of metaphor for 

the history of a thing. Although the different colour 

combinations were changing visually, they always 

consisted of these three main components in various 

combinations. 

Explaining Running Colours 

to a Friend 

Friend. What is that sculpture about? 

Hans. I will explain to you. Imagine you are 

at home, turn off everything in your room. No 

light, just darkness; now turn on your computer. 

Friend. OK, sure, but what do you mean? 

Hans. Wait until it goes into screen-saver mode. 

You see the maze. It’s building the lines, up and 

down in all directions, incredible and colourful. 

Friend. Yeah, so what? 

Hans. Imagine if the lines and colors went out 

from the frame of your computer screen and 

continued into the room, and even outside of 

the room. 

Friend. Yeah? 

Hans. Then you would not know where your 

computer was 

Running Colours was just a illustration of a 

thought in which I forgot that it was going to be seen 

by others than me. I was so into the idea I had and 

whatever thoughts were running through my head 

that it was not until later that I realised that the form 

I had chosen for this particular work was full of art 

historical references which I just had forgotten while 

persistently pushing my idea. 

This resulted in my writing a text, not as a 

description of what the work was about because I 

have faith in whoever wants to look at my work, 

but as an opening onto the work itself. In one way 

you could say that the idea animated a form, which 

collapsed, resulting in the idea itself becoming the 

centre of the work. The text was an abstraction of 



my idea, which was the result of a reflection I was 

confronted with due to historical references. 

The text is from the work entitled Running 

Colours. Man began to use reflection as a strategic 

point for the measurement of the universe. No longer 

content with the first hallucination of himself, he 

convinced himself that he could double the entirety 

of the universe. This was his way of trying to 

understand it. 3 

Wikipedia 

A black hole can reveal its presence through 

interaction with other matter. In which objects 

can fall, but out of which nothing can come. It 

is called black because it absorbs all the light 

that hits it reflecting nothing. 

I hoped that you could put all the information you 

want into a work, ideas or thoughts, and then it was 

up to you to weigh different alternatives in order to 

make idea and form medium and so forth. This was 

what it all comes down to in the end. You make all 

these choices and try to imagine a shape that could 

represent your idea in the best way so that it could 

stand for itself and hopefully work as an impulse 

of thought for anyone who was confronted with it. 

I think that even the object easily escapes its own 

objecthood when generating thought. 

I never had any problems with objects. It was just 

a format, a medium of working. I would even say 

that I kind of liked it when a object, just an object 

confronted me with just itself, no real info put on it 

unless necessary, it put some pressure on me to make 

of it what I wanted. Really what I wanted. 

Words and sentences do not transport meaning 

until afterwards. When it is put there, whatever it 

is, a word, an object or whatever you place outside 

of yourself, it can’t transport meaning until it is 

connected to something other than itself. 

Then, the field of vision assumes a peculiar 

structure. In the center there is the favoured 

object, fixed by our gaze; its form seems clear; 

perfectly defined in all its detail. Around the 

object as far as the limits of the field of vision, 

there is a zone we do not look at, but which, 

nevertheless, we see with an indirect, vague 

inattentive vision… If it is not something to 

which we are accustomed, we cannot say what 

it is exactly, that we see in this indirect vision. 4 

Journalist. Who are you? 

Manson(psychotic facial gestures all over then 

soft human voice). Nobody! 

This is a quick question from a journalist to 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Charles Manson after his trial on his way 

to prison. 5 

THIS IS THE END 

That Was Yesterday, Today is Tuesday 

(Writing Personal Letter for Application 

to the Malmö Art Academy) 

Hans. Hey, what should I write in this damned 

letter? 

Tomas. Just write about your work, say 

what you are interested in and so on: books, 

films, jazz. 

Hans. (Thinking): What an awful way, having 

to write this letter just to get accepted, I thought 

it was about the work. 

Tomas. Come on just write that: ‘At the 

moment I am working with…’ At the moment, 

to underline that this is at the moment and 

nothing else. I don’t know more than that. 

Hans. At the moment I’m working mostly with. 

48 49 

Notes 

1. Ehrenzweig, Anton and Morris, Robert, ‘Notes 

on sculpture 4: Beyond Objects’, in Art in 

Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing 

Ideas, Harrison, Charles Harrison and Wood, 

Paul J (eds). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002, 

p.881. 

2. Article from the Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2010. 

3. Pistoletto, Michelangelo, ‘Famous Last Words’, 

in Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of 

Changing Ideas, Harrison, Charles Harrison 

and Wood, Paul J (eds). Oxford: Wiley- 

Blackwell, 2002, p.874. 

4. Ortega y Gasset, José and Morris, Robert, 

‘Notes on sculpture 4: Beyond Objects’, in 

Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of 

Changing Ideas, Harrison, Charles Harrison 

and Wood, Paul J (eds). Oxford: Wiley- 

Blackwell, 2002, p.881. 

5. YouTube clip of Charles Manson on his way to 

prison after trial. 



MFA 2 MFA 2 

50 51 

 

 



MFA 2 MFA 2 

52 53 



How many times does an East Frisian laugh at a joke? 

Three times. The first time when the joke is told, the 

second when it is explained and the third time when 

he finally understands it. An explanation for this joke: 

East Frisia, a region in northwestern Germany on the 

North Sea is characterised by a particularly barren 

landscape with a few elevations not worth mentioning. 

Its inhabitants, the East Frisians, are said to be of 

a certain simplicity or stupidity, which is the theme 

of very simply constructed jokes like this one. In a 

successful joke, these three levels have to function 

at one and the same time; it is about the punch line. 

Good joke telling is a very fine art. First, it needs a 

good actor or narrator. The more refined his or her 

talent is the less weight needs to be carried by the 

quality of the joke itself, and vice versa. The third level 

or necessary precondition of a good joke, without 

which it would fail right from the start, lies in a shared 

common language. Language is to be understood 

here in a very wide sense (humour, political views, 

knowledge, sexual affinities, nationality etc.). 

In a work of art, the link between the first and 

the second laugh equals the relation between the 

narrator’s talent and the quality of the joke. A 

little more on one side compensates for a little less 

on the other. There is a balance. The beauty and 

predictability of it all lies in the fixed, unchangeable 

order of appearance of the three laughs, it is always 

the same. But some people do not make it through 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Julian Stalbohm 

Metaphor in a Bottle 

all the three stages – some stop after the first, others 

really only start at the second. The first is plain and 

straightforward: pure form. Form is inevitable, and 

those who try to get round it are already right in it. 

When you start to subvert pure form it begins to play 

a much more important role. It would be useless 

to name and analyse all the facets of form-building 

here, form either works, is successful, attracts, repels 

– or not. It doesn’t matter whether this happens 

immediately or at a second or third glance, as long as 

it is only about aesthetics. This is like preferring the 

label on one bottle of wine to another, or liking the 

handwriting on a letter (without actually reading it). 

The second level, which corresponds to the second 

laugh after the joke, is based on a point of reference 

for the observer. It can be found in a motif, the 

‘content’, a concept, composition etc. 

There is constant conflict between the first and 

the second laugh. Artists who place much importance 

on the first one, despise the second and castigate it as 

brainy and didactic, whereas proponents of the latter 

try to ridicule the first as reactionary and decorative 

(as ‘sofa art’). Still, the border between them is 

fluid, which can be seen in various contrary art 

movements that have found common ground at their 

intersection, as in the case of conceptual art and neoexpressionism. 

1 I like conflict, when a work cannot 

be located firmly on one side, when it sways back and 

forth. 

Only the third laugh is decisive for a work of art. 

This is probably the one that determines how long a 

piece hangs on the wall and whether we feel joy when 

looking at it repeatedly. As the third laugh, when 

the joke is understood, this is the moment when a 

work of art escapes, when we realise that we cannot 

get enough of it and that we would like to look at it 

again and again, when the first two laughs may have 

long since faded and something still remains which 

can neither be explained nor discarded. When a 

work of art escapes like this, it is a sign that we have 

understood it in a certain way. When there is a last 

bit of doubt, which is above pure form and supposed 

content. This would be a successful work. And it is 

the reason why I like the narrative trick of ‘laying it 

all out’, of not withholding even the most banal piece 

of information. Only then does one realise that all this 

information has no direct connection to a work, it’s 

not what it’s all about. These three levels of looking at 

art make all the difference; the conscious weighing of 

them is the entirely normal process of distinguishing 

between works of art that we all roughly agree with. 

Only when a work is looked at, does it become a piece 

of art, otherwise it is just paint on canvas. 

I go to encounter for the millionth time the 

reality of experience and to forge in the 

smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience 

of my race. 2 

I begin my approach to the region of the third 

laugh with photography. Over the years the view of 

photography has strongly shifted. Only quite recently 

has it found a place among the arts. For a long time 

photography had been understood as being true, as 

something that catches fleeting moments by which 

they become part of our memory, and as having no 

qualities beyond those of a document. Baudelaire 

expressed his aversion towards photography by 

arguing that art depended solely ‘on the addition of 

something of a man’s soul’ and that the essence of 

photography was not in the domain of the ‘impalpable 

and the imaginary’. 3 Photography has been criticised 

for simply recording things as they exist in reality. 

For not adding and not expressing anything. This, of 

course, is a very traditional view but it does reveal 

a characteristic quality of art. Over the years, the 

‘artistic’ has entered this technology after all. I think 

that no technology is better or worse at ‘adding soul’. 

Each new technology perhaps just takes a while until 

this can find an expression in it. 

If anything in a work of art anything is expressed 

at all, then it is the realisation of meaning. Everything 

that is expressed is coloured, and through this 

colouring it acquires a meaning of its own. Gesture, 

form and color make an expression real; there is no 

ready-made alphabet that can be used for this. This 

54 55 

use of colour makes art different from communication. 

Intelligible transmission of information is already 

difficult enough, it has no use for colour. But 

expression is not only looking for intelligibility, it 

is concerned with expression. There is perhaps a 

similarity between colouring and metaphor in the 

way they are understood. But metaphor is based more 

strongly on common understanding, at least within 

one and the same cultural tradition. Originally, this 

word had the meaning of ‘to carry over’. 4 One word is 

replaced by another one to add value to what is said. 

Unlike ‘colouring’, metaphor is a consciously used 

stylistic device. ‘Colouring’, I think, has a conscious 

and an unconscious side. It is much more subtle 

and escapes straightforward reading. In-groups can 

probably define themselves up to a point by a shared 

understanding of this. Here, a personal colouring 

may be joined by an emerging common one. This 

quality is attributed much more readily to painting 

than to photography simply because the so-called 

artistic handwriting is frequently identified as the 

ductus. But ductus becomes only relevant when 

an artist is famous. It is made up of thoughts and 

the unconscious. No matter what the technique, it 

is exercised by the hand – the assistant of artistic 

handwriting. 

If the press had aimed for the reader to make 

its information part of his own experience, 

it would not be able to attain its goals. But 

its goals are contrary and they are attained. 

They consist in insulating events from areas 

where they might be relevant to the reader’s 

experience. The fundamentals of journalistic 

information (newness, brevity, intelligibility 

and above all the disconnectiedness of separate 

news items) contribute to this success just as 

much as the layout and the use of language. 

(Karl Krauss never tires to point out how much 

the linguistic routine of the newspapers inhibits 

the reader’s imaginative power.) The insulation 

of information from experience also depends on 

the fact that the former is not part of ‘tradition’. 

Newspapers appear in large print-runs. No 

reader has such easy access to things that 

others would ‘let him tell them’. Historically, 

there has been competition between the 

different kinds of messaging. The replacement 

of the older relation by information, 

information through sensation, reflects 

the increasing atrophy of experience. 5 

Proust distinguishes between active and 

spontaneous memory (mémoire volontaire, mémoire 

involontaire). 6 Active memory is related to events 

that are experienced consciously and then stored 

in memory. Memories from the active region can 



be deliberately recalled by an effort of memory and 

intellect. The second region, spontaneous memory or, 

in Proust’s words, mémoire involontaire, is the part of 

memory which cannot be accessed consciously. Proust 

believed that pure coincidence decided whether 

memories from this sphere are ever recalled in life 

or not. This type of memory is based on experience 

that is not consciously perceived. These are moments 

that escaped our attention, which we experienced 

unknowingly and thus cannot recall by an effort 

of memory because there is no knowledge of their 

existence. When awoken, such memories are much 

more intense because they bring up experiences that 

are much broader and less concrete than consciously 

perceived events. (But this can actually only happen 

once because from then on this experience is stored in 

the conscious part of memory.) These memories can 

be recalled by a perception or an event. 

When we look at a work of art, terms like memory 

and experience can play a part. Everything that can 

be consciously perceived comes from the realm of 

aesthetics, of superficial motifs and of information 

provided. It can, if necessary, be stored in memory. 

For this reason, when looking at art, we try to find 

a point of reference as quickly as possible at which 

our memory can start processing the information. 

From a ‘traditional’ point of view, photography 

corresponds to this type of perception because it 

gives our active memory manageable bites. When we 

look in this way at a work of art we try to exclude 

the sphere of expression and reduce it to its supposed 

information-carrying content. Our memory tries to 

disarm the work by immediately interpreting it with 

the help of things we already know. We strip it of the 

quality which is produced by its expression and which 

escapes complete understanding. The observer doesn’t 

like being exposed to things he will not understand. 

We do not risk unpleasant boredom. 

Inasmuch as interpretation begins immediately, 

we try to reduce a work of art to one of its explicable 

aspects; we do not allow it the space which it would 

need to unfold, so that it cannot become dangerous 

for us. The internet can be compared to the way in 

which Baudelaire regarded photography. It does 

not become part of experience, it captures fleeting 

moments and it is limited to the level of pure 

information. It makes our ‘skills shrink’. 7 Allegedly, 

our concentration span for analysing information 

is getting shorter while our perception is more and 

more focused on it. This means it influences our way 

of looking at things. But it doesn’t play an essential 

role in the process of looking at art. Art is still slow. 

The surface of art may change but the structures 

of perception underneath are not. The Internet 

influences information. Art is not information in 

this sense. 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Most of our perceptions awaken in us – if they 

awaken anything at all – what is needed to 

annul them or try to annul them. It is either an 

act – reflexive or not – or a kind of indifference 

– acquired or not – that allows us to discredit 

them or try to discredit them. Vis-à-vis them 

there exists in us a constant tendency to 

relapse, as quickly as possible, to the state in 

which we were before these perceptions forced 

themselves on us or presented themselves to us. 

It thus appears to be our main preoccupation 

in life to push back to zero every indicator 

of our perceptive abilities and to give back 

to ourselves, with maximum efficiency, 

a maximum of freedom to use our own 

consciousness as we see fit. 8 

I have a tense relationship with the term 

conceptual art. I don’t mind being called an artist 

of that category, you cannot defend yourself against 

labels imposed from outside anyway. When you start 

to fend them off, they are inevitably confirmed and 

when you reject them, you unwillingly get closer to 

them. But it wouldn’t be a favor to the real conceptual 

artists who I value greatly if I tried to portray myself 

as one of them. I’d be belying the fact that I have 

understood them correctly. There is definitely a 

connection, though. I gladly use the achievements 

of the conceptualists, such as the consequence of a 

concept, the idea as foundation of a work, or even just 

aesthetic clarity. I find the aesthetic formulation of the 

works of conceptual artists particularly useful. They 

suggest clarity and yet at the time were an attempt 

to subvert art’s character as pure object. Undiluted 

attention was to be given to the idea shaped into a 

concept. The conclusion that was to be drawn from a 

conceptual work: This is not just about effect, it is not 

just a show, the pompous unveiling of a new work of 

art, that should make a deep first impression and thus 

imprint itself on memory. It was to be a different form 

of art that stands up against the object and escapes 

the status of art as a product. Like all strategies 

of proposing new forms, this, too, after gaining 

acceptance, quickly became part of the repertoire 

of art objects. But conceptual art has exerted a 

lasting influence on all movements of art. It has, at 

last, deflowered the genius. Since then, no artist, 

however far from concepts, can avoid relating to it – 

conceptual art has changed communication about art. 

In the sense in which conceptual art has escaped 

interpretation by being pure concept, I use it today for 

focusing on all possible levels beneath form. Tradition 

produces perceptual customs which one can play with. 

This does not adhere to the basic idea of conceptual 

art but uses its devices. There is an essential 

difference between a work originating in an idea, 

and working on a concept which can be executed – 

either by oneself or by third parties. The aesthetics of 

conceptual art had a clear mission – the concept was 

to be observed and the aesthetics beyond it. There is 

no link to interpretation. This was intensified by the 

fact that the concept didn’t have to be executed by the 

artist whose work was completed with the concept. 

With the growing distance to the authentic object the 

author, too, came into question, but this became really 

important only later. 

The field of so-called conceptual art has expanded 

into many areas. Nowadays, all works that cannot be 

understood as pure depictions of objects at a first and 

second glance are ascribed to conceptual art. So, apart 

from conceptual art, there isn’t much else around today. 

I mostly use ready-made things which I arrange 

in a new way and thus re-evaluate. Doing this I play 

with meanings and perceptions. Unlike with concepts, 

I open up an area of uncertainty – there is no given 

meaning. If I would understand everything that I am 

doing or if I could trace it without difficulty I’d be 

bored and wouldn’t feel the need to do it at all. This is 

why it was very important for me to have included the 

phrase of ‘moving on thin ice’ in my work. This idea is 

the reason for me to keep working. With such strong 

support I was even able to use the traditional image of 

the artist as a genius. It’s a very beautiful motif. 

André Gide says: Please do not understand 

me too fast. 9 

When a work of art originating in an idea is being 

produced, then this production process is the actual 

work. For as long as there is only the idea for a work, 

it doesn’t exist. The more ideas there are the more 

strength they absorb because ideas are constantly 

changing and have to be constantly imagined anew. 

Ideas which are not executed are sheer fantasies, 

ideas which are carried out are works, even if they 

fail. An idea cannot be attacked, it can always escape. 

To translate an idea into reality means to test its 

usefulness and open it up to attacks. Every idea when 

being translated into reality undergoes a shift, it is 

impossible to do without this drift. (With a concept 

this must not happen, otherwise the concept has 

failed.) 

Only when this drifting begins production is 

interesting, the idea is beginning to acquire its own 

dynamic and to escape control – the idea gets the 

chance to turn into a work. 

I would be disappointed if this was not happening. 

I would feel like a craftsman executing my own ideas, 

except that I would be one and the same person. 

The idea goes through a cloud of uncertainty, where 

decisions are taken that distort it and give it a new 

shape. This is why the process of executing an idea 

is the actual work itself, while the idea becomes 

irrelevant. For this reason, I frequently use reduced 

56 57 

form. The process should remain part of the work 

and should not be mystified again by an object-like 

presentation. This type of work is defined by the 

personal handwriting. Superficially, though, seen from 

work to work, it looks like a lack of aesthetic style. 

I could never understand how one can subscribe to 

a style (in the sense of fashion) or to a technique. 

When looked at, it seems like a crutch one can lean 

on, at least it can always quickly be recognised. It 

is the same with techniques. I prefer an amateurish 

relationship with the material. I have to move on 

before a technique begins to impose on me how I do 

my work. If I became too professional I would not 

be surprised by it any more. I am not interested in 

virtuoso handling of materials. 

[…] buying the newest Italian shoes or 

the latest English tweed is a thoroughly 

banal attitude, insofar as it means conforming 

to fashion. 10 

It is still interesting to look at the concept of the 

flâneur as for example described by Baudelaire and 

Proust. A major aspect of the concept of the flâneur 

is the knowledge that there is a viewer, it is about this 

interaction. The viewer enables the flâneur to appear. 

This interaction is closely linked to the idea of the 

aura of an object. This theory ascribes to an object the 

capacity to accept or to respond to a look directed 

at it while remaining at an unapproachable distance. 

Things that are set out in a display can be composed 

by the observer. This is parallel to the statement that a 

flâneur should lead his life by constantly looking into 

an imagined mirror. In the reflection of the mirror, 

we see our own projections, the mirror is our ideal 

observer. This is of essential importance for the artist. 

Art only exists through an observer. In the production 

of art the observer is always included. They both exist 

as an approach to an unreachable ideal. Just as a 

flâneur only exists in society, in the crowd, the work 

of art appears only in the eye of its beholder. 

Appearance and expression have to create a 

distance – which has to be constantly upheld – to 

create the conditions for observation. To create a 

valid possibility of observation, there should be no 

perception formulated in advance. There is a lot 

that can be said but opinions must not be given in 

advance, the image should only emerge with the 

observer. The artist exposes the work to the observer, 

as a substitute, as the flâneur exposes himself; both 

include the danger of not withstanding this gaze. It is 

a game. The observer is given a place and a task: to 

be an observer. At the very best, he will reflect what is 

projected onto him. He can destroy or allow creation. 

We can get used to the game with the observer, and 

we cannot do without the risk. 



‘That is a pity. You should insist. Berma 

in Phèdre, in the Cid; well, she’s only an 

actress, if you like, but you know that don’t 

believe very much in the “hierarchy” of the 

arts.’ As he spoke I noticed, what had often 

struck me before in his conversations with 

my grandmother’s sisters, that whenever he 

spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an 

expression which seemed to imply a definite 

opinion upon some important subject, he would 

take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a 

special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as 

though he had put the phrase or word between 

inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim 

any personal responsibility for it; as who would 

say ‘the “hierarchy”, don’t you know, as silly 

people call it.’ But then, if it was so absurd, 

why did he say the ‘hierarchy’? A moment 

later he went on: ‘Her acting will give you as 

noble an inspiration as any masterpiece of art 

in the world, as – oh, I don’t know –’ and he 

began to laugh, ‘shall we say the Queens of 

Chartres?’ Until then I had supposed that his 

horror of having to give a serious opinion was 

something Parisian and refined, in contrast to 

the provincial dogmatism of my grandmother’s 

sisters; and I had imagined also that it was 

characteristic of the mental attitude towards life 

of the circle in which Swann moved, where, by 

a natural reaction from the ‘lyrical’ enthusiasms 

of earlier generations, an excessive importance 

was being given to small and precise facts, 

formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in 

the nature of ‘phrase-making’ was banned. But 

now I found myself slightly shocked by this 

attitude which Swann invariably adopted when 

face to face with generalities. He appeared 

unwilling to risk even having an opinion, and 

to be at his ease only when he could furnish, 

with meticulous accuracy, some precise but 

unimportant detail. But in so doing he did not 

take into account that even here he was giving 

an opinion, holding a brief (as they say) for 

something, that the accuracy of his details had 

an importance of its own. 11 

Thus, when a work of art is put into the hands 

of the observer, anything can be done except giving 

him guidance. It can be done with a nod or with a 

grand gesture, everything around it can be arranged 

at will. It can be a great, precisely decorated 

ceremonial handover, but what the observer gets and 

what he should do with it must not be said. Form is 

gaining importance. Deleuze and Guattari end their 

introduction to Rhizome with a number of quotes 

about the use of books. 12 They quote Foucault saying 

a book should be used like a toolbox. Then follows 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Proust who expressed the opinion that a book should 

be used like a pair of glasses, maybe it will open up 

new perceptions or produce visibility altogether, and 

if not, a different book should be used, that there 

was nothing to interpret in books, one could use the 

passages one prefers. Proust provides information, 

pedantically precise facts and descriptions of 

situations and essential details; he does not provide 

answers and interpretations. 

I do not like hierarchies, I like everything that 

lacks hierarchy: archives, libraries, collections of 

natural history – they do not provide an evaluation 

of the things they present; we can evaluate them 

ourselves, with aesthetics or values, or not evaluate 

them at all, just as it should be with art. Art should 

not prescribe how it should be read, it should not 

provide knowledge, not tell stories and not attempt 

to carry information. Only when it does not pretend 

to be doing these things can it create meaning in the 

observer. The observer should not be instructed about 

how to read a work, this risk has to be taken, works of 

art can only be measured by the view of the observer. 

58 59 

Notes 

1. Graw, Isabelle, ‘Konzeptuelle Expression: 

Über konzeptuelle Gesten in vermeintlich 

expressiver Malerei, Spuren von Ausdruck 

in proto-konzeptuellen Arbeiten und 

den Stellenwert künstlerischer Verfahren’ 

(‘Conceptual Expression: On Conceptual 

Gestures in Ostensibly Expressive Painting, 

Traces of Expression in Proto-Conceptual 

Works and the Value of Artistic Approaches’, 

in Alberro, Alexander and Buchmann, Sabeth, 

eds., Art After Conceptual Art. Vienna/Cologne: 

Generali Foundation, Buchhandlung Walther 

König, 2006, pp.135–152. 

2. Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young 

Man. London: Penguin Modern Classics, 1996, 

p.288. 

3. Benjamin, Walter, Charles Baudelaire – Ein 

Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus 

(‘Charles Baudelaire – A Poet in the Age 

of High Capitalism’). Frankfurt am Main: 

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974, p.141. 

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor 

5. Benjamin, Walter, op. cit., p.177. 

6. Ibid., p.105. 

7. Ibid., p.140. 

8. Valéry, Paul, Werke, Band 6: Zur Ästhetik und 

Philisophie der Künste (‘Works, Tome 6: The 

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art’). Frankfurt 

am Main/Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1995, p.178. 

9. Reinhardt, Ad, Schriften und Gespräche 

(‘Writings and Talks’). Munich: Verlag 

Silke Schreiber, 1998, p.65. 

10. Barthes, Roland, ‘Das Dandytum und die 

Mode’ (‘Dandyism and Fashion’), quoted from 

von der Heyden-Rynsch, Verena, ed., Riten der 

Selbstauflösung (‘Rites of Self-Effacement’). 

Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1982, p.306. 

11. Proust, Marcel, Remembrance of Things 

Past. Swann’s Way, translated by C K Scott 

Moncrieff. New York: Vintage, 1970, pp.74–75. 

12. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Rhizom 

(‘Rhizome’). Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1977, p.40. 

Bibliography 

Baudelaire, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life and 

Other Essays, translated by Jonathan Mayne. New 

York: Da Capo, 1986. 

Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project. New York: 

Belknap Press, 2002. 

Cioran, E M, ‘Borges der Überkultivierte’ (‘Borges 

the Overly Cultured’), in von der Heyden-Rynsch, 

Verena, ed., Riten der Selbstauflösung (‘Rites of Self- 

Effacement’). Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1982. 

Duchamp, Marcel, The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, 

New York: Perseus Books, 1989. 

Graw, Isabelle, ‘Le gout, c’est moi: Notes on Taste’, in 

Texte zur Kunst, Issue 75, September 2009. 

Kristeva, Julia, Revolution in Poetic Language, 

translated by Margaret Waller. New York: Columbia 

University Press, 1984. 

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of 

Perception, translated by Colin Smith. New York: 

Humanities Press, 1962. 

Szeemann, Harald, Individuelle Mythologien 

(‘Individual Mythologies’), Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1985. 

Valéry, Paul, Monsieur Teste, translated by Jackson 

Mathews. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. 



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MFA 2 MFA 2 

Agneta Strindinger 

In my art I mostly examine social structures and I base 

my work on the ways I experience and communicate 

with the society that I live in. I question roles, 

behaviours, choices and limitations, and I try to create 

co-operation and encounters between people. I think 

it’s important for the art scene to be diverse, so that 

it can be enjoyed by a lot of people, who can also be 

given the opportunity to reflect on themselves and 

their relations, as well as identifying themselves with it. 

I grew up in a creative but tumultuous 

environment, with a lot of new faces every day. In 

this stream of people I soon learned that everyone 

should be treated equally. My reactions when this 

didn’t happen were strong and usually resulted in 

action. Early on in life, I took a responsible role in 

an unconventional family with few boundaries but 

with lots of praise. My mother’s creativity awoke 

a fascination within me for the possibilities and 

limitations of different materials. As a child I decided 

to become a hairdresser, at which I worked for 

many years. The hairdressing job taught me to listen 

to people, and I got to hear about my customers’ 

private lives. At that time, I was interested in fashion 

and personal image, but later on in life these things 

seemed superficial and I wanted to go beyond the 

surface of things. 

My artistic interests led to me starting at an Art 

Academy, The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, in 

Boston, USA. During this time I was going through a 

personal crisis. To get through this crisis I focused on 

Retrospect 

the present, and began using my art as a therapeutic 

and meditative process. I learned to live in the now, 

and became more aware of my body and its functions 

and limitations. One of the pieces I made at this time 

involved counting my steps as I walked to and from 

the school for several months. The piece was shown 

as a time chart where you could see where I had gone, 

how long it took, and how many steps I had to take to 

get there. The shoes I had worn were also exhibited. 

Another thing that I expressed in my art is my lifelong 

frustration with words. For a while, I destroyed 

and burned books. My mixed feelings about these 

actions eventually caused me to reverently transform 

the remains of the books into sculptures. Eventually, 

I was diagnosed as dyslexic. This revelation allowed 

me to change my relationship to words, and now I use 

it as a source of inspiration when developing my art. 

Emotions and associations related to words trigger 

images in me, which I end up using in my work. 

Following my years in Boston I worked on my own 

identity. I focused on me and on who I wanted to be, 

and I was also admitted to an art programme at a socalled 

folk high school in Sweden. By this time I had 

begun to challenge myself and my fears in my art, and 

I started investigating the field of relational aesthetics. 

Performances became a natural form of expression for 

me, and I was introduced to the works of Yoko Ono 

and Marina Abramović, with whom I feel, in the way 

that they think, a special kind of kinship. Janet Bishop 

wrote the following about Yoko Ono: 

Yoko Ono’s extraordinary body of work is 

distinguished by conceptual rigour, a very 

exacting aesthetic and sense of humour. 1 

My titles, materials and aesthetic expressions are 

also based on simplicity and interaction with the 

audience, and there is a sense of humor to a lot of 

my works as well. For instance, in Andedräkt (‘Spirit 

Suit’, Appendix 1a) I gathered people’s breath in 

bags, which I then sealed and made into a dress. 

In Pausparaply (‘Pause Umbrella’, Appendix 1b) I 

walked around asking people if they needed to take a 

break, and if they did I lent them my pause umbrella, 

which to some extent sealed them off from the world 

outside. I consider interaction an essential element 

in many of Yoko Ono’s works. She demands of her 

audience more than just looking, something I do in 

my own works as well, like Tillit (‘Trust’, Appendix 

1c) for instance, where I challenged the participants 

to cut my hair. Yoko Ono’s blend of humour and 

deep sincerity is clear to me in works like Ceiling 

Painting. 2 The piece consists of a white ladder and a 

seemingly blank canvas suspended from the ceiling. 

A magnifying glass hangs between these objects. 

The viewer is expected to climb the ladder and look 

through the magnifying glass. The canvas bears the 

word ‘YES’ in minute print. In this work, Yoko Ono 

makes the viewer climb a ladder to look through a 

magnifying glass ‘only’ to find the word ‘YES’. Her 

piece A Box of Smile also fuses the humorous and 

the serious together. 3 This silver box with a mirror 

mounted inside only acquires its meaning when the 

viewer who looks inside smiles. 

Although it is often interesting to see and 

experience the art of others, that isn’t my main source 

of inspiration. Many times my ideas come from 

conversations, listening to the radio, reading books 

about psychology, and watching documentaries. My 

main source of inspiration is life itself, and people’s 

inner lives and different destinies. I began to work in 

this way while I was a student at the folk high school. 

My interest in co-operation and communication with 

people grew stronger, and I started to want to interact 

with people in the community. In my piece Tillit, I 

walked around and I knocked on people’s doors in 

the residential areas of Munka Ljungby, and I asked 

whoever opened the door if they would trim the ends 

of my hair. I began to examine what I could do as 

an artist that is off-limits to me as a regular person. 

My inspiration came from the trust and confidence 

my clients had given me in my previous work as a 

hairdresser, and I wanted to explore these subjects 

in greater depth. I decided to challenge my own 

fears, and those of others, by giving trust rather than 

receiving it. I was intrigued by the notion of reversed 

roles of hairdresser and customer, and I used my 

experience in my art. Some of the questions I asked 

myself were the following: 

64 65 

Which people should I approach? 

Would people dare to let me into their homes? 

Would they dare to cut my hair? 

Could I trust this person? 

Would the meeting feel forced or natural? 

When I worked as a hairdresser, I used to feel 

responsible for making the encounters with my 

customers feel natural. I wondered if playing the part 

of customer would free me of this responsibility, and 

if it would be transferred to the person acting as a 

hairdresser, or if it would remain my own. Since then, 

I have had a keen interest in human nature. 

I want to make art accessible to as many people as 

possible, since I feel it belongs to everyone. I choose 

to include different kinds of people, irrespective of 

nationality, age, and gender. Depending on the piece, 

I might go to areas full of people, or I might decide to 

get in touch with them by phone, or on the Internet. 

In my piece Tunnelbanan (‘The Subway’, Appendix 

1d) I traveled on every line of the Stockholm 

underground, from one end to the other. I sat down 

opposite a hundred different people, and asked them 

all to draw a portrait of my face. In my piece Diplom 

(‘Diploma’, Appendix 1e) I took a more personal 

approach. I asked people around town and at work, 

my friends and family, if they wanted a certificate. 

I contacted one of the participants after I heard 

him speak on the radio. It was important that all of 

the participants, regardless of who they were, wrote 

their own certificates and awarded them to themselves 

for something that they felt that they deserved a 

diploma for. 

Sometimes I explore aspects of my own personality 

with the help of the participants, as I did in the works 

Tillit, Får jag hålla din hand? (‘May I hold your 

hand?’, Appendix 1f) and Tunnelbanan. These acts, of 

examining subjects, are based on my experiences of an 

insecure society and my conviction that experiences 

can be changed. In Tillit I looked into my ability to 

trust people. In Får jag hålla din hand? I explored the 

fears I had about going through the performance, my 

first one in front of an audience. My fear of crowded 

spaces made me challenge this fear in my work 

Tunnelbanan, where I made myself approach people 

in an environment I find uncomfortable. 

Often it is this very encounter with people, or 

between people, that I find interesting. I feel there is 

something special that happens whenever people meet 

eye to eye. In Tillit it turned out that most people 

let me in, and also let me know about their private 

lives, but many others turned my request down. The 

connections I made during my meetings with these 

people became quite personal in some cases. One of 

the female participants invited me over for a coffee 

on several occasions, and we continued to discuss the 

subject of trust. She even lent me a book about trust. 

Another person thought the whole ‘trust project’ was 



a joke at first. But as time went on she became more 

and more interested, and I ended up being invited 

over to have dinner with her and her husband on 

three different occasions. After one of the dinners 

they walked me home, concerned for my safety after I 

had received threats from another person approached 

during this project. 

I feel that the way I invite people to take part in 

or to experience my art makes the art more evident 

and less abstract, to them as well as to me. In my 

art, I alternate between the roles of spectator and 

participant. The unpredictability of the meeting, 

and of the experience of what to remember, is very 

important to me. I try to create intimate meetings 

where I (as the artist) and the participant meet each 

other, and sometimes there is also a meeting between 

the audience and the participants. 

Sometimes people aren’t aware of the fact that they 

are taking part in a performance at all. During the 

opening of an art exhibition I held my performance 

Får jag hålla din hand? where I walked around and 

asked people to let me hold their hand. I told them I 

wanted to hold their hand because I was so nervous 

about doing a performance later that evening in the 

exhibition. In this work, as in several of my other 

pieces, the experience is about me and the person 

I have chosen. Neither the participants nor the 

audience knew there was a performance going on. 

Eventually, some of the people whose hands I held 

understood that this was the actual performance. I 

experienced calm when holding the person’s hand in 

all of the encounters, as all the participants held my 

hand in a firm, secure, and natural way. Since this 

was a performance, I chose to remain silent the whole 

time, even when asked direct questions. My silence, 

along with the fact that they were holding a stranger’s 

hand, may have caused some uncertainty, but one 

woman especially said she was happy I wanted to 

hold her hand, as she felt very nervous herself. We sat 

together for twenty minutes, holding hands. It was an 

experience I will never forget. 

I believe that one of the strongest art works, in 

terms of an experience, is Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. 4 

One at a time, the audience members are invited onto 

a stage where Yoko Ono is seated. Next to her is a 

pair of scissors that the participants are supposed to 

use to cut off any part of her outfit that they like. The 

intimacy and vulnerability of this situation, both for 

the participant doing the cutting and for Yoko Ono, 

is similar to the intimacy and vulnerability in my own 

piece Tillit. Some people may feel uncomfortable 

about doing something like that, whether cutting hair 

or clothes, as they are both so strongly connected to a 

person’s sense of identity. Touching a stranger’s hair, 

or removing somebody’s clothing, can be considered 

a very intimate thing. Yoko Ono shows her trust in 

her audience by giving them a dangerous object to 

undress her with. I, on the other hand, show my trust 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

by letting the person playing the role of hairdresser 

cut my hair and treat me as a customer in his or 

her home. In both cases, the participant’s courage 

is tested: How much hair would they cut off, or in 

Yoko Ono’s case, what part of her body would they 

uncover? Both my piece and Yoko Ono’s gave rise to 

dangerous situations. On Yoko Ono’s website there 

is a story about her first performance of Cut Piece in 

Kyoto, where a man walked onto the stage with the 

scissors raised in a threatening manner, after which 

he lowered his arm and cut off a piece of Yoko Ono’s 

clothing. 5 In my case, the situation was quite similar, 

as one of my prospective ‘hairdressers’ started to 

act in a threatening manner with the scissors and 

occasionally cut long strands of hair off. This was the 

person who threatened me. 

In many of my works I try to break down people’s 

resistance so that I can get a glimpse of their inner 

beings. In some pieces I want to create closeness, as 

in Kram (‘Hug’, (Appendix 1g), where I asked people 

to hug each other for two hours. I performed the piece 

on two separate occasions. The performance took 

place on a square and was created in order to create 

a warm, loving, and sincere mood. Some passers-by 

also began to hug each other, unaware of the fact 

that they were witnessing a performance. One of the 

participants wrote of his experiences of the hugging in 

a letter: 

The physical connection between me and 

Tommy produced a warm sense of absolute 

security and acceptance. This feeling became 

even clearer to me as it contrasted with the 

insecurity and discomfort I normally experience 

in public spaces. (Appendix 2) 

Another interest of mine is people’s differences 

and similarities. I want to reach the things that 

remain unsaid, or what people don’t even know 

about themselves. I find human needs for attention 

and appreciation, through being seen or heard, very 

interesting. And I think that the right to express your 

thoughts and emotions is very important. I made the 

piece Klagomuren (‘Wailing Wall’, Appendix 1h) while 

attending a boarding school where I felt there was a 

great need to complain. The wall was well visited and 

saw a lot of use. Some people need the appreciation of 

others more than they need to appreciate themselves. 

In Diplom when I asked people if they wanted a 

certificate, a man lost his temper, raised his voice, and 

told me: ‘I don’t need a certificate! I only I need praise 

from my girlfriend!’ 

Another time I drove past the shop that belonged 

to one of the participants, and saw that she had 

placed her certificate in the display window, proudly 

showing the diploma to passers-by. I’ve also received 

an email from a friend who told me that her friend 

was so inspired by the diploma project that she made 

herself her own diploma. In this piece, that’s exactly 

what I am trying to do: to make people notice and pay 

attention to themselves. In Titta på sig själv (‘Looking 

at Oneself’, Appendix 1i), I had a similar idea, and I 

asked the participants to spend five minutes looking 

staring themselves in the eyes in a mirror. Among 

other things I wanted to make them think about their 

own sense of self. I wanted to know: 

Would the participants be able to really delve 

into their inner beings, or would they just focus 

on their appearance? Did it feel like I gave 

them five minutes to themselves, or did they 

feel like I took five minutes of their time? Was 

it a break from their everyday chores? Did they 

feel like I was watching them? Were they able 

to relax in this situation? Did they reflect on 

their own sense of self? Did they think about 

how other people perceive them? 

For many people it can be difficult to study 

themselves so closely, like the woman who didn’t have 

a single picture of herself at home because she didn’t 

like herself. For some, it was too difficult, as they were 

unable to look themselves in the eyes. 

In my art I ask the most private and personal from 

the participants, from the viewers, and from myself. I 

often expect or demand something from the viewers 

beyond simply looking at my art. I try to bring out and 

draw attention to the things that you might be scared 

of sharing, or the things you might find embarrassing. 

In a lot of people’s lives there are cover-ups and 

shamefulness and perhaps they have become an 

outsider, beyond society’s norms. I’m aware of the 

fact that my methods can sometimes cause anxiety, 

since I make the audience leave their usual comfort 

zone. Sometimes I might choose to be a thorn in 

their side, since I’m not afraid of causing discomfort 

to make a point. To convey this I often choose 

performance as my medium, along with a pure and 

bare manner of expression. 

In Imponderabilia, Marina Abramović and Ulay 

stand in the nude, across from one another in a 

doorway that the audience has to go through to get to 

the room beyond. 6 In my opinion, this work explores 

psychological and physical boundaries that can cause 

embarrassment or discomfort. The audience can’t 

avoid brushing against their naked bodies if they want 

to go through the doorway. I can see some similarities 

with aspects of my own pieces, in the sense that the 

audience is forced into a sensitive situation. 

For En dag fick jag nog (‘One Day I Had Enough’, 

Appendix 1j) I chose people who had themselves 

experienced abusive treatment at their workplace 

and asked them to take part in a performance. Ten 

participants sat on chairs for four hours, in silence, 

in an empty room. Headphones were suspended 

from the ceiling behind the participants, in which 

66 67 

the audience could listen to the person’s story, and 

the name of each participant was printed on the 

floor behind each chair. It was very important for 

me to prepare the participants that the performance 

situation might become sensitive. A psychologist and 

a lawyer were contacted to give support and advice to 

be sure of what could be said and what could not be 

said in the stories. I had continuous contact with all 

of the participants for a long time, to make sure they 

really wanted to participate and that they agreed to all 

aspects of the performance. For example, one of the 

participants said this: 

Don’t you think I can do it? I’ve been bullied 

for 20 years, and I’ve had to go to work every 

day, look them in the eyes and say hello. Of 

course I will be able to do this. 

Many of the participants also pointed out that they 

found strength in one another, both in terms of what 

they had all gone through and that they were sitting 

in the same room. Afterwards, they thanked me in 

different ways they pointed out that they were very 

pleased to have taken part in the performance. They 

even chose to stay in touch with one another. The way 

I portrayed this complex issue affected a lot of people 

before they had even seen the piece. A friend of mine 

told someone about the piece En dag fick jag nog, 

and that person got so upset that she stormed out of 

the room, even though she hadn’t seen the artwork. 

In his book Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud 

claims that the artist not only employ aesthetics to 

trigger emotional reactions but that the artist also goes 

further than that. He points out: 

[…] what matters is what is done with this type 

of emotion: what they are steered towards, how 

the artist organises them among themselves, 

and to what intent. 7 

Some people in the audience approached me 

and told me that they identified themselves with the 

participants in that they had experienced similar 

things at their own work places. Several of them told 

me they wanted to help and to thank the participants 

for their courage in sharing their difficult experiences. 

I have heard from some who were there that the piece 

had inspired them to discuss the subject of workplace 

bullying further. This proves to me that art can 

influence people, and bring them closer together. In 

this way, it can also be an asset to them. Art can make 

it possible to face our fears. 

As an artist, I believe that I have an important 

mission, and that maybe I might be able to give rise to 

alternative ways of thinking. Often it is important that 

the actual feeling gets time to develop, for example 

a sense of closeness or discomfort. Sometimes the 

thoughts will come at once, and other times it can 



take longer. I hope that my art will help people 

find the courage to take a stand and react to the 

hierarchical structures within our society, in which 

sometimes things are ignored and concealed. I believe 

it to be brave and strong to show one’s vulnerabilities 

and needs therefore I sometimes challenge my 

participants, my audience, and myself to do this. What 

I’m trying to do is to dare you to get closer to yourself, 

and to others, and to give and receive help. For this 

reason, I try to create situations where time and 

encounters become significant in my pieces. I want 

people to stop and to be in the now and to discover 

something. In my piece Tunnelbanan I wanted to 

find out if people would consider giving me their 

travel time by drawing a portrait of my face. One 

woman got so involved in the task that she chose to 

stay on the train even after her stop, just to be able 

to finish her drawing of me and for me. In another 

piece, WC (Appendix 1k), I placed a telephone inside 

a lavatory, and made phone calls to it. Whenever 

somebody picked up the receiver I pretended to be 

a self-centered person with a need to be listened to, 

and I kept on talking about my (fictional) problems. 

Not even there would I let them have their time for 

themselves, and I denied them any chance of actually 

helping me by interrupting them as soon as they tried 

to answer my questions or give me advice. 

To me, art is a tool to communicate both big 

and small issues. Through challenging myself and 

others in my art I often stage scenarios where we 

are confronted with our own vulnerabilities. It’s 

largely about being brave enough to lower the inner 

protective barriers, to some degree, and to dare to face 

the unknown. When I meet someone, I wonder: Who 

is this person? What secrets has she got? How does 

she look upon life and what choices has she made? 

This desire to reach an understanding is my prime 

motivating force. 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Notes 

1. SFMOMA, Yes Yoko Ono, January 22nd, 

2002, http://www.sfmoma.org/press/releases/ 

exhibitions/2, accessed 29 March 2010. 

2. Ibid. 

3. Ono, Yoko, Imagine Yoko, Lund: Bakhåll 

Printers & Publishers, 2005, p.8. 

4. Ono, Yoko, Cut Piece (1964), http:// 

imaginepeace.com/archives/2680, accessed 29 

March 2010. 

5. Ibid. 

6. Michalak, Katarzyna, ‘Performing Life, 

Living Art: Abramovic/Ulay and KwieKulik’, 

in Afterimage, November 1999, http:// 

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_3_27/ 

ai_58470200/, accessed 29 March 2010. 

7. Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, 

translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza 

Woods with the participation of Mathieu 

Copeland. Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998, 

p.64. 

Appendix 1 

Here is some brief information about the works 

of Agneta Strindinger. If you would like to know 

more about any of the pieces, please visit www. 

agnetastrindinger.com. 

a) Andedräkt (‘Spirit Suit’), 2005. 

Photography. 

Materials: Plastic bags, breath. 

I gathered different people’s breath in plastic 

bags, made a dress out of them, and wore it. 

b) Pausparaply (‘Pause Umbrella’), 2005. 

Performance carried out on various occasions. 

Materials: umbrella, lace. 

People were asked if they needed a break. If 

the person said yes he or she could borrow the 

pause umbrella. 

c) Tillit (‘Trust’), 2005. 

Video, 110’. 

This piece was a close examination of trust and 

reversal of roles in the hairdresser-customer 

relation. I knocked on people’s doors in Munka 

Ljungby, and I asked them to cut my hair. In 

total, ten people cut my hair. 

d) Tunnelbanan (‘The Subway’), 2007. 

Performance. Duration: one week. 

I took all of the lines on the Stockholm 

underground, from one end to the other. I sat 

down opposite different people and asked them 

if he or she could draw a portrait of my face 

there and then, and sign their drawings. 100 

drawings were made in total. 

e) Diplom (‘Diploma’), 2008–. 

Photography, installation. 

I hand out diplomas to people I know as well 

as to people I have never met. My question is: 

What would you like to receive a certificate 

for? The person then writes their own text 

about that and I make the actual diploma for 

them. I have handed out 44 of them so far. 

When the participants receive their certificates, 

I take pictures of them holding up the diploma. 

Then the photographs and the texts on the 

diplomas are exhibited. 

f) Får jag hålla din hand? 

(‘May I Hold Your Hand?’), 2006. 

Performance. Duration: 3 hours. 

I was invited to do a performance during an 

opening of an art exhibition in Malmö. I walked 

around and asked people if I could hold their 

hand for a while, as I was so nervous about 

doing a performance later that evening. This 

was the actual performance itself. 

g) Kram (‘Hug’), 2008. 

Performance. Duraton: 2 hours, on two 

different occasions. 

During this performance people hugged on 

a square in Malmö for two hours in order to 

create a warm, loving, and sincere mood on 

the square and in the community. Some of the 

people passing by started to hug each other 

as well, unaware that they were witnessing a 

performance. 

h) Klagomuren (‘Wailing Wall’), 2005. 

Installation. Duration: one week. 

Klagomuren was made available to the students 

and faculty of Nordvästra Skånes Folkhögskola. 

Complaints could be written on pieces of paper, 

and attached to the wall with sticky tape. 

i) Titta på sig själv (‘Looking at Oneself’), 2007. 

Video, 15 minutes. 

I walked around clothes shops, asking people 

if I could film them for five minutes while they 

68 69 

looked into their own eyes in the mirror image 

of the changing room. 

j) En dag fick jag nog (‘One Day I Had 

Enough’), 2010. 

Performance, installation, video. 

In a room, ten chairs were positioned with 

their backs to headphones suspended from the 

ceiling. People who had experienced abuse at 

their workplace sat on the chairs with their 

names behind his or her chair. The audience 

could stand behind them and listen to the 

person’s story through the headphones. The 

performance was held on the opening day and 

the rest of the time the chairs were empty. Two 

films were shown, one of the performance 

at the opening, and one of an interview with 

Lars Bagge, a psychologist with 35 years of 

experience in the field. 

k) WC, 2007. 

Installation, performance. 

I put a telephone in a public lavatory. When 

somebody entered the lavatory, I was alerted by 

a friend and I then made a call to the telephone. 

When the person picked up the receiver I began 

to talk about my (fictional) problems. You can 

read what I said on the phone on my website: 

www.agnetastrindinger.com 

Appendix 2 

A letter from a participant of Kram: 

Hi Agneta, 

My name is Ludvig, and I took part in the hugging 

on Gustav Adolf’s square. I’ll come on Sunday with a 

hugging pal. 

I seem to remember you said you’d like us to write 

about our feelings and thoughts after the hugs on the 

square, so I thought I’d do that now, even though it’s 

been a while since then. 

It was a pretty big moment for me. I’ve had a hard 

time being relaxed about bodily contact for as long as 

I can remember. When Tommy and I started to hug 

each other, I couldn’t help different muscles in my 

body tensing up, and it was very obvious to Tommy 

as well. The most obvious tensions to me were in 

my neck area, and I breathed deeply to make myself 

relax. After less than 10 minutes, I became very warm 

and relaxed, and I started to ease into the hug rather 

than to fight it. The physical contact between me and 

Tommy produced a warm sense of absolute security 

and acceptance. This feeling became even clearer to 



me as it contrasted with the insecurity and discomfort 

I normally experience in public spaces. I think it’s 

an incredibly powerful thing to be able to create a 

microcosm of security and warmth like that. In that 

kind of environment I’m free to experience feelings, 

thoughts and tension, and develop parts of myself 

that I’ve neglected in ways that I think can give rise to 

emotional and bodily imbalances. 

10 minutes passed very quickly, both during the 

hugs and while I waited for the next hug. After a 

while, a friend of mine and Tommy’s showed up, 

and as there were three of us, we took turns hugging 

each other. Initially, they suggested that all three of 

us share a hug, but I didn’t think it would be possible 

to experience the same warm sense of intimacy and 

security that way, so I was doubtful. But once we tried 

it that way, all three of us hugging each other, it was 

a wonderful sensation. I felt as though it was more 

dynamic and powerful with all three of us, and I also 

found it easier to find a stable, comfortable position to 

stand in. I think we stood there for 20 minutes before 

the big group hug at the end, and it didn’t feel like 

long at all. 

After that, we continued the day with cooking a 

meal, and once we’d eaten, we hugged some more. 

We were all tired and we got into a bed and had a 

cozy time. Unconcerned, relaxed, playful. I hadn’t 

done anything like that in ages, maybe not since I 

was very small. I felt as though I’d experienced more 

bodily contact during that day than I’d done for 

several months. In the evening, as I walked home 

alone after a party, I felt completely empty, and being 

on my way home to an empty bed made me feel very 

lonely. I hadn’t felt such a strong sense of emptiness 

and loneliness for a long time either. I’m usually 

quite happy and content to be and sleep on my own. 

Something inside of me had been awoken, softened 

somehow, and I felt like I was missing something. 

I’d like to thank you for arranging these hugging 

events and giving people the opportunity to 

experience intimacy in public spaces. See you on 

Sunday! 

Hugs! 

Ludde 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

70 71 



One Day I Had Enough 

Performance, mixed media 

Performance during exhibition opening, KHM Gallery 

MFA 2 MFA 2 


Performance, mixed media 


72 73 




Video 


MFA 2 MFA 2 

Hug 

Performance for two hours at two occasions 

Gustav Adolf’s Torg, Malmö, 2008 

74 75 



I will start with a story about a beginning. On my first 

day at the art academy in Malmö I was approached 

by Professor Andrea Geyer. She welcomed me and 

said that she liked my work and looked forward to 

working with me. A few months later I had a studio 

visit from her when she asked why I was working in 

the way I was. The question was direct and slightly 

provocative. This was probably necessary to access 

something that I had protected for so many years, a 

memory. After a few sleepless nights spent cogitating, 

I sent I skogen (‘In the Forest’) to Andrea. This was a 

poem my grandmother had written. 

It was a day in the mid-1980s, late in the summer 

in the forests of Småland. My grandmother, my 

cousins and I walked up a path away from the house 

and followed a narrow track into the forest. We 

passed a clearing with dry, high grass and a birch 

tree in one corner. We stopped by a large rock on 

a slope. There was a hole, a cave under the rock, 

and my grandmother said that this must be where 

the trolls live. I saw a door between the stones, lit 

by what looked like the light of a fire. But the trolls 

were probably not at home, my grandmother thought. 

While we were hunched over the blueberry shrubs I 

looked up every now and then and could see a troll 

scurry behind a felled tree or a stump. We could all 

see them. We called to each other, saying where we 

saw the trolls hiding. My grandmother said that my 

cousin looked like a fairy and I could see them, as 

small as dragonflies, dancing as in a trance over the 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Dea Svensson 

By the Light of a Story 

moss. A little old man with a grey beard and grey 

clothes and a grey pointy hat on his head scuttled 

in under the ferns and disappeared. When we came 

home from our excursion into the forest we were 

happy. We told our parents about our adventure and 

they smiled indulgently – they didn’t believe us. 

The memory of the day in the forest with my 

grandmother and my cousins only surfaced on a few 

occasions in the following twenty years. One of these 

occasions was a visit to the dentist where I happened 

upon a picture book with John Bauer illustrations 

in the waiting room. I recognised the trolls in John 

Bauer’s paintings – I had seen the same troll in the 

forest that day. 

From what I can remember my grandmother, 

my cousins and I never talked about that day in the 

forest. I have protected the memory of that day in 

many ways in my life, but I have never forgotten it. 

When I read an article describing the phenomenon 

where people unconsciously construct a memory 

from childhood in retrospect and are then entirely 

sure that this constructed memory really happened, 

I used this as a possible explanation for my memory 

of the day in the forest. I have often had dreams 

that seemed very real just a moment before waking, 

but that then after a while turned out to be dreams. 

When I have particularly intense dreams the feeling 

can persist and influence me throughout the day. 

The memory of the day in the forest is similar to this 

but the other way around. It is a memory that has 

influenced me to such an extent that it is hard for me 

to believe that I really experienced it – so I explain it 

away as a dream. 

Shortly after my grandmother passed away 

my mother came to my room one evening with a 

little book in which grandmother had written her 

poetry. My mother asked me to read it and suggest 

something that the pastor could read at her funeral. 

When I came upon I skogen I suddenly had proof 

that the day in the forest with my grandmother and 

my cousins had been a real memory. Now I could 

place my artistic practice in relation to this memory 

of the day in the forest. I finally saw a connection. 

Storytelling and the forest, two of the central parts of 

my work, are directly related to this one day. In the 

mail that I sent Andrea Geyer with the poem attached 

I also used the expression ‘storytelling’ for the first 

time to describe my work. 

I skogen 

Vi gingo ut i skogen, vi tänkte plocka bär. 

Det finns så mycket roligt som man kan hitta där. 

Vi tog det ganska makligt, jag höll en barnahand 

Och skogen susade så fin, vi gick i allemans land. 

I det stora tysta berget, där kanske trollen bor? 

Vi tyckte att vi såg en dörr, i stenen grå och stor. 

Men fast vi väntade en stund så såg vi ingen där. 

Trollen kanske ute var för att plocka lite bär. 

Men i den gamla stubben, det är vi säkra på, 

det sprang en liten tomte ut, vi hittar inte på! 

Han var liten, grå och rynkig, men har var inte ful. 

Vi undrade om det var han som var hos oss vid jul. 

Det kom ett litet ormbarn och slingrade så tyst 

i famnen for ett människobarn, som inte sa ett knyst. 

Men vi kom på att ormen blott var på promenad 

Och skulle skynda hem till mor, så hon blev nöjd och 

glad. 

När vi höll på att plocka bär, vad tror ni vi fick se? 

En liten älva plockade på tuvan strax brevé. 

Hon hade rosa joggingdress och långt och vackert hår 

Och när vi ropa’: ”Hej på dig!” ett leende vi får. 

Så måste vi ju fika och vila våra ben. 

En liten fågel sjöng för oss från grå och mossig gren. 

Och ”älvan” satte sig hos oss, hon drack av våran saft 

För när man är i skogen får man ha huvudet på skaft. 

Så säger barnens mammor: ”Ni hittar bara på!” 

Men det är mycket lättare att plocka blåbär då. 

Ja, ska man ut i skogen, då ska man roligt ha 

Och både ungarna och jag vi tyckte det gick bra. 

76 77 

In the Forest 

We went into the forest, intending to pick berries. 

There were such funny things there, that we could 

run into. 

We took it rather easy, a child’s hand sought 

out mine. 

The forest whispered softly, we were on 

common ground. 

The big and silent mountain, is that where trolls 

might live? 

We thought we saw a door there, a boulder large 

and grey. 

We watched it for a while; there was no one to 

be seen. 

The trolls, perhaps, were scattered to look for 

berries too. 

But from the battered tree stump, of this you can 

be sure, 

A little gnome came jumping, and this is very true! 

So small and grey and wrinkly, but ugly he was not. 

We wondered if, at Christmas, he was our 

Santa Claus. 

A baby snake so quietly came slithering towards us, 

I must embrace the children, who dare not say 

a thing. 

But we decided, simply, that snakes need walking too, 

And this one must be home soon, to make his 

mother glad. 

When we were picking berries, what was it that 

we saw? 

A tiny little fairy was picking next to us! 

She had a light red tracksuit, and beautiful long hair. 

And when we called ‘hello there!’ she gave us quite 

a smile. 

Then it was for time for coffee and resting for a while. 

A little bird was singing to us from its grey twig. 

The ‘fairy’ sat with us. She was drinking from 

our mug. 

For when you’re in the forest you must stay 

wide awake. 

The children’s mothers told us: ‘You just made all 

this up!’ 

But picking all those berries is easier that way. 

If you go to the forest, make sure you’re 

having fun! 

The children and myself thought that day went 

very well. 



Material and Method 2003–2009 

I draw, and the pen I use is a technical ink pen, also 

known as a Rapidograph, which was a popular tool 

among 1950s horror illustrators. As opposed to a 

fountain pen, the Rapidograph’s lines are clean and 

even in thickness, which makes them easier to control. 

The result reminds me of copper engraving. What I 

dislike in graphic media is the lack of direct creation. 

At the moment when the pen meets the paper there is 

no return and the drawing develops under control. 

The drawing process starts with a square, stampsized 

composition sketch. When I work with the 

composition sketch I often have a few images with 

motifs that I want to include in the drawing. Once 

I have done anything between five and twenty 

composition sketches until I find one that I can use. 

The next step is to make a more detailed version 

of the sketch in the actual size. After that I transfer 

the detailed sketch with faint lines using a hard 

pencil onto the final piece of paper, which resembles 

smoothed cardboard but is much thinner. With this I 

am about half way through the process. 

The last step is the inking. I start with the most 

difficult parts such as the faces or other details, so 

that I don’t do a whole lot of work in vain, if I make 

a mistake and am forced to start over. I continue by 

drawing the outlines and filling in fields with small 

lines. Letting the drawing grow slowly with small lines 

makes it possible for the viewer to see exactly how the 

image is constructed, as well as giving me a feeling of 

greater control over the development of the drawing. 

Finally I add dark lines to those parts that I want the 

viewer to pay particular attention to. 

The Inexplicable 

The first years of my life I spent believing that all 

adults were clever. They always appeared to know the 

answers to my questions. I don’t remember when my 

opinion changed but I remember the feeling of my 

whole world being turned upside down. I got different 

answers to my questions about death and I just 

couldn’t figure it out. I understood early that everyone 

must die some day. I was afraid and curious about 

death. As a child I often thought about life after death. 

My artistic practice is rooted in a strong frustration 

faced with a phenomenon I do not understand and 

my work has functioned as a tool in the pursuit 

of enlightenment. 

The Peculiar Diary 

Inspired by Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb 

Tinies and Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

the Oysterboy I wrote and illustrated my first picture 

book, The Peculiar Diary. Edward St. John Gorey 

(1925–2000) was an American writer and artist, best 

known for his macabre illustrated books. What I 

especially liked about Gorey’s illustrations was that 

one could see exactly how they were made. Every 

little line was clearly executed and I could re-live the 

process for myself – my hand felt what Gorey’s had 

when it executed the drawings. 

The Peculiar Diary is about a kitten that loses one 

of its nine lives on each page. With my own studio at 

the art school at Ölands folkhögskola, the freedom to 

create exactly what I wanted overwhelmed me and 

made me unproductive. To counteract this I had set 

myself clear parameters for The Peculiar Diary. The 

book would consist of nine pages of text and nine 

pages of images – one page for each life lost. The 

drawings would all be the same size and drawn with a 

rapidograph. The texts should be short and written in 

verse, something both Tim Burton and Edward Gorey 

often do. After the first term I had The Peculiar Diary 

printed and bound in an edition of twenty under the 

pseudonym ‘dea.d.svensson’. 

A Delicate Welcome 

For the work on A Delicate Welcome I was very much 

inspired by Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey series and 

Tim Burton’s animated short film Vincent. 

On 10 January 2004 Alexandra Fossmo was shot 

and killed while sleeping in her bed and Daniel 

Linde was injured by shots fired by Sara Svensson, all 

members of the Filadelfiaförsamling (‘Philadelphia 

congregation’), a Pentecostal Christian movement at 

Knutby. These events were later called the Knutby 

drama. The murder and the ensuing trial got a lot of 

exposure in the Swedish media. 

Helge Fossmo, also called ‘the pastor’, had 

manipulated Sara Svensson, also known as ‘the 

nanny’ to murder his wife Alexandra Fossmo, and his 

lover’s husband Daniel Linde. On the days preceding 

the murder Sara Svensson had received text messages 

from God inciting her to commit the deeds. During 

the trial these messages were traced to Helge Fossmo’s 

mobile phone. Helge Fossmo’s first wife had also 

died under mysterious circumstances. Another figure 

reported on in the case was Åsa Waldau, also known 

as Kristi brud (‘Bride of Christ’) who, according to 

certain testimonies, was said to have had an iron grip 

on the parish. 

I was enrolled at Ölands folkhögskola at the time 

when police were diving around the bridge connecting 

Öland to the mainland, looking for the gun that Sara 

Svensson used as a murder weapon. The tabloids 

reported that ‘The blood sprayed like a fountain’, 

‘She said she was the pastor’s slave’ and ‘The nanny 

wanted to win God’s grace’. At first I ignored the hooha 

around the Knutby drama as best I could because 

I thought the reporting was in particularly bad taste 

and lacking in respect. However, in the end I couldn’t 

resist the reporting in the mass media, and I decided 

to try to understand the events at Knutby. 

During the autumn of 2004 and the spring of 

2005 I wrote and illustrated A Delicate Welcome, 

a picture book with fictional stories about five 

children based on five people involved in the socalled 

Knutby drama. Before and during the process 

I did research using newspaper articles, books and 

sound recordings of testimonies and interviews. In 

these fictional children’s stories I wanted to explain 

different important events in the drama, using black 

humor typical of the gothic subculture, while at the 

same time retaining a certain amount of respect for 

those involved. Inspired by Tim Burton’s allegorical 

animation Vincent I drew on several brought in 

references, in both the text and the illustrations, to 

artists, authors and directors who have meant a lot to 

me. That spring I published A Delicate Welcome in an 

edition of thirty copies. 

Dante and Beatrice 

During a summer spent working as a guard at a 

museum in Blekinge county, I read Inferno, the 

first part of Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia 

(‘Divine Comedy’). As the summer drew to its painful 

close and with autumn knocking on the door my 

thoughts wandered to the destinies of summer cats, 

kittens that had been bought in the spring only to 

be deserted by their owners as autumn arrives. The 

short and intense relationship between child and 

cat, and the sudden break with the change of season, 

fascinated me. 

In Dante och Beatrice (‘Dante and Betarice’) Dante 

is a kitten that the girl Beatrice has been given as a 

companion over the summer on the country. Their 

days are filled with carefree games but the summer 

draws to a close and Beatrice and her family leave 

for the city, and the house is empty. In the rain Dante 

takes refuge in the forest where he meets the cat 

Virgil, who tells him of a mountain where all the 

summer cats live. This sounds like a good place to live 

so Dante accompanies Virgil on his way there. 

To challenge and develop my narration and my 

drawing I chose to use the ‘pixie book’ format and 

style as a template for the story. Pixie books are a 

series of small, soft cover children’s books that have 

a square format and 24 pages. The text is written in 

a direct and simple style and the images are often 

colourful. The target readers are young children. I 

started by drawing the images with pen on paper and 

then proceeded to scan and colour them digitally. I 

78 79 

looked to Hans Arnold’s illustrations for inspiration. 

Jörgen 

During a studio talk with my teacher Magnus 

Wassborg we started talking about Det okända (‘The 

Unknown’). This was a Swedish TV series about a 

professional psychic helping people who had problems 

with ghosts or spirits. I had followed the series for 

a while and always wondered about the psychics’ 

own life stories. Magnus told me he had grown up 

with Jörgen Gustafsson, one of Sweden’s best-known 

spirit psychics. In addition to Det okända Jörgen 

had featured in two other programs: Akademien för 

det okända (‘The Academy of the Unknown’) and 

Förnimmelse av mord (‘A Sense of Murder’). With 

Magnus’s help I came into contact with Jörgen and we 

met for an interview a few weeks later. 

The picture book Jörgen consists of four chapters 

based on four different stories that Jörgen told me 

during our interview: Jörgen loses his father, Jörgen 

knows the contents of his Christmas presents without 

opening them, Jörgen’s brother and nephew die in a 

traffic accident and Jörgen’s daughter sees Jörgen’s 

brother’s spirit. 

I wrote the texts in a direct and economical style. 

The images tell a different story from the text. I 

wanted to let the story be told in the gap between text 

and image and hence tried to avoid letting the text and 

images illustrate each other. The images were drawn 

in ink and inspired by Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey 

series and the landscape that I grew up in. 

In a Different Light 

I had my first studio visit with the painter Andreas 

Eriksson during the autumn term of 2007, when I was 

on an exchange program at the Art Academy in Umeå. 

I was working on the drawings for the first chapter of 

Jörgen. Andreas saw my drawings with a painter’s eye 

and noticed that a certain blackness, a darkness, crept 

into every picture. He said that to him my drawings 

were more about the darkness than about Jörgen, 

that it was the darkness telling the stories in the 

different images. In an attempt to really understand 

what Andreas meant I started to concentrate on 

consciously controlling the darkness. During this work 

with the darkness I started to understand important 

differences between Edward Gorey’s illustrations and 

my drawings. 

The foremost intention in Gorey’s illustrations 

is to tell a story and create a mood. He often said 

that he was amazed every time a devoted fan found 

an underlying meaning in one of his books. Gorey 

claimed that his stories were just stories and if there 



was a man with a knife in his drawings then it was 

simply just a man and a knife and nothing else. 

I don’t share Gorey’s view – my drawings are not 

pure illustration. That would feel too limiting to me. 

I want the viewer to look deeper than the figurative 

elements of the image. When I draw a forest I want 

the viewer to notice my personal relationship with the 

forest, its symbolism in fairytales and how other artists 

have worked with the forest as a motif or theme. In 

my drawings the forest is not just a bunch of trees. 

Chapter Elin, Chapter Anna 

and Chapter Åsa 

Researching Kapitel Elin, kapitel Anna och kapitel 

Åsa (‘Chapter Elin, Chapter Anna and Chapter Åsa’) 

I studied Elsa Beskow’s illustrations in her children’s 

books, many of which I had grown up with. 

In the summer of 2008 I was working on the last 

drawings for Jörgen. At that time I went to a lot of 

parties and met many new people. When I said I was 

an artist many people were curious and I told them a 

little about my work on Jörgen Gustafsson. This led to 

many people telling me their personal stories of their 

encounters with the supernatural. At the beginning of 

the autumn term I invited Elin and Åsa to my studio 

and documented their stories in order to later work 

with them in image and text. Through my sister I later 

met Anna. Kapitel Elin, kapitel Anna och kapitel Åsa 

started out as a book project but instead ended up as a 

series of ten pencil drawings with text. 

Elin is woken by a dark figure. Anna has a musical 

box that starts playing on the anniversary of her 

grandparents’ death and Åsa and her sister have a 

recurring nightmare of a house that is haunted by an 

old woman. The first image in each chapter is a portrait 

of the person telling the story. I wanted to get to know 

the person by drawing her naturalistically and creating 

a mood that carries into the story. The subsequent 

drawings are rendered in a simpler style more closely 

related to children’s book illustration, creating the 

feeling of a fairytale. Around each image I drew a frame 

into which I wove different symbols and elements that 

revealed more about the story or the mood. 

Illumination 

In the West, the word ‘enlightenment’ has been used 

to describe what happened to the Buddha under the 

Bodhi tree. The term comes from a comparison with 

a dark room where one cannot see anything and of 

which one knows nothing. When one then lets in the 

light everything is suddenly illuminated. 

In the course of my studies at the Art Academy 

I have worked with stories with parapsychological 

undertones, other people’s stories. For my graduation 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

show I wanted to work with my own stories from 

the other side – a metaphysical self-portrait of sorts. 

So I had a session with a fortune-teller, two sessions 

of past-life regression therapy, and worked on an 

interview with a psychic. Illumination consists of five 

works: Budskap från det okända (‘Message from the 

Unknown’), Historier från tidigare liv (‘Stories from 

Previous Lives’), I skogen (särskilda band 1) (‘In 

the Forest (Special Ties 1)), Theo (särskilda band 

2) (‘Theo (Special Ties 2)), and Six of Swords, the 

Hermit and the Lovers. 

During the autumn of 2006 I interviewed Jörgen 

Gustafsson for the picture book project Jörgen. 

During the interview Jörgen delivered a personal 

message to me from one of my dead relatives. The 

transcription of this message was the foundation for 

Budskap från det okända, a short animation film. 

The text alternates with the different stages in the 

production of a pen and ink drawing. 

At the beginning of the autumn term in 2009 

I had two appointments with Billy Persson at the 

clinic Mindlift in Malmö, for past-life regression 

therapy. In a series of ten pen and ink drawings I 

tell of my experiences under hypnosis of previous 

lives. The fortune-teller Carina Blomberg described a 

woman that could have been my grandmother. This 

woman meant a lot to me while I was growing up 

and during my artistic development. In the work I 

skogen (särskilda band 1) I wanted to illustrate the 

strong ties between me and my grandmother, through 

her poem I skogen. According to the fortune-teller I 

also had strong ties to a boy. From her description it 

seemed to be my nephew. Theo (särskilda band 2) is 

a graphite drawing portraying Theo and me, loosely 

based on a photo hanging in my studio. Following 

the meeting with the fortune-teller I had the 

strongest recollection of three tarot cards. The work 

Six of swords, The hermit and The Lovers shows a 

drawing of three tarot cards where I let the motif 

transmit the personal message I got from the cards at 

the reading. 

Material and Method 2009 

After my two hypnosis sessions with Billy Persson 

at Mindlift my drawing process started changing. 

I always had a rule of never using crosshatching. 

When I was done with my second hypnosis drawing 

I suddenly had the feeling that I should try it. I was 

excited by the result, which gave a certain materiality, 

and I went back and applied the technique to the 

first hypnosis drawing too. After completing the 

third drawing I took a week’s studio break. During 

this time I got the feeling that there was something 

amiss with these drawings and I had a strong need 

to redraw them. When I redrew the pictures I felt 

more confident and dared to trust that the image 

would guide me in the direction it should take. While 

working on the remaining drawings I gradually 

loosened my grip on a logical way of working and 

planning a picture and instead worked in a more 

emotional way. I would often find myself making 

a sketch in the morning only to hold a completely 

different image in my hands a few days later. It seemed 

as though I couldn’t control the order I created the 

drawings in. There was a certain resistance when 

working on a drawing at the wrong place in the 

sequence and a certain ease when I had chosen the 

right one to tackle. 

I didn’t need to go through the first two sketch 

phases as often anymore. A thin pencil sketch on the 

final piece of paper was often enough. The stage of 

sketching became less important and the inking took 

up more time. As opposed to the drawings for Jörgen, 

where the greatest focus was on the darkness and 

blackness, Historier från tidigare liv (‘Stories from 

Past Lives’) is more about light. When something has 

felt so wrong with a drawing that I have felt impelled 

to redraw it, it was invariably connected to the light. 

I will finish with a story about a beginning. I 

made the first drawing for the book Jörgen following 

an image that had appeared inside me. This was 

the only drawing in the series that was based on 

an inner picture. During the spring of 2010 I met 

Jörgen Gustafsson at his home in Södertälje. When 

Jörgen’s sisters were visiting he had shown them my 

manuscript and his sisters told him that the painting 

portrayed in the first image had in fact hung in their 

childhood home in Eksjö. Jörgen cannot remember 

the painting but he was not surprised – this kind of 

thing happened to him all the time. From what I can 

recall it was a first for me. 

80 81 



The Hermit 

Pen on paper, 8.5 x 14cm 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

82 83 



MFA 2 MFA 2 

84 85 



A few words written on a piece of paper, a thought 

flies by, leaves an image on the retina – this is how 

it all begins. The words are given a life of their own, 

thoughts become concrete, they develop, think, feel, 

grow a soul. And so things start, life begins. The words 

and images are filled with meaning and get relatives, 

cousins, grandchildren. They become pictures, develop 

a rhythm. They grow uncontrollably and become 

separate individuals. Suddenly they are in a context, 

part of something bigger, part of our world. They say 

something about us. 

I Eat Paint for Breakfast. 

Art Becomes a Part of Everyday Life 

There are many different layers to my art: those that 

are personal and poetic as well as the narrative and 

the political. I often work in parallel in these registers 

and am constantly searching for something bigger, 

a logic, some sort of meaningfulness to what I do. I 

want my art to be like a cog in the great machinery, 

just like the citizen in relation to the city or the 

individual in relation to society. Everything has to be 

fused in order to create a context. No loose ends. 

My first year at the Art Academy in Malmö started 

in total confusion. I was incredibly energetic, felt 

immortal and as if the whole world lay at my feet. I 

wanted to do everything; I was invincible. I was like 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Ella Tillema 

My Heart Is a Bomb 

a bicycle with oversized wheels. But at the same time 

I felt unbelievably driven. I was not afraid to use big 

words or strong expressions. I started painting on a 

large scale and experimenting with different media 

to express myself. Finally it was time for the end 

of year exhibition at the academy and I felt forced 

to summarise and in some way consolidate all the 

different parts of my first year at art school. This was 

no easy task since I had spent the year painting, doing 

graffiti-embroidery and screen printing, composing 

music, films, texts and, well, all kinds of other 

things. Restlessness and curiosity had dominated 

my work and nothing seemed particularly focused, 

except maybe an interest in narrative and a vision of 

changing the world. But, at the same time, I noticed 

that this mess was what held it all together, that it 

was these elements that were my first year at the 

academy. And this chaos was precisely what I ended 

up portraying in my installation entitled Broderi och 

Anarki (‘Embroidery and Anarchy’), and in hindsight 

I think that it said a great deal about my creative 

process to this day. 

The installation became a sort of metaphor for 

my different areas of interest and activity. I collected 

everything I had produced in my studio in the course 

of the year: embroidered furniture, posters, paintings, 

instruments and everyday rubbish and closed it all 

off behind a wall with the words Broderi och Anarki 

cut out of the plywood. At first glance one could 

only see the slogan, centrally placed in a white room, 

however, if one went closer and peered in through 

the letters this world, my world, filled with creative 

chaos opened itself to the viewer, as if in a sense they 

could look straight into my head. The meaning of the 

work is not something I could have formulated at 

the time because it was born out of a gut feeling. But 

looking back I understand that there is a lot behind 

the words ‘embroidery and anarchy’, or at least behind 

the reason why I used those words, and that I couldn’t 

just have shown this slogan. The space behind the 

letters became a metaphor for why and how they 

came about. It is the process itself that one sees, the 

reason why the words were chosen – gut feeling. And 

this gut feel is a big part of my work, so it is important 

for me that this is reflected in the finished product. 

If the gut-feeling element disappears in the process I 

stop working from the heart and become a machine. 

I Don’t Want to Be a Machine 

But my heart is expected to be a machine and my body 

a part of some greater machinery. And everything is 

politics, because as long as humans are alive they are 

part of a political system, part of a context in which 

they must be able to function. Humans are so small, 

they could be entirely irrelevant in their existence. 

But this is not the case and that is what frightens 

me. It frightens me because human beings are so 

vulnerable – they are constantly influenced by external 

circumstances and by the actions of other individuals. 

I have carried this fear with me all my life, and the 

thought that my body is made of flesh and blood, not 

cement and stone, has preyed on my thoughts for a 

long time. 

As a child I had a recurring nightmare: a comic 

book figure (sometimes it was Donald Duck) would 

cycle on a red ribbon suspended in nothingness. The 

nothingness was black and empty. It could have been 

the universe, space devoid of stars. This figure would 

cycle, easily, without a hitch, and in the background 

I could hear happy music. But suddenly it would 

become silent and the red ribbon would contract like 

an elastic band. The figure would fight to stay on the 

bicycle and on the ribbon, so as not to disappear in 

the darkness. But the bicycle was out of control, the 

ribbon twisted and bulged, it was impossible to keep 

going. Then I would wake up. When I was young this 

was the worst of all nightmares and it recurred quite 

frequently. I think that already at this point I had a 

fear of losing control over a situation and the anxiety 

in the dream stemmed from my inability to control 

the red ribbon. The recollection of this dream became 

the starting point for a series of paintings portraying 

the red ribbon. They reflect the feeling evoked by the 

dream but describe the present more than the past. 

The figures in the painting turn their heads away 

86 87 

from the viewer. They do not want to reveal too much 

about themselves. Instead they end up in dreamlike 

surroundings, abstract places occurring in their 

imagination alone. But despite hiding their eyes from 

the viewer they still want to communicate, they want 

to talk about what is happening inside their bodies. 

The place where the figures find themselves acts like 

a mirror to their spiritual and emotional state, and 

the paintings tell of what it is to be human in a world 

where the border between the inner and the outer is 

hard to define. 

The project was entitled Over The Edge and 

encompassed a series of six paintings and a text 

written in English. 1 The red ribbon is found in all of 

them but the relationship between the ribbon and the 

figures changes all the time from painting to painting. 

The text and the paintings describe human beings in 

relation to the city and the dreamlike journey to the 

Edge. The works are characterised by theatrical facial 

expressions, the figures are acting out a role before 

the viewer, and a symbolism clearly inspired by David 

Lynch and popular culture is employed. The red 

ribbon could be seen to symbolise both the previous 

generation’s expectations of their offspring and one’s 

own anxiety at being part of something that one hasn’t 

actively created oneself. 

I have long been interested in using symbols 

in my paintings. I know that this can be rather 

problematic, especially since I am not particularly 

interested in religious symbolism and its meaning, 

and possibly don’t always know the classical meaning 

of the symbols I use. But I don’t let that limit me, 

viewing it rather as a challenge to combine the old 

with the new in order to create something that has 

meaning for me. I want to give these old symbols a 

contemporary meaning. I want to make these symbols 

into something that suits my generation’s lifestyle, 

something that speaks to us. Sometimes it feels like 

the symbols are secret, that I am really the only one 

who knows what they mean and that the viewer is 

invited to come along on some form of treasure hunt 

in my stories, where possibly only people with certain 

specialist knowledge would understand their meaning 

in the work. In the work Everything Went Black, for 

example, the title is taken from an album by the punk 

band Black Flag. 2 The title works well for the painting 

irrespective of whether one knows where it comes 

from or not, but those who are acquainted with the 

band can also see the work in relation to the music. 

In addition the album cover is visible on one of the 

figures’ back pockets. The red ribbon in the painting 

could be seen as a metaphor for punk, its origins and 

attempts at freeing it, even the rebellion itself against 

the older generation. Simply put, this could be a 

subtle political statement but the painting says just as 

much about the figure’s sense of self and the influence 

society has on the development of the Self. 

I feel a strong connection with Frida Kahlo’s 



painting. Not only the fact that she uses herself as 

a tool but also the way she uses symbolic language. 

I feel we are similar in many ways – our visual 

narrative language, political activism and the impulse 

to put general problems into a personal context. I 

am also fascinated by the freedom in her painting, by 

the self-assurance with which she mixes dreamlike 

elements with realism, mythology with images from 

contemporary life, and uses simple values of scale 

to point at the most important elements in the 

image. She allows the viewer to be drawn in to her 

fictitious yet very real and disturbing world, while 

being seduced by her clear colors, dark symbolism 

and strong emotions. Frida Kahlo often tells of the 

agonies of love, of the pain of sharing oneself with 

another, and power struggles in relationships. And I 

can understand her. Her tears become my tears as I go 

astray in her barren industrial landscapes. But she also 

makes me feel alive in this time dominated by dead 

technology. 

But what I like most of all about Frida Kahlo is 

her way of moving between extremes: life and death, 

day and night, love and hatred, fiction and reality. The 

poetic oppositions in her painting describe in the most 

fantastic way what it is like to find oneself somewhere 

in the midst of all that. 

With Frida Kahlo as my brightest star I have often 

searched for a similar kinship with contemporary 

artists. I find that painting with such strong poetic 

undertones and personality as Kahlo’s is quite rare. 

And in fact I find it hard to put my finger on what it 

is exactly that appeals to me. I also realise that she 

has had a massive influence on other contemporary 

female painters and that she has inspired young 

female artists to dare to paint in a big and selfexposing 

way. One of the first contemporary painters 

that I fell for was Linn Fernström. I was fascinated 

by the sheer scale of her work, and her personal 

and wacky style. Her work felt like a fresh breeze 

when I started exploring contemporary art and I was 

incredibly impressed by her self-assured brushwork 

and poetic ambiguity, something I find quite rare, 

especially in contemporary painters. She is ‘loud’ 

and unafraid of being seen, and she does this with a 

technical precision previously considered the domain 

of male painting. Her contemporary symbolism 

and mystique have often inspired me to make my 

own rules when it comes to narrative. Just like her 

predecessors, such as Lena Cronqvist – and of course 

Frida Kahlo – she put her ‘Self’ into complete focus 

and used this to tell the story of life in the here and 

now. All three painters twist and turn, constantly 

rephrasing the position of the self in order to advance 

as human beings. It is the fact that these three painters 

dare to be so personal in the narrative that gives me a 

sense of safety – it is as if they, through their painting, 

are whispering to me that what I’m doing is also okay. 

It is as if they legitimate the personal and emotional 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

in art and that, as a woman, one can focus on oneself 

without being reduced to Woman, emotional wreck 

and hysterical narcissist. I also believe that the large 

scale of the works has not only helped me, but even 

Cronqvist and Fernström, to make the viewer take us 

and our narratives seriously. 

I’m Lost in the War with Myself 

I had just returned from my term at the Braunschweig 

University of Art in Germany and I was not entirely 

happy with being back in Sweden. Too much had 

changed in my time away, everything felt foreign and 

my life was full of wrecked relationships. It was as if 

I needed to start over in order to get anywhere with 

both my private life and my artistic work. Instead I fled 

again and went back to Germany. I left the country in 

order to flee from my own and others’ expectations of 

me. And after an intensive phase of frenetic painting 

in Germany the words had gathered like an army in 

my head and it as if they had to be voiced to explain 

my state of mind. From this emotional chaos my 

musical project called Personangrepp (‘Defamation of 

Character’) started taking shape. Everything started on 

the train down to Hamburg. I was sitting and listening 

to Thåström’s album Skebokvarnsv. 209 and thought 

about life and about leaving one’s hometown for 

various reasons. It felt as if Thåström was singing just 

for me, and I naïvely thought that he was the only one 

who could understand what I was going through right 

then, kind of like he knew what I was thinking right 

there on the train: 

Följ med fjärilar och fåglar som du ser 

Kasta allting som du inte vill ha med 

När vägen går isär och floden blir ett hav 

Låt din stjärna visa vilken väg du ska. 3 

Follow the butterflies and birds in the sky 

Throw out everything you do not want to keep 

When the road parts and the river becomes a sea 

Let your star guide you to where you should be. 

Thåström’s autobiographical texts and personal 

language inspired me and I started writing down 

all my rhymes on a piece of paper. I couldn’t stop 

and when I got off the train in Hamburg I had the 

beginnings of five different texts that I didn’t really 

know what to do with. I felt that what I had written 

was nothing other than lyrics and that I would 

be forced to write music for them in some way or 

another. At that point I was not part of any band but 

I let Thåström inspire me once more to take matters 

into my own hands – I started my solo project. 

En dag hittade jag en liten skinande maskin. 

Den glänste så fin att jag gjorde den till min. 

Jag tog den hem till mig, jag ställde den i en vrå. 

Men den började växa så, vad skulle jag göra då? 

Den dunkade och pös, den förde ett jävla liv. 

Jag flyttade runt den, nervös att den inte skulle 

passa in. 

Det var en djävulsk maskin. 

Jag begravde mitt jag för att få plats med min 

skinande grej. 

Men den gjorde aldrig någon plats för mig. 

Den spydde ut avgas, ja stora svarta moln. 

Men jag såg aldrig röken för allt annat jävla 

dån. 

Till slut så gick jag sönder, jag bara föll rakt 

ner. 

Jag hade varit blind, men nu ville jag se. 


Då förstod jag att det var en djävulsk maskin. 

Dess yta blev svart och inte längre fin. 

Jag sparkade ut den, jag ville ha bort alla spår. 

Men hur jag än gjorde så rev den upp sår. 

Så fort den var ute, då krympte den igen. 

Och började glänsa så, någon annan skulle ta 

med den hem. 


Det var en djävulsk maskin. 4 

One day I found a little machine that could 

shine. 

It shone so bright that I made it mine. 

I took it home and put it away. 

It started to grow, but I wanted it to stay. 

It hissed and roared and made a terrible din. 

So I moved it around, nervous that it wouldn’t 

fit in. 

It was a devilish machine. 

I buried myself to make space for my shiny new 

thing. 

But it never made any space for me. 

It spat out fumes, black clouds, it’s no joke. 

But with all the clanging I never saw the smoke. 

In the end I broke down, couldn’t recognise me. 

I had been blind but now I wanted to see. 


Then I understood that it was a devilish 

machine. 

Its surface grew black, it lost all its sheen. 

I kicked it out, wanted to get rid of all the 

traces. 

But no matter what I did it hurt in old places. 

88 89 

As soon as it was out it shrank again. 

And started to glitter to attract a new friend. 



I had been writing and playing music for a long 

time, but this time I wanted to take things to a new 

level in my artistic practice. I decided to make my own 

record – write all the music, play all the instruments, 

record, mix, design and print the album cover, and 

then release it. Said and done. At the final exhibition 

in 2009 at the Art Academy I showed the result 

along with a wall painting, which was to become a 

metaphor for the entire writing process behind the 

album. The painting showed a boy doing the splits, his 

face twisted in a forced smile and his left foot stuck 

in a trapdoor and streaming with blood. The image 

reflected precisely what Personangrepp meant to me. 

I had done something that I was very proud of – done 

the splits – but that was also both difficult and painful. 

The texts I had written had emptied me of blood and 

energy. I had put myself in a vulnerable position by 

being very personal and at times private in my writing 

– I had in some way got myself caught in this trapdoor 

and it was just a matter of keeping up appearances. 

My Heart is a Bomb 

I started thinking about the reasons why 

Personangrepp had come about in the first place, 

why the people around me had reacted so strongly to 

the texts and almost created a rift in Malmö’s punk 

scene. The solo project had gone from being a form of 

therapy to being a way of showing that I could take 

care of myself and continue writing music irrespective 

of whether I had a punk band backing me or not. And 

looking back I think my situation had more to do with 

politics than love. I went from feeling sad to feeling 

angry since I suddenly realized that I never would 

have gotten into trouble if I had been a man – nobody 

would have questioned me, or my music, in the same 

way if I had been a guy. 

Akta din tunga, flicka lilla. 

Uttryck dig fritt och det kan gå illa. 

Säg inte sånt som folk inte gillar. 

Snacka inte skit om häftiga killar. 

Jag sågar vad jag vill rätt och slätt. 

Jag skiter i vad ni tycker är rätt. 

Och ni som tycker jag är knäpp, 

Akta er för Personangrepp […] 5 

Little girl, watch your tongue. 

Express yourself freely and things can go wrong. 

Don’t say things that folks don’t like. 



Don’t talk shit about the coolest guys. 

I diss what I like, am up for a fight. 

I don’t give a shit what you think is right. 

And all of you out there who think 

I’m certifiable. 

Watch out for this thing called libel […]. 

The texts continued to flow. I moved on – the 

writing took a new turn and became broader in 

meaning. Personangrepp started doing live shows 

and we toured the country. I was contacted by 

documentary filmmakers, journalists and agents from 

around Europe, and I got to talk about what it is like 

to be a female musician in a male dominated genre. I 

worked as a band coach on a pop summer camp, went 

to Berlin and discussed feminism and encouraged 

young girls to make their voices heard on the punk 

scene. 6 During this period I felt my political opinions 

mature and I suddenly felt that I could apply these 

politics to my own experiences. 

I spent a whole summer trying to understand 

my surroundings and formulate my thoughts. I read 

books to broaden my knowledge and discussed the 

topic with friends. I read Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M. 

Manifesto among others and she made me laugh but 

also made me see myself in her hard language and 

her uncompromising message. She inspired me and 

in some way defended my hatred of the establishment 

and the sophisticated male elite – to move among 

them but at the same time do all I can to tear it down. 

I wrote the song Kuk Klux Klan (‘Cock Klux Klan’) 

pointing at the problems in the music scene (which 

could even be applied to a more general context) and 

most of all the discrimination going on against young 

women. It took me several months to write the lyrics 

not only because there is a lot to say about the topic 

but also because I realised that it was a very important 

issue to me. After a while I realised that I could not 

condense everything into a short and punchy text. 

To find a vent for everything I wanted to say the 

work series Mitt hjärta är en bomb (‘My Heart Is a 

Bomb’) was born. It encompasses thirty silk-screen 

prints, all in the same format. Before I started, my 

idea was to work quickly – I wanted to rid myself 

of what I was carrying inside and I wanted it to be 

direct and accessible. By using a mix of text and image 

Mitt hjärta är en bomb became something of a cross 

between my music and my painting, and the result 

was reminiscent of the aesthetics of punk music as 

well as referring to pop art and Swedish political art of 

the 1970s. 

Fuck Tradition 

I remember when I started working on the piece I 

en annan del av stan (‘In a Different Part of Town’) 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

during my fourth year at the Academy. It all started 

with a studio visit from Viktor Kopp during which we 

spoke about painting and difficulties in convincing the 

viewer, of having confidence in one’s craftsmanship. 

He asked questions that were very relevant but that I 

also interpreted as being very personal. He wondered 

what I was afraid of, why I gave up so easily and 

always cut corners in my work. I took these questions 

personally instead of seeing them as concrete and 

strictly professional feedback – I was devastated and 

sad. And slightly angry. 

Of course I had asked myself the same question 

many times but now it became so obvious: I felt 

stuck. I didn’t know which direction I could take or 

wanted to go in and it felt like an immense leap to just 

move on and start something new. Despite this I felt 

incredible frustration, and a growing energy that I had 

no idea how to channel. The studio talk left me with a 

very clear feeling in my body and I realised that it was 

exactly this bottled-up frustration and the realisation 

that I was entirely alone in my artistic practice that 

I wanted to express on canvas. The result was three 

paintings – three metaphors for my art – three selfportraits. 

The paintings showed small figures pushed 

into an abstract, white liquid, perhaps paint. They 

stood alone and vulnerable but at the same time angry 

and threatening. 

While I understood what Viktor Kopp was talking 

about and that he had a point, I still kept thinking 

that I couldn’t and wouldn’t listen to him; I wanted 

to work by my own rules. At this point a text started 

taking shape that eventually became I en annan 

del av stan. It served as a sort of manifesto for 

these paintings. 

I en annan del av stan är himlen alltid blå. 

Och här står du och jag, 

Vi som färgats grå. 

I en annan del av stan verkar allt vara lätt. 


Vi som aldrig haft rätt 

Vi är ingen självklarhet i er verklighet. 

Men vi har vår fantasi – vi väntar på vår tid. 

Vi har vår egen lag. 

I morgon är en annan dag. 

Det är du och jag. 

I en annan verklighet är allt stöpt i guld. 


Vi som bär er skuld. 

I en annan verklighet finns det inget som stör. 


Alldeles utanför. 7 

In another part of town it’s always a clear day 

And here stand you and I, 

We who have been painted grey. 

In another part of town everything seems light. 


We who have never been right. 

We’re not a part of your reality. 

But we have our own fantasy – we are biding 

our time. 

We do it our way. 

Tomorrow’s another day. 

It’s just you and I this way. 

In another reality there’s nothing but fun. 


We who bear the brunt. 

In another reality everything is steeped in gold. 


Out in the cold. 

My self-portraits whispered to each other, they 

conspired in the hope that soon, soon it would be 

their turn. And they would persist, united and strong, 

together they would tear down what we call reality 

and create their own conditions. 

This became a sort of turning point for my artistic 

practice. Suddenly all the different parts of my 

practice moved closer to each other. The aggressive 

energy that was previously only expressed in my 

music started coming out on the canvas, the texts 

started working well with my paintings. I realised that 

the different media fit together and strove towards a 

unifying expression instead of talking about different 

things, each in their own corner. I had previously 

thought that my music was a separate thing and a vent 

for my need to be direct, angry and loud. The texts 

gave me the opportunity to express my political views, 

thoughts on life, society and the ennui in the everyday. 

Painting gave me the chance to be personal, poetic 

and emotional. Suddenly I had these three different 

media speaking of the same things, a common 

expression but three different artistic traditions. 

It’s You and Me 

Where love has always been a reason and driving 

force behind my creative process, I now think 

that my art has become a way of channeling my 

thoughts and of making them public, as well as 

seeking understanding and sympathy for that which 

I experience for myself, in my head. In his book 

A Lover’s Discourse Roland Barthes says that the 

loneliness of the lover is not a personal loneliness 

but something of a system. He says that it is a strange 

paradox where everyone understands but nobody is 

90 91 

listening except those that right at that very moment 

speak the same language as me. Alcibiades says that 

those in love can be compared to someone bitten 

by a snake – they do not want to discuss what has 

happened with anyone other than those who have had 

the same experience because they are the only ones 

who will both understand and excuse everything that 

they have dared to say and do whilst in the throes of 

their pain. 8 

I can draw parallels to my art with what Barthes 

says here. I think that I am looking for a way not 

to be alone with my thoughts; I am looking for 

understanding and a sense of community through 

storytelling. Through my art I want the viewer to be 

bitten by this snake making them for one second speak 

my language; the image as a portal into my world of 

thoughts. It has become for me a way of making the 

audience listen and understand me, since they, just like 

Barthes’s lovers, right at that very moment when they 

interact with my work, have a chance of inhabiting the 

same language as me. I can even apply this to the love 

of art, or self-expression – to share part of the self – 

exactly that which love is all about. 

The Incurable Loneliness of the Soul. 



Notes 

1. The title is taken from an album by The Wipers, 

Over The Edge. Trap Records 1983. 

2. Black Flag, Everything Went Black – Previously 

unreleased Black Flag Recordings 1978–1981, 

SST Records 1982. 

3. ‘En stjärna som är din’ (’A Star that Is Yours’), 

in Thåström, Skebokvarnsv. 209. Sonet, 

Universal 2005. 

4. ‘En Djävulsk Maskin’ (’A Devilish Machine’), 

in Personangrepp, Fuck You Very Much. DMC 

Records, 2009. 

5. Personangrepp (’Defamation of Character’), 

Personangrepp, unpublished material, 2009. 

6. Pop summer camp is a music camp where 

young girls learn to write and play music. 

7. I en annan del av stan (’In Another Part 

of Town’), Personangrepp, unpublished 

material, 2009. 

8. Barthes, Roland, Kärlekens Samtal, Fragment 

(’A Lover’s Discourse’), translated by Leif 

Janzon. Gothenburg: Bokförlaget Korpen 1996, 

p.41. 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Bibliography 

Barthes, Roland, Kärlekens Samtal, Fragment (‘A 

Lover’s Discourse’), translated by Leif Janzon. 

Gothenburg: Bokförlaget Korpen, 1996. 

Bulgakov, Mikhail. Mästaren och Margerita (‘The 

Master and Margerita’), translated by Lars Erik 

Blomqvist. Stockholm: AWE/Gebers, 1986. 

Linn Fernström, exhibition catalogue. Stockholm: 

Galleri Lars Bohman, 2005. 

Solanas, Valerie. S.C.U.M Manifest, translated by Sara 

Stridsberg. Stockholm: Modernista, 2003. 

Sveland, Maria. Bitterfittan (‘Bitter Cunt’). Stockholm: 

Norstedts, 2007. 

Sveriges Allmänna Konstförenings Årsbok. Lena 

Cronqvist (‘Yearbok of the Swedish General Art 

Society. Lena Cronqvist’). Stockholm: Wahlström & 

Widstrand, 2003. 

Music 

Ebba Grön, Ebba Grön, Mistlur, 1982. 

Hanna Hirsch, Tala Svart (‘Speak Black’), Diskret 

Förlag/Release The Bats, 2008. 

Personangrepp, Fuck You Very Much, DMC Records, 

2009. 

Thåström, Skebokvarnsv. 209, Sonet, Universal, 2005. 

The Wipers, Is This Real, Trap Records, 1980; Over 

The Edge, Trap Records, 1983. 

Film 

Andersson, Roy, Du levande (‘You Who Are Alive’), 

2007. 

Wong, Kar-Wai, In The Mood For Love, 2000. 

92 93 



MFA 2 MFA 2 

My Heart Is a Bomb 

Screenprint and acrylic on paper, 250 x 800 cm 


94 95 



The Trip (Over the Edge) 

Oil on canvas, 160 x 200 cm 

2008 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Everything Went Black (Over the Edge) 


2008 

96 97 



MFA 2 MFA 2 

Thale Vangen 

A Shifting Meeting of Opposites 

But what person will not marvel greatly, upon 

contemplating this animal, with so many eyes 

and feet, and upon seeing each one do its 

office? Truthfully, as for myself, I lose my mind 

over it and could not say anything other than 

that Nature has played a trick in order to cause 

the grandeur of her works to be admired. 1 

My works exist in a borderland. Or perhaps in a 

shifting meeting of opposites. This is the sphere of 

impossible possibilities. War and peace at one and 

the same time. A place where disgust and desire find 

one another. Kindness and cruelty. Life and death. 

Where conflicting forces come face to face, images are 

created that defy logical explanation. Nevertheless, 

logic advances inexorably upon them on all sides: 

like approaches to something that lead only to new 

approaches. Chaos and order at the same time. In 

an eternal high endeavour, striving towards the 

essence. An eternal quest to reach the absolute, everinaccessible 

point zero.0000000000000 2 

When I search back through a process of working 

(in order to find out what it is all about) I often end 

up with an image that simply exists for what it is – an 

image that I’m unable to link to anything else. I end 

up in a blind alley. I see no connections to what has 

come before. Just an image. It’s magical in its own 

way. As if a stranger has approached very, very close; 

intimidating and fascinating at the same time. And in 

the meeting with this stranger, I drift into perilously 

narrow passages, where I feel that I have no control 

over what is happening. Yet, at the same time, I feel 

confident that something important is taking place. 

Light is reflected and penetrates the eye; deep 

into the innermost recesses. And then the eye takes 

over, seizing the rays of light, capturing and gagging 

them, pulverising them and recasting them as another 

material; a material that is highly transitory and that 

seeks out its own different paths. (A whole host of 

potentially different paths.) A friend explained to me 

once (in a dream) the reason why we never become 

one with the images that are chasing us: there comes 

a point when it’s essential that we stop the image that 

is heading towards us, for otherwise we risk being 

devoured by it. Often we’re unaware that we may 

be standing face to face with a monster. I’m on the 

point of entering into different kinds of monstrous 

landscapes. The monster as the borderland described 

above. The monster as the stranger, as madness, 

as the hybrid, as death. The monster exists as the 

manifestation of the impossible and the unknown. 

It disconcerts us, leaves us unable to explain what 

it is we are looking at. It is an omen of warning, a 

harbinger of potential. This is the material among 

which I roam. 

In his compendium On Monsters and Marvels 

Ambroise Paré makes no distinction between the 

natural and the supernatural. For him, monstrosities 

include everything that discomfits us and cannot be 

explained. He talks of birth defects (the main focus 

of the book) and of strange beasts from reality and 

the realms of imagination. For Paré a monstrosity 

is something outside the bounds of nature, and 

frequently a precursor of disaster. Michel Foucault 

characterises the monster as a mixed form: 

It is a mixture of two realms, the animal and 

the human: the man with the head of an ox, 

the man with a bird’s feet: monsters. It is the 

blending, the mixture of two species: the pig 

with a sheep’s head is a monster. It is a mixture 

of two individuals: the person who has two 

heads or two bodies and one head is a monster. 

It is a mixture of two sexes: the person who 

is both male and female is a monster. It is a 

mixture of life and death: the fetus born with 

a morphology that means it will not be able to 

live, but nonetheless survives for some minutes 

or days is a monster. Finally it is a mixture of 

forms: the person who has neither arms nor 

legs, like a snake, is a monster. 3 

The borders to the monstrous are constantly 

shifting in society. You might for a while indulge 

in fantasies about a sort of linear development, 

where the bounds of what deviates from the social 

or biological norm are constantly being pushed 

to embrace more and more in a display of everincreasing 

tolerance. But monsters are not lined up, 

one after the other. While new scientific, ideological 

or mythological ‘achievements’ are ridding us of old 

monsters, new ones are being brought into existence 

all the time. Since monsters arise in the human spirit, 

their character is basically unstable. The existence of 

a monster is predicated on the innermost nature of 

mankind. It is ideologically or psychologically based 

and can arise as a consequence of fear, xenophobia, 

stupidity, primitive notions and other ideas. A monster 

is a monster by virtue of the fact that we humans 

deem it a monster. The monstrous is like cysts that 

grow and dissolve in the midst of other materials. 

One monster of a mythical, supernatural character, 

whose significance must be said to have paled in 

recent times, is the Devil in Hell. Does anyone care 

about the Devil today? Evil has taken over. And it 

is in the process of growing untamed from an axis 

somewhere in the Middle East. Examples of more 

tangible monsters might be West Berlin before the 

Wall came down, or East Berlin before the Wall came 

down, and Gaza, the West Bank and the ghettos of 

Los Angeles today, or persecuted peoples such as Jews 

and Gypsies, social deviants and criminals. 

Within the structures of society there is clearly an 

aspect of power in being able to define what it is that 

constitutes monsters. When I look at society with the 

monster in my sights, I am left confused. I don’t know 

98 99 

where to place the monster. It’s as if it constantly 

keeps raising its head in the very people who thought 

they saw a monster somewhere else. Maybe it’s a 

hopeless strategy. You can never take a monster 

captive: if you do, it ceases to be monstrous. But, even 

so, I wonder why we are always hunting for monsters. 

Is it Death that we’re hoping to conquer? A 

monster that is very close, yet may be further away 

from us than ever. Death, which we carry within us 

as a monstrous potentiality for the whole of our life. 

We catch only fleeting glimpses of it. Always distant. 

Always near. Always possible. Always impossible. A 

stranger in our own home. Death, promising liberation 

from the desire and loneliness of being trapped in an 

individual body. Possessed within us like a demon, an 

instinct that is one of life’s innermost concerns… It 

is this that is truly monstrous – not death alone, but 

life and death in one (irresistible and repellent at the 

same time) – this reciprocal invasion in which the 

individual has its being. It is a situation that leads to 

a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. It is life’s 

limbo of damnation. Repetition and death, death 

and desire: ‘a longing to die, disguised as a formula 

for life.’ 4 

The work Eerie Sounds from the Swamp 

constitutes a concrete representation of the organic 

and metallic, united in a perpetually repeated 

occurrence. A number of silicone frogs sitting 

mouth to haunches one after the other form a 

wreath suspended above a machine. The machine 

is reminiscent of rigging, a mast, a mill, a gallows, 

a carousel… When the wheel is cranked, the line 

of frogs rotates with the help of the machine’s millwheel. 

As the frogs pass between the legs of the 

contraption they are dipped in a vat of syrup – syrup 

that clings to their bodies as they are once again raised 

above the surface, raining down as a syrupy shower 

over everything as the frogs continue their procession 

round and round. 

The image haunts me for a long time – more or 

less unchanged, constantly recurring – triggering 

a frenzy of mental effort that is dominated by the 

realisation that thought is not bound by any physical 

laws. Thought moves along the periphery of what 

is comprehensible, where the coordinates that keep 

everything in place are on the point of collapse, 

and where the difference blurs between true and 

untrue, good and evil, inside and outside, subject and 

object… I have a strong feeling of being on the trail 

of something, of being about to cross the boundary. 

A subversive transition. It is titillating because it is 

impossible. Obscene. Forbidden. Roving around like a 

bloodhound in a splatter film, I burst out in a torrent 

of practical work. It’s all very concrete – a longing to 

place the image within a context of materiality, the 

dissolved within what is firmly structured. It involves 

many precise choices, many practical problems that 

need to be solved. It’s about seeing the possibilities in 



the impossible – and that means waging war with the 

laws of physics. 

The most important weapon in my arsenal is 

the ability to forget. I forget as much as it is within 

my power to forget, step outside my immediate 

surroundings and rearrange the world anew. Then 

again, the most important weapon I have is the 

ability to observe. If I concentrate hard enough, I 

can see that the state of things is not immutable. Not 

definitive. Not defined by a rational formula with a 

specific context. No oracle can tell me how things 

are connected, one with the other. My picture will be 

part of this. An island of suggestion in the prevailing 

structure, where mislaid memories and experiences 

are coaxed back into existence and examined with 

kaleidoscope eyes to become new-born. 

Each Is Furthest from Himself. 5 

Human experiences in relation to other people, 

whether they are pleasant or painful, leave their 

traces in a person’s psychological make-up. These 

then become part of the cast in the endless dynamic 

between kindness and cruelty. These two opposites are 

deeply human attitudes that form the bedrock of our 

human existence. Their shared origin means that the 

line that separates them is extremely thin and fragile. 

It also means that we humans have a broad stage on 

which to act out our parts. But that is a freedom that 

comes with a very great responsibility. 

First there is fear, the fear of existence. Then 

comes stiffening up, a refusal to confront the 

fear. Then comes denial. The terror of facing 

ourselves keeps us from understanding and 

subjects us to the repetition of acting out. It is a 

tragic fate. 6 

The projection and personification of repressed 

impulses can take place in the meeting with the 

unfamiliar. Even if the unfamiliar can herald a great, 

enriching potential, it also appears as something 

intimidating that arouses uncertainty and imbalance 

in our established unity. At the same time, the 

presence of the unfamiliar reminds us of our feelings 

of vulnerability and exclusion – angst-filled self-images 

that we find difficult to relate to and that we project 

into the unfamiliar. All of this motivates feelings of 

scepticism, dislike and hatred, while responsibility for 

these feelings is transferred to the ‘other’, enabling us 

to justify and vindicate evil actions without having to 

assume responsibility for them. Moral convenience 

and fear make it tempting to shift responsibility 

for evil deeds to a scapegoat. But how is such selfdeception 

possible? What happens deep inside a 

human being when he or she commits acts of evil? 

Is there something deep inside the human being that 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

knows the difference between good and evil? Are 

there not traces of the admission of betrayal that gnaw 

away at our peace of mind? 

Creaking and squeaking like an ancient hell 

machine, round and round, up and down, back and 

forth, the hell machine doesn’t let me escape. The 

motion captures my attention. It wants to be captured 

by me. Captured so that it can drive me round and 

round, up and down, back and forth. It seems as if it’s 

become impossible to separate us. It is movement, it is 

action. But it remains amorphous and unspoken. We 

are produced and we produce. Suggesting perverse 

hybridizations that conjure forth mental images. 

Dreamlike images with overtones of eroticism and 

torture, life and death. Pleasure is trapped within a 

metallic, mechanical, manic, repetitive suffering. Desire, 

monsters, death. In eternal bloom. Eternal decay. 

After all: is not what distinguishes man from 

the machine the option granted to man not to 

repeat himself? 7 

The work Integrity Is Tickling Me with Too 

Many Fingers consists of an octopus perched on 

top of a flimsy, tottering frame. The octopus has 

tin tentacles that are jointed to make them flexible, 

and is supported by a mechanism that can make it 

move its tentacles with the observer’s help. When I 

look at a work that I have completed, I can be quite 

astonished that it is actually my work. Astonished 

by what I have created. It seems to work incognito. 

I have established contact with something; for a 

moment incomprehensible materials were arranged in 

a constellation that I could embrace, but that has now 

retreated, recoiled. 

I try to familiarise myself with the concept of 

das Unheimliche. It seems to be as slippery as 

an eel. Just when you think you have caught it, it 

slithers out of your grasp. It is a concept you can 

never fully contemplate, because it evades every 

attempt to captured by definition. It is transitory and 

contradictory. It can lead to uncertainty about who 

you are, what is real, what is yours. The familiar seems 

unfamiliar. The ordinary, extraordinary. The difference 

between imagination and reality is ill-defined. It 

moves within the sphere of what is eerie, uncanny… 

In a psychoanalytic context, das Unheimliche is 

something that unconsciously reminds us of forbidden 

and suppressed impulses in the unconscious part of 

the human mind (the id). It is, in other words, not 

anything new and strange – but it is perceived as a 

threat by the consciously socialised part of the psyche 

(the superego), because it deviates from accepted 

social norms and rules. 

Unheimlich is the name for everything that 

ought to have remained […] secret and hidden 

but has come to light. 8 

For a moment the unconscious is left to run 

loose and releases a snatch of memory. It is a 

new recollection. This improbable feeling spreads 

seductively within us like a disconcerting wave, 

through our physical substance and spiritual essence. 

If it is possible to represent das Unheimliche as a 

feeling composed of a mixture of physical and spiritual 

elements, then it is probable that it, too, is a monster. 

The work A Funny Time of Year is a wall-covering 

with a subdued, silver-grey, silk screen-printed pattern 

that covers the entire room. The pattern consists of a 

mass-produced block – a picture of a group of people 

sitting in different positions. They look preoccupied. 

All of them have a goat’s head poking out from 

between their legs. These seem more communicative, 

sticking out their little tongues at one another. 

I find it difficult to talk about my own art. It’s 

easier to talk with someone else, when I, too, am the 

observer. I imagine this has to do with the intuitive 

nature of the process. There is a gap between my 

intention with the work and the work in its final, 

completed form. And it is within this gap that the 

work exists. You don’t need a key to open up an 

understanding of my work. It is what it is; neither 

work shrouded within itself nor dependent upon a 

supporting context. The interpretation is open-ended. 

There is no sophisticated argument that runs parallel 

to and forms the basis for the work, during the process 

that leads to its ultimate creation. Sometimes I have 

problems in accepting this, because I feel that I have 

to be able to state the reasons for my choices in a 

carefully considered way. I try to do so, but it is a 

futile exercise. I’m unable to locate what I want to. I 

end up in speculation and illustrations. 

Action is not possible if I make values the basis for 

it before it takes place. My efforts, decisions, attempts 

and fiascos are fuelled by an irrational attentiveness, 

in an endeavor to achieve a precision that is not 

rational, but intuitive. What I have before me is an 

iconographic – maybe a tactile – language that cannot 

form part of any construct that depends on words. 

Rational language is inadequate. Art operates in the 

sphere of ambiguity and obscurity and it is there that 

it does its talking – in all absurdity. It is a language 

that cannot be controlled: that is what makes it 

magical. By means of this language I seek to invoke a 

tactile encounter with the observer, to get under her 

skin and to ignite sparks of repressed and forbidden 

memories, feelings, stories, fantasies. Unpleasant 

maybe, improbable. Maybe turn things inside out. 

100 101 

Notes 

1. Paré, Ambroise, Des monsters et prodiges 

(1573), translated as On Monsters and Marvels. 

Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982, p.149. 

2. 0000000000000: When I printed out my text, 

these figures had been added without my being 

aware of it. 

3. Foucault, Michel, Abnormal: Lectures at the 

Collège de France, 1974–1975. London/New 

York: Verso, 2003, p.63. 

4. Leo Bersani, quoted in Royle, Nicholas, The 

Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University 

Press, p.99. 

5. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Moralens genealogi (‘On 

the Genealogy of Morals’).Solli: Spartacus, 

2010, p.8. 

6. Bourgeois, Louise, The Locus of Memory. 

Works 1982–1993. New York: Brooklyn 

Museum, 1994, p.70. 

7. Duchamp, Marcel, The Writings of Marcel 

Duchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1973, p.59. 

8. Friedrich Schelling, quoted in Freud, Sigmund, 

The Uncanny. London: Penguin, 2003, p.132. 

Bibliography 

Bourgeois, Louise et al, The Locus of Memory, Works 

1982–1993. New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1994. 

Duchamp, Marcel, The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. 

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. 

Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization. London/ 

New York: Routledge Classics, 2001; 

Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974– 

1975, New York: Picador, 2004. 

Freud, Sigmund, Das Unheimliche (1919), 

translated as The Uncanny, London: Penguin, 2003; 

Traumdeutung (1900), translated as The Interpretation 

of Dreams, Plain Label Books, 2007 (electronic edition). 

Hagerup, Simen, Grufulle tomrom (‘Gruesome 

Voids’). Oslo: Kolon forlag, 2009 

Igra, Ludvig, Den tunna hinnan mellom omsorg och 

grymhet (‘The Thin Line between Care and Cruelty’). 

Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2003. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 

(1887), translated as Moralens genealogi by Øystein 

Skar. Solli: Spartacus, 2010. 

Paré, Ambroise, Des monsters et prodiges (1573), 

translated as On Monsters and Marvels. Chicago: 

University of Chicago, 1982. 

Royle, Nicholas, The Uncanny. Manchester: 

Manchester University Press, 2003 

Sandqvist, Gertrud, ed., Death Drive: Art and 

Film Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Copenhagen: 

Øjeblikket: Publication for Visual Cultures, special 

issue #2 vol. 10/2000. 



Eerie Sounds from the Swamp 

Mixed media, 300 x 300 x 290 cm 

Installation views, KHM Gallery 

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102 103 



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104 105 



My artistic practice to date has predominantly 

taken two main approaches. The first is committed 

to observing and experimenting with the status of 

architecture and painting, from a socio-political 

perspective, but also dealing with formal and aesthetic 

issues. These works are often in the form of painting, 

photography, or a combination of the two. I consider 

this part of my practice as art-historically located in 

between a post-conceptual art practice and something 

that results in, or has a potential for, relational 

aesthetics. To clarify, I do not define these works 

as necessarily participatory in the same way as for 

example Rirkrit Tiravanija, where he arranges dinners, 

lounges or similar social gatherings and leaves the 

artwork to be executed by exhibition visitors. Nor do 

I consider them as evidence that a physical action 

that has taken place, as in some of Gordon Matta- 

Clark’s work. On a more general basis I regard 

them as documentation and an aestheticisation of 

a subjective potential in, and between, architecture, 

painting and obsessive formalist thinking. If a label is 

needed to categorise my work, I would prefer post- or 

neo-relational aesthetics, rather than conceptual art. 

The projects presented in this text such as MODERN 

LIVING and Property Paintings are photographs 

documenting a genre of relational aesthetics, at the 

same time as being framed objects of art, aestheticised 

and autonomous. 

In 2005, after making graffiti for seven years and 

attending classes to become a graphic designer, I 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Fredrik Værslev 

This Is It 

produced the first work that fits into the first category. 

The work, Untitled (Bus Shelters), was part of my 

application to the art academies in Scandinavia. I 

wanted to synthesise my background as a graffiti artist 

and my formal training as a graphic designer, in order 

to analyse the similarities between the public service 

architecture in urban and suburban Norway. In 

short, two bus shelters in different areas of Oslo were 

selected as the sites for a public installation based on 

the architecture and social situation of that particular 

site, in tandem with the bus shelter s own architecture. 

I executed modernist-style paintings based on the 

surrounding architecture and installed the paintings 

in the bus shelters. The paintings were engineered 

to fit into the structure of the shelter, letting the 

architecture of the structure dictate the size and shape 

of the canvas. The bus shelters were chosen due to 

their proximity to me, and because they represented 

extreme differences within the status of social, cultural 

and economical class in Norway. The two were, and 

still are, representative of an area with the highest 

average income in the country, and the kind of urban 

development that proliferated in Norway in the wake 

of the Second World War. 

It’s interesting for me to observe how an artist 

and the work of an artist is quickly stereotyped 

and generalised if said artist has a background in 

for example graphic design, graffiti or architecture. 

The works produced and the discourse connected 

to the works always relates the present to the past. 

With my background in graffiti, on the one hand, I 

find it extremely problematic that graffiti as a genre, 

and in relation to/transformation into art, is only 

seen as confirmation of failure – given that graffiti 

is not able to reach the same discursive level of art 

on its own. At the same time it’s easy to see that the 

intellectual discourse surrounding painterly practices 

in contemporary art also exists in graffiti culture, 

and therefore it must be a derivative of for example 

conceptual, formalistic, or abstract expressionistic 

painting. Very recent examples of the importance 

of this can be found in the work of artists such as 

Christopher Wool and Sterling Ruby, who both 

shamelessly use spray paint in their work without 

differentiating the technique from a graffiti way of 

using spray paint. Ironically enough, the thoughts 

and influences driving me as an artist and, more 

specifically, as a painter, working today, have their 

roots in my graffiti background. 

The first pure example where I looked into 

graffiti culture as an artist on a discursive level was 

MODERN LIVING. The project emerged from 

a studio visit with one of my professors, Annika 

Eriksson, in 2006. It was five years after I ended my 

practice as a graffiti artist, and I tried to explain to 

Eriksson how, on a daily basis, I was still performing 

the same routines I did as a ‘graffiti artist’. I was 

mapping my daily route from my apartment in 

Malmö to school with potential sites for graffiti. 

Eriksson encouraged me to document my findings, 

and a few months later the topic of art’s integration 

into architecture became the core investigation of 

MODERN LIVING. The work represents parts of the 

city of Malmö via 86 architectural ‘snapshots’ showing 

ideal sites for graffiti, each photograph depicting the 

site as if a graffiti painting was already present, or 

recently erased. The photographs depict what could be 

the erasure of, or the preparation for, a painting. The 

work ended up as two posters, including a quote from 

a 1947 Life Magazine advertisement promoting the 

importance of contemporary painting in architectural 

surroundings. 

During the summer of 2007 I worked 

as a technician and assistant at Vestfossen 

Kunstlaboratorium, a contemporary art centre 

situated an hour outside Oslo. I had already started 

my first collaborative project with Shwan Dler 

Qaradaki, the Property Paintings, and I found myself 

dealing with other artists and their work from a 

different professional angle, that of the technician, 

rather than as an artist. Having Property Paintings 

fresh in my mind, an ‘accident’ at work became the 

point of origin for Cindy & I during my period at 

Vestfossen. The installation Cindy & I is based on an 

encounter with a large Cindy Sherman photograph. 

In order to satisfy loan conditions for the extremely 

valuable Untitled #216, due to the lack of structural 

support of the gallery walls, the art center had to 

106 107 

place the framed photograph on a 2” x 6” piece of 

wood, corresponding to the width of the Sherman 

photograph. Working as an assistant at a still fledgling 

exhibition space, I was given the task of painting the 

2” x 6” in a white monochrome with the precision of 

Vermeer. A task that normally would take a minute 

with a roller, took three hours to complete according 

to the specifications of the conservation specialist. 

The installation is presented as the piece of wood, 

displayed as a monochrome painting, a photograph of 

the piece by Sherman, and a hand-painted text. 

Cindy & I wasn’t just the starting point for an 

obsessive interest in looking at the work of other 

artists as a starting point for my own practice, but 

also the act of placing the Cindy Sherman photograph 

on top of the 2” x 6” white monochrome painting 

merged my core interests into one piece of wood. It 

not only connected my work with the work of a role 

model in presenting my work with Cindy Sherman’s, 

but I was able to produce something according to 

my own preferences, presented in a context outside 

my work as an artist. Whether visiting museums and 

galleries, the local hardware store, or just walking my 

dog in an urban or suburban environment, I’m always 

concerned with formal issues to the point of absurdity. 

A far more personal point of view serves as the 

basis for My Architecture. The project is a direct result 

of my obsessive-compulsive disorder – a diagnosis 

I was given at the age of eleven after arriving late at 

school several times a week. The reason for being 

tardy was that I was spending time connecting random 

pieces of the suburban cityscape: looking at two 

separate buildings from a certain view, height or angle, 

they would come together as one unified building – 

thus creating a moment of order and producing new 

architecture. A formal reversal of Gordon Matta- 

Clark’s Splitting, at the same time as making my own 

paintings out of architecture and the city. 

My most recent painterly experiment is 

TERRAZZO, a series of paintings based on the 

terrazzo floors you find in most hallways in Malmö, 

and all over the world for that matter. I have been 

extremely intrigued by how the terrazzo floors looked 

depending on how old it was, the marks and impact 

of daily wear and tear, how cleaning and maintaining 

the floors affect the surface of the terrazzo, and other 

factors that impact on the floors, such as bubblegum 

and spills. In TERRAZZO the floor is abstracted into 

painterly matter. I was interested in making the floor 

of a hallway synonymous with an abstract painting, 

and casting the floors of all the buildings in Malmö 

as different abstract painters, within a very strict field 

of painting. I made some tests on a piece of canvas 

and found that the technique would become the main 

focus of the work. The execution is like a Jackson 

Pollock, and at the same time an anti-Jackson Pollock. 

The Jackson Pollock part refers to his way of working 

with the canvases lying on the floor and systematically 



dripping paint onto the canvas to get the look of a 

terrazzo floor. The anti-Pollock part is the fact that 

I’m working towards a pattern, a system, and imitating 

a Jackson Pollock painting by imitating a Pollock 

‘found’ in the terrazzo. These paintings summarize my 

interest in, and in-between, architecture and painting, 

found primarily in MODERN LIVING, the Property 

Paintings, Lerkesvingen, Drøbak Blue and the Shelf 

Paintings, and now TERRAZZO. 

The second approach is based on collaborations 

with artists and non-artists, where the interest lies 

in developing a critical dialogue concerned with 

the production of art, and in exploring alternative 

methods and differing points of view. It is to a large 

degree motivated by an interest in examining what 

constitutes an artist’s practice, as well as questioning 

the notions of an individual’s work, a collaborative 

work, and how to engage and utilise contributions 

by others. These works and dialogues could also be 

seen as a much larger production in contrast to the 

regular set-up of studio based practices, where I serve 

as director. The outcome of these works illustrates 

an aspect of my own practice through the craft and 

thoughts of others – not primarily as an interest in 

appropriating the thoughts and handicraft of others, 

but learning through respectful collaboration. 

What MODERN LIVING accomplished as a 

project helped me to develop my interest in the 

presentation of a work of art. When was it art, when 

was it documentation, and when could it be more 

like a two-dimensional representation of relational 

aesthetics? During Christmas in 2006 I went to visit 

my uncle in the Norwegian countryside for the first 

time in several years. With the theme and presentation 

of MODERN LIVING in mind I came across an 

amazing source of inspiration for the next project. A 

painting depicting the exterior of his house was hung 

above his television in the living room. The painting 

was dated 1947, two years before my uncle was born. 

Given the fact that he took over the house after his 

parents and my grandparents died at a relatively 

early age, my uncle had been living in the same 

environment since birth, living inside the same house 

for his whole life, with a constant reminder of the 

exterior of the house and the architecture surrounding 

him in the painting. After some initial research I found 

that a very large percentage of people living in rural 

Norway had commissioned these types of paintings 

after the second world war, partly due to pride in 

owning a house in grim times, when Norway was in 

dire financial straits until the discovery of oil in the 

1970s, and partially due to a trend. What made this 

trend unique was that it was independent of economy 

or class. There was a correlation to money and income 

of course: rich people commissioned skilled painters, 

the middle-class could afford to pay an average 

painter, while poor families got whoever they could 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

find, meaning either friends or family with some kind 

of painting skill, or even homeless people drifting from 

farm to farm, painting for food and shelter. 

Property Paintings was initiated in early 2007 

after agreeing on a collaboration with my friend 

and artist colleague, Shwan Dler Qaradaki. Dler 

Qaradaki is a trained watercolor painter from Iraq, 

who is extremely technically skilled. The main idea for 

Property Paintings differentiates it from existing house 

paintings, and nullified traces of class, status, and 

economy, by giving the participants, who all represent 

different categories of homeowners in society, the 

same contemporary art treatment. 

The project took four years to complete, and 

is a collaboration not only between me and Dler 

Qaradaki, but also with the twelve homeowners. 

Each homeowner was first invited to have a painting 

made of the exterior of their house or building. 

The homeowner decided for him- or herself the 

‘portrait’ of their home, meaning that they got to 

decide how to frame the house or apartment for 

the painter to paint. Dler Qaradaki then painted 

a photo-realist style painting, and the homeowner 

was given the responsibility of selecting a frame 

and placing the painting within his or her domestic 

interior. Thus, the homeowner served as curator, 

interpreting the painting within what is already a 

complex socio-aesthetic environment. When this 

process was complete, I photographed the painting 

in its surrounding and Property Paintings was finally 

presented as twelve large scale photographs. 

One year after the initiation of the first 

collaborative work, Property Paintings, I founded the 

project space Landings with a fellow student, Lars- 

Andreas Tovey Kristiansen. It is situated in the same 

building as Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, where we 

both work, and the space was given to us by the head 

of the art centre to compensate for the low salary 

we received. The space was a way to provide both 

established and emerging artists, curators, and writers 

with the possibility of doing independent projects in 

a non-commercial setting. Landings was, and still is, 

a reflection of my own practice of collaboration. The 

collaborations in my art practice and for Landings are 

two separate practices, but it’s still very interesting 

to consider the two projects in the same context 

since they developed simultaneously; for example, 

looking at how my works post-Landings have evolved 

through collaborations, compared to the selection of 

people invited to exhibit at Landings, and how my 

collaborative projects have developed and what they 

discuss. 

The first collaborative project to involve my 

mother, who has no professional training as an artist, 

was Lerkesvingen. The project was initiated in 2006 

and recently completed for my MFA graduation 

exhibition in Malmö earlier this year. Lerkesvingen is 

the name of the street where I grew up in suburban 

Norway. There are 42 villas there, erected in the early 

1980s. All are identical in every possible way, apart 

from the choice of colour. In addition there are 21 

shared parking garages. 

My project documents the changes of the latter 

during the years 1985–2010 and raises questions of 

individuality, community, and ideas of neutrality. 

Throughout this period the garage that my family 

shared with our neighbor was painted and re-painted 

several times. The story of this changing color palette 

is told through 23 drawings executed by my mother, 

Anne-Britt Værslev. Initially the garage was painted 

in various colours, with the decision of colour 

scheme being made by the two households sharing 

one garage. Over the course of 20 years the colours 

have slowly transformed into what is perceived by 

both parties to be classical and timeless: white. When 

the piece is exhibited a scale model of the façade 

of my parents’ garage is installed and painted over, 

repeating the different color schemes from 1985 till 

present, representing a fast-forwarding of the process 

that took over 20 years in its original setting. The 

project is transformed into both a performative work 

and a geographically specific painterly presentation. 

An addendum to the 20-year cycle is a projection 

sequence of twelve photographs showing the white 

garage from January to December 2009, where the 

colour cycle changes in concert with the Norwegian 

seasons. 

Cindy & I didn’t only place me in an ideal situation 

according to my view and take on the art world, 

but it also intensified my interest in other artists’ 

practices, as much on a collegial level as on a collector 

level. Being an art fan was probably the point of 

departure for the next, and a big step in my practice, 

Ideal Settings. If Cindy & I introduced an interest in 

discussing art practices located in between my own, 

and somebody else’s, Ideal Settings adopted this as a 

working method. It has been an ongoing project since 

2007 and came about through months of discussing 

exhibition practice with one of my closest colleagues, 

Eivind Nesterud. Nesterud had very recently 

graduated from art school and participated in a few 

exhibitions, and I had shown work in an institutional 

setting for the first time. What we came across as 

either problematic, or advantageous, was how the 

space where we showed our work impacted on the 

work. What would the optimal space be, to show a 

collage by Nesterud? Could my MODERN LIVING 

posters be shown somewhere that provided them with 

an added dimension? Could the exhibition venue be 

seen as a virus that added questions not asked by the 

work? In short is there, for every artwork made, sitespecific 

or not, potentially an ideal setting? 

These questions would not leave my mind, and 

I decided to invite Nesterud to participate in a new 

project, Ideal Settings. The project starts by looking at 

one specific work by the participating artist and also 

108 109 

to consider the practice of that artist, and assume that 

there exists a potentially ideal setting for all art works. 

The invited artist is asked to start thinking of what 

would be an ideal setting for that work. I would then 

ask for an accurate description of the chosen setting, 

either as a visual representation or described in words, 

either on paper or orally. The actual execution of 

the ideal setting is solely done by me, and is based 

on the directions provided by the artist. During the 

course of time it takes to execute each ideal setting, 

my ideas, formally as well as conceptually, tend to 

interfere with the initial idea of the invited artist. This 

could be due to geographical issues, physical issues, 

miscommunication, financial limitations, and so on. 

In other words, the outcome of each ideal setting 

becomes a hybrid between the form and ideas of the 

invited artists and the work in question, my interests 

as artist and facilitator, and the practical restrictions 

of the execution of the project. The first completed 

Ideal Settings ended up being quite complicated. 

In 2004 Eivind Nesterud made a sketch for the 

Rooseum Contemporary Art Centre in Malmö. The 

sketch was an amalgam of a sculpture and a bench, 

and was a proposal designed to solve the lack of 

seating at the museum. Nesterud wanted the bench 

to interfere as little as possible with its habitat, and 

based the dimensions of the bench mathematically on 

the size of the Art Centre‘s ceiling tiles. The project 

was initially presented as an insert in Malmö Art 

Academy’s yearbook of 2004, but was never realised 

in its intended setting, because Rooseum closed down 

in 2005. The bench was built in Finnish oak plywood 

by a furniture carpenter and through the academy’s 

connections in Malmö, I was granted access to the 

Art Center for one day in 2008. I found the ceiling 

tiles from the Rooseum, and placed them as cushions 

on the bench, which was installed according to 

Nesterud’s sketches. 

Eivind Nesterud’s ideal setting for A Bench for 

Rooseum’s Turbine Hall ended up being a project in 

four parts, all executed by me – including the actual 

sculpture, a photographic series of the sculpture 

installed at Rooseum, a storage photograph of the 

sculpture, as a nod to Louise Lawler, and a setting for 

a fashion photo-shoot. 

A more recent Ideal Setting was executed with 

another Norwegian artist, Per-Oskar Leu. Leu 

chose his 2006 painting If You Can Remember It, 

You Weren’t Really There as his work to be placed 

in an ideal setting. The painting depicts the cover 

of the Documenta 4 exhibition catalogue and is a 

tongue-in-cheek reference to minimal art and Martin 

Kippenberger. While Documenta 4 summed up 

most of the major tendencies in post-war art, the 

exhibition was nevertheless considered controversial 

and targeted by student protesters because of its 

predominant focus on American art. As a result, 

Arnold Bode who had been the artistic director of the 



first four Documentas was forced to leave his position. 

Minimalism was one of the movements showcased at 

Documenta 4, and in particular the work of Italian 

painter Antonio Calderara stood out. He presented 

a series of square monochrome canvases, one of 

which was red and selected to be on the cover of the 

catalogue. 

This piece of information is the basis of Leu’s 

work, as the red square displayed on the book cover 

becomes not only a piece of graphic design, but also 

a representation of Calderara’s painting, which in 

turn was a reference to Malevich’s Red Square from 

1915. By making an oil painting of a book cover 

from 1968, Leu adds yet another layer to the game 

of citations. The title of Leu’s painting is a quote by 

Paul Kantner from the psychedelic rock band Jefferson 

Airplane, who are credited for the saying that ‘If 

you can remember anything about the sixties, you 

weren’t really there.’ Leu’s work serves as a critical 

remark on the canonisation present in all history, and 

more specifically the nostalgia surrounding the 1968 

revolutionary movement, reaching a contemporary 

climax at the 40th anniversary, in 2008, of the student 

protests. Since 2006, Per-Oskar Leu has done several 

projects referencing the work of Martin Kippenberger, 

who also produced numerous paintings of book covers 

throughout his career. When pondering an ideal 

setting for If You Can’t Remember It, You Weren’t 

Really There, one specific piece by Kippenberger came 

to his mind. Documenta IX was created in response 

to the 1992 Documenta to which Kippenberger was 

not invited. Insulted, the artist brought his sculpture 

Untitled (Lamp) to Kassel, and placed it on top of 

Walter de Maria’s Vertical Earth Kilometer outside 

the Museum Fridericianum, where he photographed it 

and made his own bootleg Documenta poster. 

As an ideal setting, Leu’s Documenta painting was 

brought to Kassel, photographed in the exact same 

spot, and made into a bootleg Documenta XIII poster, 

silk-screened on top of a photograph from Kassel and 

framed in the same way as Kippenberger’s Documenta 

IX poster. Ideal Settings have also been found for 

works by the Italian duo Pasquale Pennacchio and 

Marisa Argentato, by Welsh artist Dan Rees, as well as 

for one of my own projects, MODERN LIVING. 

At this point my artistic role models had not 

changed much, and continued to influence my 

practice. Works of artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark 

and Michael Asher are still very important in my 

thinking, but Michael Krebber, Christopher Wool and 

John Knight have also influenced me when it comes to 

my recent studio practice, and in particular painting. 

One might even say that they gave me a boost of 

energy that has lasted. A continuous and intensive 

interest in painting reached its climax during a year 

spent in Germany where I was forced to rethink my 

own painterly ideas and discover paths I would have 

considered impossible earlier in my practice. Parallel 

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with this reevaluation came my constant and close 

dialogue with my mother about aesthetics and formal 

choices that also inspired me enormously. 

The first project where these new inspirations and 

conversations became evident were in a new set of 

paintings presented in installations, called Drøbak 

Blue. Drøbak Blue is a collaboration with my mother, 

set in the same neighborhood as Lerkesvingen. The 

piece tells the story of how my family constructed a 

physical boundary to contain and maintain a personal 

and private sphere in an area where all is seemingly 

equal and identical. Drøbak Blue takes its point 

of departure from an entrance gate that my father, 

Morten Værslev, constructed in 1991 to protect our 

family from inquisitive neighbors, and painted in a 

serene light blue colour. In Drøbak Blue the wooden 

gate has been dismantled into twelve pieces, and 

each piece is presented as a monochrome painting 

leaning against the wall. Each of these monochromes 

is accompanied by a family photograph, a drawing 

and a title made by Anne-Britt Værslev in response 

to the photograph. The characters in the stories are 

summarised in a larger painting, another collaboration 

with my mother. Linking ordinary, colloquial forms 

of painting and artistic notions of painting and the 

history of painting has been the driving force of my 

artistic practice of late, and that’s where my mother 

has been an invaluable inspiration. 

My constant dialogue with my mother about 

aesthetics and formal choices was channeled into a 

new set of paintings, Shelf Paintings. This is a series of 

paintings executed with spray paint on plywood. The 

prototype was based on my mother’s description of 

an ideal painting; a painting that would not interfere 

with whatever was placed in front of it, but rather 

function in the way that the perfect blouse brings out 

the tones of your skin or the colour of your eyes. The 

motives of these paintings are abstracted or faded 

colour formations similar to the backdrop of the Good 

Morning America TV studio, to that of a tapestry, or 

a nice evening sky. Underneath each painting there’s 

a wooden shelf mounted with hinges. The shelf is 

a platform for decorations of all kinds. The colour 

formations on the paintings are primarily based on 

wishes from the ones who will decorate them. 

Moving on from Shelf Paintings, I really 

found the ‘letting go’, giving another person the 

final responsibility for finishing a painting, highly 

interesting. During a recent house cleaning I 

came across a bag full of graffiti sketches from the 

late 1990s, all done collaboratively with my best 

friend Øyvind Zahl. These sketches became the 

starting point for Swap Paintings. This is a mutated 

appropriation of a former graffiti activity of mine. 

Over a period of seven years making graffiti on a 

daily basis, 95% of it was together with Zahl. During 

this time of painting and sketching together, our 

communal feel for aesthetics and form became so 

synched, that a verbal discussion on style and form 

became unnecessary. Imagine a table full of sketches, 

half mine, half Zahl’s. Half his signature, half my 

signature. Without even asking, when recognising 

‘flaws’ in each other’s sketches, we erased and fixed 

them to satisfy our common language, making 

something that would be impossible to accomplish 

if done individually. Looking back at this period, it 

encouraged me to proceed with the same method with 

a new set of collaborators, Anne Britt Værslev, Ståle 

Vold, and also Øyvind Zahl. 

For each new collaborative work, I discover new 

paths in thinking, seeing, and doing that I appropriate 

into my work in general. One might dismiss it as a 

cowardly practice, giving a second party responsibility 

and a say in the making of work, or one could also say 

that it’s a drive for appropriation of new aesthetic and 

formal understandings I admire and seek. Sort of like 

a school where you choose your own professors, in 

my case, they ended up being my mum, my best friend, 

and a former teacher. 

110 111 



Drøbak Blue 

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112 113 



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Lerkesvingen (1985) 

House paint on pine panels, steel, aluminium, 295 x 490 x 4 cm 


114 115 



Memory: Recollection; Recognition; Warning; 

Memento; Impulse; Drift; Desire; Passion; Mania; 

Freneticism; Energy; Dynamism; Movement; 

Gesture; Sign; Mark; Trace; Imprint; Reproduction; 

Image. (A walk through the origin of drawing where 

the image is still a block of graphite that must be won 

from the ore.) 

Memories and experiences together form an inner 

sequence of rooms. Every single room exists for a 

specific reason and was created at a particular point 

in time. They have all been created and filled with 

passing time and their building blocks are the events 

and circumstances that were lived throughI often see 

the images I create as a form of documentation. Just 

like these inner rooms they are containers for traces 

left after events and experiences. My drawings are 

rooms for memories and traces, and at the same time 

they are the hallway to the viewer’s inner house. 

I want to get at the in-between, those periods that 

are forgotten and the journey between two points. I 

want to get at the physical traces but also the inner 

spaces that have been filled with recollections of 

events and which border on new rooms and form 

an experience. Working with memories and traces 

is perhaps an attempt to reconfirm the existence of 

something or to investigate and control an event that 

happened too quickly. 

True aesthetic achievement is deemed 

impossible without a lifetime of accumulated 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

Sara Wallgren 

Re-Entries 

experiences that have almost literally become a 

part of the artist – his lifeblood. 1 

Among the experiences that Rainer Maria Rilke 

called lifeblood, the foundation that an artwork or 

drawing is built on, there is a mix of memories and 

thoughts of varying shape and density. In this porridge 

certain thoughts are easier to focus on while others 

need more attention before they can be tamed. This 

perhaps explains why certain drawings differ in 

appearance from others. Maybe one actively chooses to 

forget and repress, shut out certain memories and lock 

the door to certain rooms. That which is only allowed 

to exist in darkness may lack an image to define it but it 

is just as tangible as that which one can see. 

Memory. ORIGIN Middle English: from Old 

French memorie, from Latin memoria, from 

memor ‘mindful, remembering’ 2 

A memory is a fragment of an event. There are 

layers of easy access and layers of difficult access. 

In the latter there is a throng of those events that 

do not seem to have any significance and those that 

are kept hidden because it is too hard to let them 

come too close. In the easily accessible layer we find 

those memories that we replay because we want to 

remember them. Every time a thought touches it 

the memory is changed, improved, or clarified and 

simplified. 

The deep psychic roots of the mark, the drawn 

line and the act of drawing […] is not an 

exploration of space but of movement. The 

gesture – the mark and the line – is not the 

starting point but the registration of something 

arising from within the body that the field then 

creates and patterns hold, as a memory. 3 

Memories and the Dissolution of Organic Life 

In drawing it is the draftsman that is the organic life 

and that inevitably will dissolve and disappear. The 

corpse of the paper becomes a vessel, a memory of 

time and trace and in her zombie state she carries a 

witness of previous events. The drawing becomes a 

souvenir linking the here and now with a place visited 

long ago. 

It is clear, however, that art can re-stage that 

relation to memory (itself the composing 

of what never had a form before it was 

remembered as a lost object, now of desire) 

with a more open door to the faded trace not 

only of desire, but of what we desire to find 

reconnection with rather than possession of. 4 

Freud writes of some memories as not forgotten 

but screened off. Something that is very much there 

below the surface or behind a locked door. Moments 

both as points in time and causes/reasons where 

an event is the origin of a symptom. To be rid of a 

symptom the psychological processes from the event 

should be reproduced in order to bring them to the 

surface through conscious activity. 5 The stronger the 

opposition, the urge to keep the memory in place, the 

more the memory needs to be substituted with activity 

(repetition compulsion). 6 In order not to sink down to 

the level of the memory one treads water – an activity 

that preserves a sense of balance, and security in the 

familiar. 

Felix González-Torres’s installations with their 

constant renewal – refilled piles of posters and sweets 

– tell a tale of constant cell renewal. Ending is denied 

as the sweets consumed by the visitors are replaced 

with new ones. This is a generous act from the point 

of view of the audience, the act of sharing the artwork. 

From the point of view of the work it is an anonymous 

act of giving where nothing and nobody is worth more 

than the other. Nothing is unique or irreplaceable. 

Those sweets and posters that the visitors take with 

them leave their place of origin and become what they 

were meant to be. By carrying a rolled up paper from 

one of the poster piles under your arm, that which 

once was González-Torres’s memory becomes your 

souvenir (subvenire – ‘occur to the mind’). 7 Souvenirs 

are objects connected to travel. One buys souvenirs 

and brings them home in order to extend a memory, 

116 117 

bind it to a physical object, which reminds one of a 

place and an experience. An object as the fuel in a 

biological time machine. 

Despite Eva Hesse’s interest in repetition she 

did not care if that which she created would last 

longer than she would. The material she used for her 

sculptures was not durable and her works have turned 

into a fragile memory of what they once were. Eva 

Hesse was well aware of the fact that her work would 

not survive in its original form. The material she uses 

in her sculptures disintegrates, changes color and 

character. ‘Everything was for the process – a moment 

in time, not meant to last.’ 8 Lucy Lippard concludes 

her book on Eva Hesse by writing: 

What is surprising is that she did not separate 

her sculpture from her life with more clarity, 

did not seem at that point to think of her work 

as her memorial, did not attach her great drive 

and ambition to its permanent place in the 

world after she had left it. It is as though she 

had finally made her art for herself as a part of 

her life, that she had no picture of it after she 

was gone, that it made no difference whether 

or not it remained intact forever, if she herself 

could not survive to enjoy its triumphs; as 

though this were an acknowledgement of the 

ultimate tie between art and life. 9 

A Humble Abuse 

I fantasise about undrawn drawings. These fantasies 

of drawings have the same tendencies as other 

fantasies. Possibilities are limitless and yet one looks 

for restrictions to get some excitement into it. The 

restrictions I look for are often time-based. Time is 

joined by memories and traces as witnesses of an 

existence, always with an expiry date. My repetitive 

artworks can be seen as traces of an existence – they 

become memories that throw themselves around the 

neck of time like avid fans through traces that are left 

in the drawing process. Instead of being an attempt 

to portray time, figuration works as a fraction of time 

and portrays a moment. If the one way of drawing is a 

trace then the other is a memory of it. 

When I am in the process of starting a new project I 

search the corridors between inner rooms. I try to force 

doors that are not open more than a fraction, allowing 

me peer into them through a crack and imagine what I 

am missing. I feel great irritation and frustration at not 

being allowed in to the idea that seems to hover inside 

the unwelcoming room with great self-assurance and 

elegance. Despite a certain despondency there is no 

turning back and the only solution is to grab all I can, 

and with the mind of a thief I take what I find and use 

it as mine – although what I have taken actually never 

belonged to anyone else. 



With the stolen material in tow I make a run for 

it back to the outside room, to the studio. The more I 

have managed to take the more I have to work with 

before the drawing starts. In those instances when 

the theft was fast and not so complete I am forced to 

put the small fragments together and the riddle of the 

pieces left behind in the room must be solved. The 

less material there is, the more chance is needed to 

fill in the gaps. So I skip the work and thinking that 

accompanies my figurative works, and a repetitive, 

performative drawing is born. 

Traces. ORIGIN Middle English (first recorded 

as a noun in the sense ‘path that someone 

or something takes’): from Old French trace 

(noun), tracier (verb), based on Latin tractus. 

Tractus. ORIGIN late Middle English (in the 

sense ‘duration or course (of time)’ ): from 

Latin tractus ‘drawing, dragging,’ from trahere 

‘draw, pull’. 10 

Traces are leftovers from events; carvings on the 

bark of a tree form a lasting trace of fleeting feelings, 

or the print of a cat’s paw in a cement floor. The 

traces we leave can be both physical and emotional. 

A trace can be etched into you as a memory or left 

on the floor like a chewed off nail. Traces are not 

always left deliberately and some are hard to see. 

Traces exist as proof of events and existence. 

Recollection is somehow more vivid, or put 

in another way, original experience is a pale 

reflection of its repetitions. Repetition is 

understood as a means of not deadening but 

heightening experience, just as infinity is not 

opposed to the material trace so much as 

rescued through it. 11 

Nesting. The Repetitive Act as Enclosure 

Repetition is the rotation of the earth and the 

zeroing of the clock at midnight, the explanation in 

recurrence, the control and security of experience, 

the wearing down of friction or the layering of 

build-up. 

Birds’ repeated flight patterns fetching twigs, 

returning with them and weaving them into a nest 

only to raise a new generation of birds in them 

is a metaphor for a repeated line. The process of 

repeated line drawing is an act that builds walls 

around a state and isolates by reducing the world 

to a pencil line. The concentration of a repetitive 

activity lies more in the individual line than in 

the image as a whole. It is an act that doesn’t lead 

anywhere but instead can be connected to staying in 

one place, to establish an existence there. Heidegger 

MFA 2 MFA 2 

is quoted in Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Fenomenets 

plats (‘The Place of the Phenomenon’) as explaining 

that the Old English and German word for ‘to build’ 

was buan which includes the meaning ‘to live’ and 

is closely related to the verb ‘to be’. 12 So what does 

ich bin (‘I am’) signify? The old German word 

bauen and its conjugation ich bin, du bist says it all: 

I live, you live. The way in which you and I and all 

humans on earth are is das Buan, ‘living’. We can 

further conclude that living means to collect a world 

in the form of a concrete building or thing; and 

the archetypal activity of a building is Umfriedung, 

enclosure. The German word for peace, Frieden 

means to be free, protected from threat and danger. 

Thus this protection is created through Umfriedung, 

an enclosure. 

Even the wearing of clothes is a form of 

enclosure. We wear clothes as physical protection, 

as well as for individuation, to maintain an identity. 

A repetitive drawing which through its performative 

creation process can be seen as a seismograph or a 

mirror of inner circumstances can at the same time 

create an inner space through the contemplative 

aspect of its execution. Is it just a coincidence that 

most of the clothes we wear are made of thread 

that through a repetitive process just like that of 

the drawn line creates an enclosure? In traditional 

handicraft repetition in knitting, croqueting, lace 

making and weaving has created cloth and clothing. 

The objects created bear information in their 

threads/lines; thoughts and secrets. Repetition 

encourages escapism and freely floating thoughts 

connected to the thread/line that is woven, plaited 

and drawn into the object. The gathered traces are a 

hidden reflection of an inner experience. 

Christian Norberg-Schulz writes in Fenomenets 

plats about the notion of the genius loci, a spirit 

that gives life to people and places, follows people 

from birth to death and determines their character 

and temperament. This spirit describes what things 

are or want to be. In antiquity people perceived 

their surroundings as being made up of certain fixed 

characteristics. It was particularly important to be 

in harmony with the spirit of the place where one 

lived. 13 In the same text there is a discussion of how 

one gets on with a place. To describe the complete 

relationship between humans and place he uses the 

word ‘dwelling’. 14 He maintains that when humans 

live in a place they are simultaneously localised 

in the space as well as being subject to certain 

influences from their surroundings. He calls the two 

psychological functions involved ‘orientation’ and 

‘identification’. In order to find one’s existential feet 

he says that we must be able to orientate ourselves, 

i.e. know where we are. But we must also be able to 

identify ourselves with our environment, i.e. know 

how we are in a certain place. 

Dwelling – The Narrative as Dressing 

Identification – Identity – Clothes – Repetition – 

Habit – Orientation. I get dressed in an agreement 

with an inner will. I furnish my house to be 

comfortable and to maximise the functionality of 

the room. The choice of both clothes and furniture 

is a result of our aesthetic and practical needs. Do 

clothes, interior decorating and drawing as a result 

fulfill the same function? Creation as a way to be 

recognised as a certain kind of person, to confirm 

one’s personality to oneself as well as others? And is 

interior decoration a reflection of an inner process 

in order to feel a part of a room and identify oneself 

with a place? As Heidegger writes: I am comes 

from I live, as if it is one and the same thing. The 

repetition of a line, irrespective of whether it creates 

a pattern or a figurative image, is also a reflection of 

the inner self. 

The process in the studio is a constant back 

and forth. I move between the fantasy in which I 

take something, and the reality in which I try to 

do something with what I have stolen. I oscillate 

between abstract repetition on paper and figurative 

drawings. I move between being the studio and being 

in the studio. 

In those drawings where the drawing of the 

repetitive line does not become a pattern but rather a 

figurative image I try to translate a code into images. 

This translation process needs careful consideration 

in order to find a form and expression which comes 

as close as possible to what I knew at the beginning. 

The translation is never perfect since what needs 

to be expressed doesn’t have a direct match in any 

language other than its own. Some words exist only 

in certain languages even though the phenomenon is 

found everywhere. 

I work with memories and traces, partially 

through the experiences that Rilke called lifeblood, 

in part through the changes that happen in the 

work, through a chance-based parallel process in my 

drawing. I let those traces and marks of the process 

and my body remain. They tell as much of a story 

as those images that have been connected in such 

a controlled way through graphite marks on paper. 

For my graduation show I exhibited drawings that 

had not been fixed. The viewer becomes part of the 

process, and after I had completed my part of the 

drawings they continued to live and change with 

every touch from the viewer. The portfolios with 

drawings of sleeping people are, in addition to not 

being fixed, drawn on thin mulberry paper that will 

absorb dirt and grease from the fingers of those 

paging through them and become worn from being 

handled. 

118 119 

The Thin Membrane Between You and Me 

Rooms and the walls of buildings are shells that 

separate the outside from the inside. Clothes separate, 

hide, emphasise and reflect or oppose an inner state. 

Privacy is the right to keep information about oneself 

hidden from others and the general public. Despite 

this right to choose for ourselves what we want to 

reveal and share with others about ourselves we are 

constantly leaving traces of ourselves behind; be it in 

a private room or out in public. Every meeting with 

another person leaves a trace in the other person in 

the form of a memory. Complete control is a vain and 

meaningless attempt at keeping something together 

when its essence is fleeting. In the in-between, the 

distance between two points, we unconsciously share 

and receive impressions. Between people and between 

artworks. 

Lucy Lippard says of Eva Hesse’s sculptures and 

her identification with the material and the shapes she 

worked with: 

I once used the term ‘body ego’ which I 

understood to mean a strong, virtually visceral 

identification between the maker’s and/or 

viewer’s body and abstract or figurative form. 15 

And Agnes Martin writes the following about her 

own work: 

The solutions to my amateurish painterly 

problems came from that space of the other, 

the treasure house of non-verbal signifiers, the 

domain of the thing-presentation, which Freud 

suggested remained closer to archaic senseperception 

impressions not yet articulated into 

thoughts. It also allows us to link what we call 

abstraction and view it as linked psychically, 

and affectively, to a thinking-body-memory. 16 

I see the memories that Martin mentions as 

a common language of symbols, as signs that we 

perceive but don’t really understand because there 

is no reference for them other than the symbols they 

consist of. 

Image. ORIGIN Middle English: from Old 

French, from Latin imago; related to imitate. 17 

An image is a trapped reflection. A memory 

is something we see inside of ourselves, an inner 

reflection where that which is reflected is no longer 

there. Images are used to show, remember or explain 

our thoughts. An image can be a reflection in a 

mirror or the photo of a place. Images document the 

ephemeral. 



Notes 

1. Spector, Nancy, Felix-Gonzalez Torres. Travels 

as Metaphor, New York: The Solomon R 

Guggenheim Foundation, 1995, p.42. 

2. Thesaurus. 

3. Pollock, Griselda, 3 x Abstraction: New 

Methods of Drawing by Hilma af Klint, 

Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin, Agnes 

Dreaming:Dreaming Agnes. New Haven/New 

York: Yale University Press and the Drawing 

Center, 2005, pp.174–175. 

4. Ibid., p. 161. 

5. Freud, Sigmund, Psykoanalysens teknik VIII. 

Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2002, p.177. 

6. Ibid., p.180. 

7. Thesaurus. 

8. Danto, Arthur C, ‘All about Eva’, in The Nation, 

28 June 2006, http://www.thenation.com/ 

doc/20060717/danto 

9. Lippard, Lucy, Eva Hesse. Cambridge, Mass.: 

Da Capo Press, 1992, p.209. 

10. Thesaurus. 

11. Pollock, Griselda, op. cit., p.191. 

12. Norberg-Schulz, Christian, ‘Fenomenets Plats, 

Platsens Ande’, in Kairos nr 5: Arkitekturteorier 

(‘Kairos no. 5: Theories of Architecture’). 

Stockholm: Raster, p.112. 

13. Ibid., p.106–107. 

14. Ibid., p.107. 

15. Lippard, Lucy, Eva Hesse. Cambridge, Mass: 

Da Capo Press, 1992, p.187. 

16. Pollock, Griselda, op. cit., p.174. 

17. Thesaurus. 

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120 121 



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122 123 



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124 125 


2009–2010 Yearb0ok 

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127


Arab Blaster 

Pencil on paper 

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Emil Ekberg Celie Eklund 

128 129 



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Karen Gimle Sarah Jane Gorlitz 

The Watzmann (After Caspar David Friedrich) 

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 90 x 109 cm 

130 131 



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Jorun Jonasson Ingrid Koslung 

During the Reconvalescence (a) 

Installation 

BREKK 

Action, 28 February 2007 – 15 July 2010 

132 133 



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Ove Kvavik Juha Laakkonen 

Walking from Yakutsk to Helsinki in 5.3 Million Steps 

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God 

had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in. 

Genesis 7:16 

This is the last verse in the Bible describing life 

on Earth before the Great Flood. As water covers 

the land, Noah’s journey begins. Where it will end 

depends on the weather, not on mankind (although 

people had to decide to stay alive long enough to 

cover the time gap). 

From everything that lives of the land, a few are 

chosen to be isolated, to suffer a time of incertitude, 

waiting for the land to reappear. All is lost, all will 

be preserved. Everything on land is brought in pairs, 

selected as representatives of their own kind. 

I translated the Bible verses into days by counting 

the verses from the beginning of Creation to the Great 

Flood. This gave me 176 days. During the second 

world war, Finnish people were deported to Siberia. 

5.3 million people live in Finland today. The city of 

Yakutsk, capital of the Republic of Sakha or Yakutia 

in eastern Russia, is 5,004 kilometres away from 

Helsinki. I calculated that I would have to take 5.3 

million steps to walk this distance. 

The day I arrived in Yakutsk I wrote a postcard to 

myself in Helsinki with the Bible verse and the date. 

I made all my 5.3 million steps in Yakutsk. That took 

176 days. The day I left Yakutsk I mailed the postcard. 

Prior to my departure I made myself a pair of 

winter boots from reindeer hide. These were the 

boots I was going to wear as I walked the entire 

distance from Yakutsk to Helsinki. I got a bit worried 

that the boots weren’t warm enough, as I spotted 

some tiny holes in the leather. 

134 135 

I knew Yakutia would be cold, but I had no way 

of knowing how cold it would feel. I had decided 

to prepare only for winter conditions, since I would 

arrive in January. Yet I knew the transition from 

winter to summer would be harsh for the material. 

Indeed the boots were sometimes too warm even in 

winter. During my stay daytime temperatures ranged 

from –50 to 40 centigrades. 

Maintenance rules for the boots: All repair 

work must be done from the inside. The fur will be 

gradually shaved off as temperatures rise. Under no 

circumstances will the boots be replaced with another 

pair. 

As time passed the snow melted, the ice broke 

and the boots wore out. I did my best to adjust to the 

changing natural environment. I was left with fewer 

directions to walk in as winter roads on ice vanished 

and the flooded Lena river reached the borders of the 

city. 

Every little change I made was reflected on my 

feet. About half way through my 5.3 million steps I 

put the left boot on my right foot, and the right boot 

on my left foot, stopped eating meat, and continued 

walking like this. When summer arrived, with the heat 

and the dust, the boots were no longer recognisable. 

I finished collecting steps on the 176th day, as I 

walked up to the aeroplane back to Helsinki, took my 

seat and changed into ordinary shoes. 

25 January – 19 July 2009 



MFA 1 MFA 1 

Eric Length António Martins Leal 

Paraphernalia 

Mirror, saliva, ceramic, ink, metal chain, crystal, 20.5 cm across 

Bench 

Video installation 

136 137 



A spiral staircase brought me spinning to a small room 

on the highest floor. There she stood. I think I had 

never seen anything like it before and immediately 

fell in love with this piece of Italian craftsmanship. 

The form was beautiful, perfect. I sat down on a chair, 

grabbed the neck that was united with the peg box 

MFA 1 MFA 1 

I forgot all about the cello. The colours started to get 

mixed and I stopped only when I couldn’t recognise 

what I was painting. It was just a mess, a mess in 

colours. 

My interest for form remained. Today, though, 

it is not at all organic, rather industrial. Forms such 

and the scroll carved out of a single piece Olof of boxwood. Nimar as squares, boxes, triangles etc. This is not about 

Pauliina Pietilä 

I placed my left hand fingers on the fingerboard and mathematics or anything similar. Questions that only 

with the other hand took a piece of wood originating have one correct answer have never interested me. 

from the Caesalpinia echinata tree. This specific wood Geometric forms can be complicated but are usually 

was connected to hair taken from a horse. 

easy to understand. If you have seen one side, you 

With a precautious movement I let it slide against have seen them all. I don’t want anything hidden that 

the aluminium, following the whole body from the I don’t know about. I want to keep it simple, but at 

scroll down to the tail piece, from wood down to the same time I’m rather contradictive. Now I have 

plastic. I started with C, continued with G, then D and taken her out of the case – or should I call it a coffin? 

finally A. Four different letters, four different strings, She is smaller than I recalled. It is as if we have grown 

four different sounds – this was more than enough. apart, literally. She stayed in the past and I moved on. 

Back then I couldn’t really tell why I liked this I place the cello in the middle of my room and study it 

instrument so much. I have never really had an ear from a distance. I carefully go through every part. 

for music and that didn’t interest me so much either. I have always wondered about the two ‘F-holes’. 

It was about form, the shape of the cello; this was my Why an ‘F’ and what does it stand for? The only thing 

interest. Often the shape of a cello is compared with a that I could come up with and makes sense is ‘form’. 

woman’s body, and it is also the instrument which has ‘Form-holes’ where the air goes into the body and also 

the sound closest to a human voice. 

out of it, as if it was breathing. But when I first got my 

This wasn’t anything I was thinking about at the cello and learned the names of all its parts, I didn’t 

time. Instead something quite the opposite of the think that it looked like an ‘F’ at all, rather an ‘S’. ‘S’ 

number 8 came to mind, something that later led me as in ‘symbol’. But now when I have read Donald 

to , the sign for infinity. But what was the connection Judd’s Complete writings 1975–1986 it becomes more 

between my cello and infinity? The instrument in and more clear. ‘It is impossible in art and architecture 

itself? The form? Or my relation to it? My career as to use forms from the past. They become symbols […] 

a cellist would become intense and short. Playing “Form” is a vague word, because form and content is 

all day, practicing, it was almost as I loved it too an incorrect division derived from an other incorrect 

much and the love turned into hate. And one day division: thought and feeling.’ 

it all ended dramatically. I smashed her head into 

I guess they couldn’t really decide whether the 

‘another girl’s’ head, as a symbolic act. The neck was cello were more a form or a symbol, but I don’t think 

disembodied, the form was broken, and the sound that is so interesting anyway. What is interesting in 

would never be the same again. 

all this is what the form/symbol is for? Later I started 

I thought I had made it clear to both of us, but I to touch the cello, played it with my fingers. But the 

continued to think about her. I tried to understand sound of a human voice wasn’t the same. The strings 

my instrument and, above all, where my obsession lay. were so relaxed that it barely came a sound, it was 

Downstairs in the cellar I found the cello in the corner more like a sigh. Or was it me who had forgotten how 

exactly where I had left her. After I had taken her out to play? I also noticed that the crack was even bigger, 

of the case now covered in dust I loaded my Nikon F6 it was as if the case which should have protected it 

with black and white film. I hoped that the camera’s made it worse. The form was in two pieces and the 

lens would see more than my own. Later I stood in the symbol had vanished. 

dark room and watched her slowly appear on a piece All this reminded me about Chris Marker’s film 

of white paper, but no answer came not even a cello. Sans soleil when he quotes Samura Koichi: ‘Who 

It looked as if there had been a battle between black said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to 

and white, and all ended up in a grey mess where say that time heals everything except wounds. With 

no one could see the difference. A few years later I time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With 

painted two big paintings of the cello and combined time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the 

all the different colours I could come up with, as if desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, 

the colours themselves were the answer. But while I then what remains is a wound… disembodied.’ 

Paris 

was painting, the colours took over my interest and 


138 139 



MFA 1 MFA 1 

Titas Silovas John Skoog 

The installation is based on historical facts and examines history and archival images 

with particular attention paid to articles in newspapers from 1936–1947. 

You‘re Only Human Once 

Table, vitrine, two 35mm carousel projectors, two cardboard boxes, 

vintage frames, black and white photographic prints, engraved metal 

plate, screenprint on paper, photocopies 

(exchange student) 

140 141 



MFA 1 MFA 1 

Asgeir Skotnes Susanne Svantesson 

Untitled 

Iron, tomatoes, can, toy aircraft, 155 x 37 x 11 cm 

Marie-Louise, Janna, Anna, Casia, Sara, Nässlan (Translucent Views) 

6 lambda prints, each 50 x 50 cm 

142 143 



MFA 1 MFA 1 

Gunnhild Torgersen Lars Andreas 

Tovey Kristiansen 

January – May 2010 #1 

Polyester, tabloid flyers, 150 x 240 cm 

If Humans Were Gone, at Least a Third of All Birds 

on Earth Might Not Even Notice 

Mixed media, dimensions variable 

144 145 



MFA 1 MFA 1 

Örn Alexander Ámundason 

Stöðvarfjörður 

42 sheets of A4 paper; video, 30’ 

146 147 



BFA 3 

148 149


BFA 3 BFA 3 

Søren Aagaard Jensen 

Speech as Raw Material. 

and Other Topics Related 

to My Practice 

One of the main preoccupations in my work is the 

exploration of the boundaries between constructed 

realities and reality itself. Using video and installation 

pieces that exploit the potentials of narrative and 

stage-set installations, I investigate the differences and 

affinities between actor and private individual, fiction 

and documentary, staged set-ups and actual space. 

Speech as Raw Material 

Human speech is bursting with intrinsically interesting 

material. Its felicitous, barbarous, perverse, poetic or 

droll combinations are used in innumerable ways and 

its micro-level linguistic features repay close attention. 

An example of this can be seen in the expressions we 

resort to when language fails us. The exclamations, 

primal cries and pre-lingual sounds that burst from 

us spontaneously when joy, sorrow, enjoyment 

or pain outstrip our standard vocabulary. Ouch, 

hmmm, ugh, oh are just a few of the interjections that 

have a written form, but there are others that defy 

straightforward transcription. 

Our conversational exchanges are not in and 

of themselves coherent and self-contained, but we 

grasp their meaning within contextual frameworks, 

where both the setting and visual cues facilitate 

understanding. The ways in which language is recycled 

and revitalised varies from one social or cultural 

constituency to another. Specific types of situation 

each have their own conventions and linguistic codes. 

Everyday conversations, for instance, tend to be 

centered around current affairs, the past, local news, 

what someone has just read or heard, global issues, 

trends, and the like, all spliced together with a sense 

of the here-and-nowness of the present moment. 

The ways in which we communicate in particular 

situations reflect our take on the world, and how 

we construe the roles we play in it. An examination 

of the variety of conversational structures and the 

different ways in which we use language sheds light on 

how distinct social realities are constructed through 

language. 

To explore the way settings impact on a 

conversation, my video piece Middagssamtaler 

(‘Dinner Conversations’, 2008) focuses precisely on a 

social dinner situation. A social dinner is an occasion, 

which, by virtue of its structure and rituals, conjures 

a very particular space – a space where people meet, 

catch up with each other and enjoy time out from 

the pressures of everyday life. Dinner companions 

give each other insights into who they are by sharing 

their experiences and their opinions. Moreover, 

implicit in these conversations are suggestions of 

larger existential questions. This piece includes a 

transcription of everything that was said over the 

course of a meal. 

This looks like somebody or other. It looks sick. 

Nab, nab! Some awesome UFO with grab arms 

or something. Yep, absolutely, that’s just landed. 

Have you got an awesome UFO? With grab 

arms? Yup, grab arms. What, you mean a real 

Jean Michel Jarre sort of thing? A Jean Michel 

Jarre. I think I’m going to have to have a little 

sip. An awesome UFO with grab arms? Yes, 

that one there – can’t you see it? So you need 

to have a wind turbine thrown in, then, if you’re 

Jean Michel Jarre. Did you catch? What’s that? 

I went to see him play the day before yesterday. 

Did you? What’s that? Was there wind, like 

wind, windmill? It was fucking amazing. Or 

illuminated keyboard. It was… they played the 

Oxygen record. Yes. Jarre. That was what they 

performed. Shit. We’re talking about megaancient 

synthesizers. Illuminated synthesizers, 

in a large circle or what? And they’d simply 

set it all up in the middle with him standing 

in this little square space with a synthesizer in 

front of him. No, no, no, no! And they all stood 

behind. That’s cool. There were all these special 

effects. Where was this, or where? The Falconer 

Center. This reminds me of my childhood. 1 

Spoken language is a fascinating infinite web, 

replete with curious, ‘meaningless’ and intricate 

byways. After completing the video transcription, 

I stumbled across Kenneth Goldsmith’s 500page 

book, Soliloquy (1996), which contains every 

utterance he made over the space of a week. He 

recorded every word that he uttered and then 

transcribed the tapes. In his paper I Love Speech, 

which is available on the Poetry Foundation’s website, 

he explains the project’s rationale. 

Real speech, when paid close attention to, 

forces us to realise how little one needs to do 

in order to write. Just paying attention to 

what is right under our noses – framing, 

transcription, and preservation – is enough… 

The rise of appropriation-based literary 

practices: Suddenly, the familiar or quotidian 

is made unfamiliar or strange when left 

semantically intact. No need to blast syntax 

apart. The New Sentence? The Old Sentence, 

reframed, is enough. 2 

Once speech is considered as text or script, it 

takes on different meanings, which lend themselves 

to countless interpretations and uses. I consider 

some of my own videos as species of text: texts or 

scripts that write themselves, evolving as the shooting 

proceeds. I hold the view that video documentation 

of conversations evolves into a kind of un-written text 

that may be archived, interpreted, reread, or recycled 

as material for another work. 

A comparison of a transcription of recorded 

everyday utterances with a film or stage script reveals 

150 151 

eye-catching differences. The latter, a thoroughly 

crafted text, is strikingly neat and tidy. By contrast, the 

ways in which we use language in our utterances are 

immensely more complex. Authentic conversations 

are more like montages, consisting of fragments and 

interpolations rather than a coherent, linear structure. 

One problem that I have encountered relates to the 

fact that the language spoken in my videos is Danish, 

and the pieces presuppose everyday familiarity with 

that language. My attempts at subtitling the videos led 

to impossibly long lines of text, with speech needing 

to be edited down to selected excerpts, and decisions 

having to be made about word substitutions. There 

is much that resists translation. Common sayings, 

colloquial expressions, familiar understandings 

and humour all have resonances that are languagespecific 

and are lost in translation. Translations 

serve to convey the gist, but are no substitute for the 

conversation in the videos. 

The Kitchen 

I was formerly educated as a chef and have spent a 

number of years working in restaurant kitchens, an 

experience that has impacted significantly on my 

working practices and thematic interests. To work in 

a kitchen is to work, quite literally, backstage. Behind 

the space where guests dine, their senses regaled, the 

kitchen is a flurry of activity. 

The demarcation line between the diners in the 

restaurant and the chefs in the kitchen is a very 

palpable one – a ‘firewall’ constantly traversed by the 

waiter whose job entails circulating between the two 

spaces, oscillating between the jargon swirling around 

in the kitchen and the urbane tone that is expected 

in the restaurant, and between the harshly-lit kitchen 

and a quite different realm where the last couple of 

days’ worth of hard graft is being consumed. All this 

so that guests may enjoy a break from the imperatives 

of the everyday, eased into the rituals of restaurant 

dining. The door swings open and fragments of 

conversation blend with the sounds in the bustling 

kitchen. To be in the kitchen with one’s thoughts 

focused on the guests on the other side of the wall is 

both an adrenaline-rush and a surreal experience. 

There are a number of similarities between the 

structure of the restaurant and the theatre’s onstage/ 

backstage dichotomy. The restaurant owner might be 

compared to a theater manager who articulates the 

theatre’s overarching visions. The head chef’s role 

is that of artistic director who, via the menu, fleshes 

out his ideas, which he is keen to relay to the guests. 

Together the menu and food preparation conjure a 

total experience that requires both rehearsals and 

considerable overtime through which, by their efforts, 

the other chefs help realise these visions. Food is 

the medium in which the narrative is written but is 



also the element that comes in for the most critical 

scrutiny. The waiter is an actor but also a stagehand, 

helping sustain an illusion by ensuring that the music, 

lighting, decorations, and so on are in place before 

the guests begin to arrive. Furthermore, the waiter has 

to ‘go to and fro’ from backstage to onstage before, 

during and after the performance (the delivery of the 

service). The dining space itself is the stage. From my 

perspective, guests perform a dual function – they are 

the audience, and they are actors, contributing to the 

show through their conversation, attire and gestures 

during the meal. 

Time and timing are of the essence in the kitchen. 

The combined efforts build towards the moment when 

the first guest arrives – by which point everything 

must be in place, since the service delivery process 

leaves time for nothing beyond the preparation of 

guests’ orders. Nothing can be changed. Once the 

food has left the kitchen, it’s too late. During the 

service of the meals, staff cannot afford to miss a 

beat: the constituents need to be variously roasted, 

braised, grilled, blended, boiled, steamed, chopped, 

and what have you, before everything comes together 

at the exact same time to be arranged on plates and 

dispatched from the kitchen. The guest is served, as it 

were, on cue. 

Time 

In my pieces, time appears to build in a crescendo 

towards a climax or dénouement that never arrives. 

As a result, while the audience remains in anticipation 

mode, other details are picked up that are of seminal 

importance to the piece. In a homogeneous universe, 

I find the magic moments where the slightest forward 

thrust of the action generates laughter, joy, excitement 

and surprise. 

My video pieces don’t have to be viewed from 

beginning to end, but can be viewed both piecemeal, 

punctuated with breaks, and in their full length. I see 

my pieces as samples, documentations, or explorations 

of conversations across a span of hours, and since 

the shots are often screened in their full length, it 

is possible to discern an arc and the significance of 

seemingly minor details for the overall trajectory. 

In recent years I have used the ‘one take’ concept 

in various ways, a format that preserves the raw, 

unedited footage, and so includes glitches and other 

unscripted incidents. By filming in one take and 

deferring to chance, the relationship between reality 

and self-staging, which I find intrinsically interesting, 

is spotlighted. 

An example of a glitch. The chef responsible for 

preparing the crabs (in the video Et lille teater, ‘A 

Little Theatre’, 2010) had not opened their claws 

properly. This oversight had implications for the 

participants, and not least for one particular actor, 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

given that she managed both to drop the crab 

and to jab herself so hard with the crab fork that 

it drew blood. Now she was aware that it was a 

one-take scene and that nothing would be edited 

out. This affected the way she dealt with the 

situation, both verbally and in the way she conducted 

herself physically. It is, among other things, such 

minor incidents that, interestingly, bring out the 

difference between spontaneous reactions and 

camera-conscious responses. 

The Verfremdungseffekt 

Bertold Brecht’s notion of the Verfremdungseffekt 

(‘alienation effect’) was not always in my mind when I 

made my pieces, but it is implicit in my approach and 

the methods I have used. It was important to Brecht 

to break with the notion of theatre as a depiction of 

reality. His aim was to have the audience develop a 

critical take on the various situations with which they 

were confronted over the course of the performance. 

Brecht’s stage designs were highly stylised. Making no 

attempt to represent reality, they continually remind 

the audience that they are in the theatre. Further, the 

actors were trained to maintain a certain distance to 

their roles. While in his early performances Brecht 

marks a clear distinction between the stage and 

the audience, his later plays were didactic pieces 

deploying the techniques of epic theatre. However, 

in contrast to the ‘epic pieces’, the demarcation line 

between spectator and actor was abolished. 

To critically engage viewers in the viewing 

experience, I work with documentary conversations 

in a fictional space. Here, with everyday life presented 

as a fiction, the conversations come across as prewritten 

scripts. The videos make no attempt to depict 

individuals but focus rather on a particular group 

of people, following their interaction in a set space, 

observing commonalities in the way they talk to each 

other and put themselves across. 

The defamiliarisation in play here yanks the 

quotidian out of its normal context and suggests 

alternative readings of what is staring us in the face, 

or is too close for us to see it afresh. A defamiliarising 

distance is needed if we are to see it differently. The 

encounter with typical everyday conversation in a 

fictional space strikes a nerve with some as reflecting 

their own conversations and spotlighting the roles 

they themselves play every day. One of the reactions 

to Simultane samtaler (‘Simultaneous Conversations’, 

2007) came from a lady who asked, ‘What was the 

idea behind that?’ Not in the sense of ‘I don’t get 

it but rather, ‘What was your point in displaying 

me in that way?’ And I too, when listening to the 

conversations in Middagssamtaler, recognised the way 

I myself talk and issues that are part of my world. 

Reconstructed conversations and the simultaneous 

repetition of voice recordings that are run through inear 

monitors is a device that I have used in a number 

of films. What happens when you relay a conversation 

or a text from one individual to another who has 

been instructed to repeat the utterances heard is that 

individual traits disappear and the ‘repeaters’ act as 

embodied loudspeakers, switching gender, personality, 

splitting sentences between two interlocutors, and so 

on. The repeaters simultaneously repeat conversations 

taking place between other people, or else dialogues 

lifted from documentary media. And they are so 

focused on listening and repeating that they don’t 

have time to articulate the words in their own way. 

In consequence, it becomes impossible to form any 

overall impression of those doing the repeating, in that 

their postures, gestures, glances, tones of voice and 

articulation don’t match up. I have also observed how 

they take on the accents, speech rhythms and speed of 

delivery of the voices they hear in the monitor. 

When working with video as a documentary 

medium, the important point is that camera usage 

should ensure that the documentary rhetoric chimes 

with the intentions behind the particular work. This 

is primarily achieved by adopting a methodological 

principle of structural filmmaking: the use of a fixed 

camera position throughout. The camera makes 

no attempt to simulate anything organic (through 

adjustability, rotation, mobility or the facility to glide 

around), but instead, draws attention to its position 

and the effects generated by the camera lens. 

Stage Design 

The use of simple stage sets foregrounds the fact 

that what the audience sees is a manipulated reality, 

the fictional space flagging up the setting’s role in 

the piece efficiently and effectively. The individual 

stage designs are kept to a bare minimum, acting 

as visual captions for the context and making it 

readily decodable. The pieces themselves have no 

sequential narrative, which, frame by frame, ties the 

story together. Instead settings are created that allow 

the random twists and turns of the conversation to 

determine how things unfold. One way of achieving 

this is by means of a stage design that neither changes 

nor transmutes into something else over the course of 

the video, so that what is pertinent to and driving the 

action is manifestly confined to what takes place in 

the space of the stage set and not in the editing. 

In the video Shall We Dance? (2009), non-actors 

are introduced into minimalist stage sets, each of 

which encapsulates a particular situation. With 

non-actors taking the place of professionals, the 

relationship between reality, and the way that stage 

design prompts us to perceive what is happening as a 

fiction, is highlighted. 

As distinct from space as such, a stage set is 

152 153 

capable of evoking a generic space, and so becoming 

emblematic of a real world space. Examples of such 

scenographic spaces might arguably include the first 

bar scene in Roy Andersson’s Sånger från andra 

våningen (‘Songs from the Second Floor’, 2000), 

the waiting room scene in Jacques Tati’s Playtime 

(1967), and the factory scene in Charles Chaplin’s 

Modern Times (1936). All three seem to me to feature 

a set that refers not to some particular space but to 

a generic space. The waiting room, as I perceive it, 

epitomises a typically boring waiting room; the factory 

conjures up a thousand different factories with their 

repetitive, monotonous production routines. Such 

stage set spaces conduce to a perception of the action 

as taking place in a generic setting, telling the viewer 

that what they are witnessing is not reality. The stage 

set functions as a metonym for something that lies 

outside its own space. 

A Little Theatre 

Et lille teater (‘A Little Theatre’, 2010), which gave 

stage design equal weight with the actors, marked 

my debut at working with professional actors. By 

putting professional actors together with non-actors 

and supplying them with no script, and just a bare 

minimum of instructions (such as that they should 

not divulge that they are actors and are completely at 

liberty to draw on episodes from their own lives), they 

are set loose to switch between the role of actor and 

that of private individual. The aim is to get the actors 

to oscillate between these two roles, thereby forcing 

them to think about the characters they are playing 

and what they are saying. 

The video is screened uncut and extends 

through the real-time duration of a restaurant visit 

(approximately three hours). The set consists of 

three spaces (the kitchen, restaurant and hallway), 

organised and designed so as to fit the measurements 

of the camera’s field of view. This makes it possible 

to ‘cut’ the film using the zoom function to shift the 

framing between the three distinct spaces. 

The architectural space of the set is determined by 

the camera’s field of view. By not moving the camera 

and therefore not struggling to find the best angles, the 

fixed camera, one take, no cuts and no special effects 

forces you to rethink the shape of the set construction, 

and the compositional effects must be produced by 

moving what is in front of the camera instead of the 

camera itself. The set takes the form of a ‘still’ or 

tableau in which the camera can zoom in and out of 

the various spaces, an allusion to the still life painting 

tradition – the staged depiction of reality. This highly 

stylised stage design is thus able to highlight structural 

affinities between theatre and restaurant. 



129. The aspects of things that are most 

important for us are hidden because of their 

simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to 

notice something – because it is always before 

one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry 

do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has 

at some time struck him. And this means: we 

fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most 

striking and most powerful. 3 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notes 

1. Excerpt from the transcription of 

Middagssamtaler, 2008. 

2. Goldsmith, Kenneth, I Love Speech, 2007, 

www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article. 

html?id=179027 

3. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical 

Investigations, translated by GEM Anscombe. 

Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958, p.50. 

154 155 




Photograph of the film set, 40 x 25 cm 

BFA 3 BFA 3 


HDV, 16:9, one take, 180’ 

156 157 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Majd Abdel Hamid 

Political Art (National Identity) 

Art Produced in a Politically 

Charged Context (Deconstructing Identity) 

In this paper I will briefly discuss Palestinian art 

and its development since the beginning of Modern 

Palestinian history, highlighting the role of art 

throughout the past 60 years; and where I stand in 

relation to the status quo of the Palestinian art scene. 

I will then address the issue of the ‘identity’ of the 

Palestinian artist with regards to what it means to 

be a cosmopolitan artist. The purpose of this paper 

is to embark on an ambitious venture to articulate 

coherently my practice and how I process, analyse, 

and produce my artworks. 

As the byproduct of an ongoing conflict we are 

living in a gigantic pressure can; everything melts, 

evaporates, and sublimates, there is a constant 

deconstruction/construction, with little control 

over it, the consequences of which are evident in all 

strata of society. Nothing makes sense in that very 

small piece of land: like the uncertainty principle 

in quantum mechanics, you can only figure out one 

variable within your own community or ‘the other’, all 

the other variables are completely chaotic. When you 

are working within the framework of contemporary 

Palestinian art while being personally involved in the 

conflict on a daily basis, it is inescapable just to seek 

ways in which to maintain one’s physical and mental 

wellbeing. In an abstract sense, this experience adds 

an enriching perspective to life as a whole and to 

one’s own practice, leading to frequent questioning of 

what the role is of art, artists and intellectuals in this 

context – and it is the focal point at which my practice 

started emerging and began to permeate my work and 

go deeper. 

I was born in Damascus, Syria in 1988, to a 

refugee mother and an exiled father. We were part 

of the collective Diaspora, raised anxiously looking 

forward for the ‘returning moment’, romanticizing 

about the beautiful picturesque homeland. When I 

was two we moved to Jordan, then after the Oslo 

Peace Agreement in 1994 we came back to the West 

Bank, specifically to the city of Ramallah, in the centre 

of the West Bank. In the period between the Oslo 

Agreement and the Uprising in September 2000, I 

was privileged in having first-hand experience of the 

process of the construction of the State, or as it turned 

out to be, a simulation of constructing the state; then 

the Uprising started, and that was the turning point: 

infinite possibilities, a very condensed experience in 

a short period of time, and the borderline between 

death and life was constantly revisited. 

The newly born Palestinian Modernist Art 

movement in the 1960s and 1970s functioned 

primarily by endorsing the revolution and speaking on 

its behalf, merging the characters of the artist and the 

fighter. This tendency is clear in filmmaking, as Jean 

Chamoun stated: 

Palestinian cinema at that time responded to 

and fulfilled a temporary political need without 

stressing the cultural and historical dimensions 

that related to the existence of a people. 

The accumulation of events drowned the 

Palestinian cinema in the whirlpool of 

current events. 1 

It was the time of prevalent revolutionary slogans; 

one famous slogan adopted by Fateh 2 was ‘thought 

stems from the barrel of the revolutionary rifle’, the 

reflection of which can be seen in cinema, literature, 

poetry and the visual arts (paintings mostly) such as 

Ismail Shammout’s painting Where to…?, 3 Mahmoud 

Darwish’s poem Identity Card, 4 Mustafa Abu Ali’s 

film They Don’t Exist 5 and Ghassan Kanafani’s novel 

The Land of Sad Oranges. 6 It was an era characterised 

by intellectuals taking part in the physical sense 

of the struggle; art’s function was to employ visual 

language to speak on behalf of the ‘revolution’. This 

went on until 1982 when the Palestinian Liberation 

Organisation was forced out of Lebanon and its 

members split between Syria, Tunisia and Cyprus; 

there was no direct combat taking place. 

From the final transformation after the Oslo Peace 

agreements in 1994, fighters became policemen 

and revolutionary intellectuals were employed in 

Ministries, working for the newly formed government. 

This coalition of cultural production and politics 

that merged under unique conditions became a 

liability: the artist/writer/poet had a very specific 

role in a society accustomed to the image of the 

oppressed, with very specific visual representations. 

The hatta, 7 Handala, 8 olive trees, the Dome of the 

Rock, traditional dress, and the Palestinian flag: what 

happens if you take these symbols away – what is 

left of Palestinian identity? A friend of mine asked 

this not too long ago, as we were talking about the 

current Palestinian ‘identity crisis’; and interestingly 

enough we concluded that if you take away the 

visual representations of Palestinian identity then the 

problem of defining ‘ourselves’ manifests itself clearly. 

The art movement that emerged after 1948 

(as the date of what is known as the nakba, or 

‘catastrophe’) remembered this date as the starting 

point for constructing a Palestinian identity, an 

identity of a mostly agricultural community that 

suddenly lost the land, creating a collective identity 

crisis. As Ben Zvi puts it: ‘the Palestinian art field is 

based chiefly on artists operating within the frame 

of a Palestinian identity.’ 9 Because of the correlation 

occupation–resistance–existence the image of the 

Palestinian people as the ‘oppressed’ has been the 

predominant image. Constantly produced and 

reproduced by Palestinian artists this is apparent in 

the works of contemporary Palestinian artists. I find 

this very problematic, as it entails a self-sustaining 

process of repressing critique of one’s own society in 

order to glorify oppression. Giving in to the societal 

code:‘it’s better to do the laundry at home’, this 

becomes an issue of ‘self-justification’ which proved 

to create a self-destructive collective mentality, giving 

158 159 

fundamentalism more space as the sole political and 

social framework that criticises the existing model and 

provides alternatives. Any societal progression needs a 

conceptual framework that guides or analyses it; when 

the intellectual loses the freedom to think critically 

and is bounded within national rhetoric change 

becomes a reactionary emotional behaviour, ranging 

from depression and suicidal behaviour, to religious 

extremism. 

What is the role of art and artists in the 

Palestinian/Arab context in particular, and on a larger 

scale? This is a question that I have been pondering 

since starting my art education. It was asked by 

one of the most influential Palestinian intellectuals 

in the 20th century, Edward Said, in his book 

Representations of the Intellectual, and I quote: 

Against the abuse of identity-defense 

mechanisms which has become so endemic 

to nationalist thought from its origins in 

education to its expression in public discourse, 

the intellectual offers instead a dispassionate 

account of how identity, tradition, and the 

nation are constructed things, most often in 

the insidious form of binary oppositions that 

are inevitably expressed as hostile attitudes to 

the Other. 10 

Taking a Cartesian approach while asking this 

question along with a vast interest in conceptualising 

current social/political phenomena in Palestine, I 

decided to adopt the view of Edward Said. To me 

therefore the artist’s role is at the margins of the 

society while preserving a relationship within one’s 

own locality. Taking this as a point of departure 

and expanding it to tackle and question the set of 

predestined beliefs produced by society, such as 

nationality, sacrifice, religion etc, I took into account 

the concept of soldiering. The transformation of 

human beings into soldiers: this metamorphosis 

that is reflected evidently in the behaviour of both 

the individual and the collective in times of violent 

escalation, leading to the end result of duality in 

thinking, the inner dialogue that was highlighted in 

Hannah Arendt’s ‘what makes us think’. I tried to 

question this thinking process, in an untitled videotaped 

performance in 2008, where I’m playing a chess 

game: embedding 64 identical pawns on a chessboard 

from two opposite sides of the board while going 

around the table in constant rotation, on the screen 

below, looped text of a soldier’s prayer from Kubrick’s 

Full Metal Jacket. 11 



Appendix 1: Palestinian Artist 

International Artist 

In my first two years as an art student in the 

International Art Academy Palestine, the relationship 

between the international and the local was highly 

emphasised; to become internationalised in a local 

community, proved to be paradoxical. How to achieve 

a delicate balance in praxis between what it entails 

to be an international artist, the cosmopolitan, and a 

local artist in a place where international and local are 

dichotomised. 

The local art student is under constant exposure 

to international artists/curators/critics engaging in 

dialogues where they automatically represent one side 

of the story; one becomes the ‘native informant’ and 

a discourse autonomous from political polarisation 

is impossible. A victimised artistic attitude starts 

emerging, nurtured by international attention, which 

leads to the reproduction of the Palestinians as the 

oppressed, using the same clichés and stereotypes 

that happen to be demanded by some venues and 

collectors in the western world. It simply sells! 

Creating a very tempting situation where as a young 

emerging artist you get numerous opportunities to 

exhibit worldwide, more than you can possibly get as 

a young emerging artist in other places in the world. 

The dilemma lies in the fact that you are showing your 

work primarily because you are Palestinian. 

The question is: do you want to be evaluated as a 

Palestinian artist and get credit because you belong 

to the oppressed? Or do you want to get an impartial 

evaluation of your practice as an emerging artist? 

How can you bypass this burden on both parties, 

escape the stereotype? And all these questions make 

you wonder if you want to get into the international 

game of political correctness, of getting awards and 

international recognition because you are Palestinian. 

This in principle is contradictory to the paradigm 

of my practice, leading me question: what are the 

chances of me having any of these shows had I not 

been born to Palestinian parents? 

In the end, I think that it’s a choice that an artist 

should make, and I truly believe that being part of 

this game of representing the oppressed can be as 

colonising as the actual occupation. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notes 

1. Lebanese film director Jean Chamoun, http:// 

www.thisweekinpalestine.com 

2. A major Palestinian political party and the 

largest faction of the Palestine Liberation 

Organisation. 

3. Oil on canvas (1953), a painting depicting the 

Lydda Death March in July 1948. This painting 

has attained iconic status in Palestinian 

culture. It is perhaps the best-known version 

of his several representations of the refugee 

experience of the Palestinians. 

4. Written in 1964 about an encounter with an 

Israeli police officer. 

5. Film (1974) about the bombing of a Palestinian 

Refugee Camp in Lebanon. 

6. Written in 1962 by a Palestinian writer and a 

leading member of the Popular Front for the 

Liberation of Palestine. 

7. Palestinian scarf. 

8. The most famous of the Palestinian cartoonist 

Naji al-Ali’s characters is a ten-year old boy, 

and appeared for the first time in Al-Siyasa in 

Kuwait in 1969. The figure turned his back to 

the viewer from the year 1973, and clasped his 

hands behind his back. The artist explained 

that the ten-year old represented his age when 

forced to leave Palestine and would not grow 

up until he could return to his homeland; his 

turned back and clasped hands symbolised 

the character’s rejection of ‘outside solutions’. 

Handala wears ragged clothes and is barefoot, 

symbolizing his allegiance to the poor. 

9. Ben Zvi, Tal, ed., Hagar – Contemporary 

Palestinian Art. Jaffa: Hagar Association, 2006. 

10. Said, Edward, The Public Role of Writers and 

Intellectuals; 1993 Reith Lectures. New York: 

Vintage Books, 1996, p.32. 

11. ‘This is my rifle. There are many like it but this 

one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my 

life. I must master it as I must master my life. 

Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle 

I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must 

shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying 

to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots 

me. My rifle and myself are defenders of my 

country, we are the masters of our enemy, we 

are the saviours of my life. So be it, until there 

is no enemy, but peace.’ 

160 161 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

162 163 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Zardasht Faraj 

The Swedish Language and Painting 

A Potential Space 

I wish to examine the place, using the word 

in an abstract sense, where we most of the 

time are when we are experiencing life. By the 

language we use we show our natural interest 

in this matter. I may be in a muddle, and than I 

either crawl out of the muddle or else try to put 

things in order so that I may, at least for a time, 

know where I am. Or I may feel I am at sea, 

and I take bearings so that I may come to port 

(any port in a storm), and then when I am on 

dry land I look for a house built on rock rather 

than sand; and in my own home, which […] is 

my castle, I am in seventh heaven. 1 

Donald W Winnicott has a theory about the space 

between the infant and the mother where the infant 

deals with the trauma of separation from the mother 

through a creative process of hallucinations and 

fantasising which in turn leads to expression 

and action. 

I interpret this potential space as a place in our 

psyche where we use our imagination to prepare for 

a future reality. 

My thoughts and my work are about finding 

meaning in my existence and understanding it. It is 

also an attempt at placing myself within a context, 

at creating an identity, which matches who I am and 

where I am at right now. I do this by creating spaces 

for creative play and cultural experience. By drawing 

or painting different scenes where something is 

happening between the subject and the object I can 

visually investigate relationships, for example between 

the mother and the child, the child and the father, the 

individual and society, people and the state, the ego 

and the superego. 

Until you can clear up your true identity you 

will be tied to a repetition of this life. 2 

By playing and imagining, or thinking up ideas and 

directing scenes, or by performing in social contexts, 

photographing, painting or building sculptures I create 

the sense of a meaningful game and satisfy my desire 

to structure thoughts, feelings and experiences into 

words and images. Such possible spaces can be found 

between abstract horizontal and vertical lines, as in 

the case of a series of paintings I worked on this year 

based on my own teenage love letters. These potential 

spaces can even be present in geometric forms or 

animated films. 

My formats are square, but the grids never are 

absolutely square; they are rectangles, a little bit 

off the square, making a sort of contradiction, 

a dissonance, though I didn’t set out to do it 

that way. 3 

The Swedish Language and My Painting 

The Swedish language is an important tool for me 

when I want to formulate my thoughts and ideas in an 

attempt to create a coherent narrative in my painting. 

During my adolescence, my curiosity about what 

the other teenagers around me were talking about 

when Swedish was nothing but abstract sound waves 

in a foreign environment, led me into this society in 

a weird way. The adoption of an identity has been 

my method in learning Swedish in a playful manner. 

When I occupied an identity in order to use the 

language I also managed to accumulate thoughts 

and values that I then worked towards or against. In 

addition to the language I also learnt how different 

people think and feel, and their value systems. 

Crystal Clear 

Painting is a language. The painter gives himself 

a role and shapes the language to suit it. 4 

To me language is the secret behind any creative 

process. Even though as cavemen we were already 

communicating with images, sounds or performances, 

I think it has always been the lack of language that is 

the driving force for our creative process. 

I draw and paint with language, and here I mean 

that it is specifically the Swedish language that I speak 

and think with, which gives colour to the picture. To 

me painting is a play on words. The Swedish language 

is eternal and universal. I started learning Swedish by 

looking at painted images with words on them. It was 

like being a child again. I recognise the feeling when 

I look at Torsten Andersson’s paintings. The words in 

his paintings get a personality, an identity and a shape 

in relation to the motif in the painting. 

I am trying to summarise my feelings for the 

Swedish language and to use painting as a tool 

to integrate Swedish words in me, and eventually 

separate the image from the word and put words to 

images. I want to find out what the Swedish language 

has suppressed in me, and spread it out on a canvas or 

board. My paintings are obsessed with knowing how 

learning the Swedish language has influenced my way 

of seeing and thinking, and how I experience Sweden 

and the Swedish landscape. 

The Resistance against Being 

Integrated into the Collective 

! 

In my first five years in Sweden I had some wild idea 

about becoming part of my surroundings, fitting in 

and being invisible. I was fascinated by all those who 

looked ‘real’, people who seemed to be at home in 

the language and in the society. During that time I 

wanted to know all there was to know about youth 

164 165 

subcultures: their banners, what they wore, what they 

thought and felt. I wanted to be in the game but I 

lacked the language and couldn’t see the difference 

between the mannequins in the shop windows and the 

objectified people passing them. I had a blurred and 

generalised image of people. I was out of focus. 

The Landscape 

! 

By studying and practicing art I discover details about 

life, people and not least myself. It is like re-living the 

past, not only out of nostalgia but in order to link the 

past with the present. 

To me Sweden has been and probably in some way 

still is like something out of the film The Wonderful 

Adventures of Nils. The film is based on a book by 

Selma Lagerlöf, and is the story of Nils Holgersson, 

a boy who shrinks and who as a Tom Thumb rides 

on the back of a goose through all of Sweden. The 

book was meant to teach children about Swedish 

geography. I saw the series in Baghdad when I was 

about seven and it had a profound impact on me. 

My primary point of entry to Sweden and the 

Swedish landscape was via an animated TV series. I 

sometimes use this sense of the Swedish landscape as 

an animation, as a Disneyfied image, in my painting. 

I work with the contrast between the real landscape 

around me in Scania, and my animated image of 

it. Perhaps it is because of an unfinished game that 

I continue to draw and paint. Maybe the lack of 

personal integrity and security in my childhood has 

led to this creative process. Or maybe it is due to my 

total obsession with the relationship between objects 

and people. 

Playing with Dolls 

I equate the connection between the Swedish 

language and painting with the situation where a child 

is put in a tub full of cold water with some plastic toys 

thrown in to stimulate play and hence prepare the 

child for some form of reality. Words are the 

rubber ducks, painting is the game, and the water is 

this country. 

Working with animation and stop motion film is 

a direct way of dealing with my personal trauma. In 

the so-called potential spaces that I create I allow my 

inner child to express itself. The dolls become like 

external egos and help me gain some distance from 

the feelings and thoughts that I am dealing with. 

Artworks 

In the film En dans med Döden (‘A Dance with 

Death’), 2010, the character ‘Death’ is waiting to 



ask the blond doll to dance. The background is a 

photograph that my brother took of the Kurdish 

mountains in the town of Sulaymaniyah, where I 

come from. The film is about my longing to relive the 

feeling of being at home, and it is an attempt to access 

a long-lost feeling in a forgotten game. 

In another piece I have filmed myself repeatedly 

being hit on the back of the neck by a passer-by. There 

is no motive for this action, which is repeated several 

times and at various speeds. The work is about a 

sort of waking from a dream world, in which I have 

deliberately immersed myself. 

History 

I grew up in a Kurdish family in the Iraqi capital 

Baghdad. We lived in a five-storey building along with 

a mix of people of different religions and nationalities 

in the Middle East. I spent most of my childhood in 

this building and it had a beautiful balustrade, which 

made a deep impression on me. The pattern is etched 

on my mind and it has been in my thoughts ever since 

the Gulf War broke out and we fled to Sweden. The 

pattern is part of my work as a painter. 

View from a Balcony 

A constant searching. A void. A hole. An image is 

missing, a state, a way of being and a soul, a God. 

There is a lack of real feeling and functions. The 

machine is broken, the suit doesn’t fit, the wound has 

not healed. The shell has cracked, the nest is empty, 

the birds have left, the tree is uprooted and the roots 

are rotten. 

I miss a pattern of rusty metal, the scent of wings 

and golden claws. I miss an image. The image is of the 

view around and of the balcony. I mislaid it and forgot 

to pack my bicycle. 

The balcony is my tower, my strategic position, my 

horizon, my perspective on the world, my shell. Maybe 

I want to finish playing on my balcony, the place that 

was mine. I can live with no longer having a country – 

but not without my balcony. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notes 

1. Winnicott, Donald W, Playing and Reality. 

London: Tavistock Publications, 1971, p.141. 

2. Martin, Agnes, Writings. Winterthur: 

Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 1993, p.114. 

3. Ibid., p.29. 

Bibliography 

Andersson, Torsten, Torsten Andersson. Riga: Torsten 

Anderssons stiftelse, 2008. 

Martin, Agnes, Writings. Winterthur: Kunstmuseum 

Winterthur, 1993. 

Winnicott, Donald W, Playing and Reality. London: 

Tavistock Publications, 1971. 

166 167 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

168 169 



My essay is an indirect attempt to analyse the bornagain 

Christian personality and my own experiences 

of the charismatic Christian movement. One of the 

topics I will discuss is the question of truth and my 

attempts at overcoming the barrier that it creates 

between believers and non-believers. I will also 

touch on the force of attraction that the truth has in 

answering one of our strongest drives – to understand 

the reality we live in and to be able to fit it into a 

system. These thoughts lead me to a discussion of an 

alteration, a change in the way we perceive reality. 

This is where I refer to my own experiences of having 

left a Christian identity behind me – a process which 

brought about change in my life and became a source 

of inspiration for my work. 

Revised Memories 

An experience is processed and interpreted, judged 

to be of value or ignored and forgotten. During our 

lives our frames of reference change and develop as 

we have new insights and experiences. That means 

that experiences we have had earlier in life can 

change meaning and can be seen in a new light, be 

reinterpreted. Memories of childhood events can 

be rediscovered and seen through the eyes of the 

adult, and a more mature perspective can change the 

character and contents of a memory completely. It 

becomes possible to distinguish other events which 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Malin Franzén 

Further In Further Away 

were on the periphery of the child’s experience but 

which now function as clues to a greater context. 

Outside the Self 

The charismatic experience speaks to your inner 

emotional life and bypasses your intellect. Hence the 

feeling of being taken for a ride – you want to let go 

and give yourself over to it. You may cry but it is out 

of happiness, out of the feeling of finally being able to 

relax because there is someone who has everything 

under control. It is a moment of respite from all that 

comes with being human, from responsibilities and 

duties. A feeling of wholeness, safety and love infuses 

you. 

This feeling is easily brought on in the charismatic 

context characterised by suggestion. It’s a human 

driving force born out of our longing for ‘something 

more’, something better, of a need to be part of 

something that is much bigger than the self. The 

German theologian Rudolf Otto called it the 

numinous and described it as a ‘non-rational, nonsensory 

experience or feeling whose primary and 

immediate object is outside the self’. 1 

Suggestion is not objective, it is emotional, 

irrational. Now when I enter charismatic Christian 

contexts while working on my projects I am struck by 

how susceptible I still am to it. However, nowadays it 

is an unpleasant experience with a fake aftertaste. It 

is a sensation of euphoric happiness but at the same 

time it gives me a bellyache as my intellect warns 

me that I am being seduced against my will. For a 

moment I travel back to the person I was, before the 

alteration, surrounded by the old values and frames 

of reference that are in total opposition to who I am 

today. 

My view of the world is altered for a moment 

and when it’s all over and back to normal I have a 

lingering feeling of something being out of joint. Who 

am I? What is really real? Are we capable of believing 

any truth whatsoever as long there is an environment 

confirming it? 

Nothing Is Constant 

What does going from one truth to another do to 

a human being? How many times in a life can you 

fundamentally change your view on life, the way 

you perceive the world and your values and view of 

humanity? Is the old ‘self’ intact and stored away 

in the subconscious along with its complete set of 

life principles? There are many accounts written by 

people who have converted and found a truth. But the 

story of the opposite change, where one leaves behind 

a truth, I find to be an unwritten chapter. 

I lived the first twenty years of my life in a deeply 

religious environment. My family were members of 

the Baptist congregation in Stockholm and we were 

very involved in its activities on different levels. This 

shaped my perception of reality and what it means 

to be human while providing me with a very safe 

upbringing in a loving community. When, for various 

reasons, I left my religious faith behind me in my 

twenties it also meant leaving this community and 

for a while I had little contact with my family. But 

the worst was the absence of a loving God. It felt as 

if the ground I was standing on and from where I 

had perceived the world had been pulled out from 

under me and I fumbled with my feet trying to find 

something firm to stand on. 

My entire world-view went to pieces and I emerged 

alone in a strange reality that both frightened and 

surprised me. I remember completing a painting 

during this time that I called Eden is Burning – an 

attempt at capturing my ambivalent feelings. I no 

longer believed in the existence of God but at the 

same time I was scared of being punished for this 

and ending up in hell. The notion of God changed 

from loving to judging. It took a while for me to stop 

being afraid of a relapse, of re-converting. Knowing 

the powers of suggestion at play in the charismatic 

Christian movement I knew just how difficult it could 

be to resist. I quite simply did not trust my own mind 

but thought that I could be coaxed back into that 

world against my will. 

It was only after several years when I started 

170 171 

feeling at a safe enough distance and stable enough 

within myself that I started being curious about the 

strong powers that had been at play, and I started 

looking into the religious context again, trying to 

understand and explore the psychological dimension. 

I bear my experience of having lived with an entirely 

different perspective on life with me, and to me it is 

a point of contact with and entry into the religious 

psyche. In a sense I have both perspectives and know 

both lines of argument. Using this personal experience 

I try to understand how religious experiences are 

created and what effect they have, how they are 

interpreted and employed. 

We Were Youth With a Mission 

Depriving our senses of outside stimuli and instead 

focusing on inner impressions can give rise to 

mental pictures. The most familiar example for this 

is daydreams, but within religious practice there 

are many different techniques to produce such 

impressions such as meditation, isolation, prayer etc. 

One rarely places much importance on daydreams, 

but in contexts in which the religious frame of 

reference is active these experiences can become of 

central importance. 

In August 1995 some 30 children were gathered 

on the island of Gotland to take part in a summer 

camp held by the organisation King’s Kids Sweden. 

On KK’s website you can read: ‘It is our goal to 

lead young people and children towards their own 

experience of Jesus and together make Him known to 

all.’ 2 I was one of the children who experienced this 

environment where the boundaries of reality were 

moved, any experiences and impressions we had were 

deemed to be relevant as messages from God. Even if 

we didn’t immediately understand their meaning, the 

messages would all become clear to us in the end. I 

have kept my flowery notebook from that time and in 

it there are notes from the classes, the daily schedules, 

drawings of figures, crosses emitting rays of light, as 

well as lists of what God said to us in visions while we 

were praying. 

The work Notebook (2010) consists of two pieces. 

The first one, Notebook Inside, is 83 pages from the 

book mounted on the wall in chronological order like 

a film strip. The viewer can follow the outer and inner 

journey for one participant during the camp and gets 

clues along the way to an extraordinary way of life 

and view of the world. It is also an interesting view 

into the missionary psyche and rhetoric, since the 

education is simplified and clarified to suit children. 

The second piece Notebook Cover is an animation 

of the book’s flowery outside. At first this animation 

seems to be a still picture but after a while one gets a 

sense of movement. Actually there are 170 different 

layers moving at the same time but it is so organic 



that it is hard to distinguish. The animation creates an 

uncertainty around what we perceive with our senses 

and what passes us by. No one can be sure of having 

the right impression, are you imagining it or did the 

flower just move? 

To Meet 

If you take God out of religion – where does that 

leave us humans? In discussions with religious people 

I often find that their notion of truth stops all further 

conversation, suddenly it’s all about being for or 

against and they set the rules. I feel this barrier even 

with people who I am very close to. When one least 

expects it, it can show itself and I realise that the 

distance between me and my friends and relatives 

must be bigger than I thought, that essentially we 

have a completely different worldview. I find this very 

hard to accept and it drives me to find ways of getting 

around the question of truth and finding a way back 

to solidarity, to that which we have in common. 

Some are provoked by the fact that I make work 

about deeply religious people without a distinctly 

critical and challenging tone. In my experience a 

critical stance evokes defensiveness, opposition 

and embellished arguments – something we are 

used to hearing and which for that reason is rather 

uninteresting. The opposite, a supportive stance, 

awakens the missionary – also a simplistic and empty 

track which is a dead end where one will never find 

common ground, since there are only two choices, 

black or white, right or wrong, paradise or hell. This 

portrayal of the religious type also easily becomes a 

caricature since the distance to the people behind the 

phrases becomes too big. 

I want to move in a space between the two and 

take careful steps towards a meeting with respect 

where I can get uncensored insight into the believers’ 

way of thinking. In the absence of religious rhetoric a 

free zone is created for personal, honest thoughts that 

can explain why people believe. Maybe that which 

we share, which holds us together, can be found there 

despite totalitarian notions about truth. One of the 

lowest common denominators shared by believers and 

non-believers is the origin of belief, the reason why 

we become religious, i.e. the need that religion fills. 

Examples of such needs can be the need to find the 

meaning of our existence, the need for love, a context, 

an agenda (a role or a calling), a feeling of being 

chosen, of safety, protection. There’s the possibility of 

a meeting in which understanding can be attained. 

Semi-Documentary 

When I started working with video as an artistic 

media I was very inspired by the work of Finnish 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

artists Petra Lindholm and Salla Tykkä. I wanted to 

construct worlds and universes just like them, seduce 

as their work seduced me. My early films were quite 

suggestive and I often acted in them myself. From 

these sometimes theatrical pieces a longing for a less 

artificial expression, for the unrehearsed, was born. 

In my search for this I subjected myself to different 

situations that provoked natural responses in front of 

the camera. For example Tjärnen (‘The Lake’, 2004), 

where in the middle of October I put the camera 

down by the side of a small lake and wade into the 

cold water fully clothed until my head disappears 

completely under the surface. Another example is Råh 

(2005), set in a winter landscape, where I’m dressed in 

a thin ball gown playing a mouth organ, on a frozen 

lake. 

During the first years at the art academy I became 

interested in the spatial aspects of the installation of 

my films, building rooms and sculptures to surround 

the monitors and screens. I also got interested 

in mythological themes that in turn led me to 

broaching my own religious experience. At that time 

I interrupted my studies at the academy in order to 

study documentary filmmaking at the Biskops-Arnö 

college outside Stockholm. 

In films such as Hissen i benet (‘The Elevator 

in the Leg’, 2007), Gertrud och Rune (‘Gertrud and 

Rune’, 2008) and Missionärerna (‘The Missionaries’, 

2009) I point the camera at people in my surroundings 

who are actively religious, in an attempt to explore 

our new positions, feel where the boundaries lie and 

in which aspects we think differently. Aside from 

some intimate interviews I mostly filmed like a fly on 

the wall, observing events as they unfolded without 

intervening, looking in the images for some sort of 

presence, contact – for natural moments that are 

unmediated by the people themselves. 

In the current process I mix my experiences into 

some sort of ‘semi-documentary’ comprising both 

documentary and performative elements. For the 

project Further in Further out (2010) I gave a group 

of people certain constraints to work with and then 

followed them with the camera to see what would 

happen during the encounter. The choreography was 

inspired by movements from born-again Christian 

ecstasy where participants falls to the ground during 

the laying on of hands, as well as the exercises used 

for getting people to trust each other where one takes 

turns falling and catching the other. The room in the 

film is totally dark with a single source of light, no 

sound. Slowly the participants move in and out of the 

circle of light, emerge and disappear, all you can see 

is faces, arms and hands. The movement is repeated 

on and on and creates a tension and presence in the 

room that is close to trance. 

The installation of the work consists of a pitchblack 

room, subdued with carpets and soft walls, 

and a screen. Entering the darkened room through 

a narrow corridor the viewer looses orientation and 

feeling for distance. The concentration and presence 

during the shooting of the film is recreated with the 

images looped to form a constantly unfolding event. 

Through the projection it becomes possible for the 

viewer to take part in the performance which develops 

into a sort of secular ritual. 

Travelling Between Worlds 

Projections with sound in a darkened room, the 

classical film experience, have illusion and suggestion 

as trusty companions. Via the moving image and 

in the safety of the darkness we can travel between 

worlds, identities and different realities. The border 

between the self and the moving images becomes 

blurred and it is as if the projection happens within 

us, in direct dialogue with our personal experiences 

and thoughts. 

How the space is constructed, proportions, 

differences in height, material etc are decisive to the 

way the film is experienced. Sight is the sense that we 

have the greatest control over. We are trained in the 

analysis of images and often have a strong sense of 

what we like to see and what not. But sound, smells 

and perception of touch are harder to control and 

often have us reacting instinctively. By detaching 

the viewers’ senses from the normal, the everyday, a 

free zone is created in which we become receptive to 

something new as well as being personally involved 

in what is happening in the room. I work with video 

as my medium of expression because of its ability to 

lead the viewer into new states, to absorb and seduce 

– maybe not so far from the numinous when all is said 

and done. 

172 173 

Notes 

1. Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy – An Inquiry 

into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of 

the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 

London: Oxford University Press, 1923, p.17. 

2. www.kingskids.se/omoss.asp, accessed October 

4, 2010. 

Bibliography 

Geels, Antoon and Wikström, Owe, Den religiösa 

människan (‘Religious Man’). Stockholm: Natur och 

Kultur, 1999. 

Leighton, Tanya, ed., Art & the Moving Image, Tate 

Publishing, Afterall, 2008. 

Cullberg, Johan, Johannisson, Karin and Wikström, 

Owe, eds., Mänskliga gränsområden – om extas, 

psykos och galenskap (‘Human Boundary Zones – On 

EXtasy. Psychosis and Madness’). Stockholm: Natur 

och Kultur, 1996. 

Habbe, Peter, Att se och tänka med ritual (‘Seeing 

and Thinking with Ritual’). Lund: Nordic Academic 

Press, 2005. 

Jarrick, Arne, Den himmelske älskaren: herrnhutisk 

väckelse, vantro och sekularisering i 1700-talets 

Sverige (‘The Divine Lover: Herrnhutian Revelation, 

Heresy and Secularisation in 18th Century Sweden’). 

Stockholm: Ordfront, 1987. 

Bergström, Göran, En illusion och dess utveckling 

(‘An Illusion and Its Development’). Älvsjö: Verbum 

förlag, 2004. 

Works Mentioned in the Text 

Further in Further out (2010) HD-projection, 

installation, 09:27min, loop. 

Notebook Inside (2010) 83p. from a notebook in 

chronological order. 

Notebook Cover (2010) Animation, 02:10min, loop. 

The Missionaries (2009) Documentary, DV, 33min. 

Gertrud and Rune (2008) Documentary, DV, 18min. 

The Elevator in the Leg (2007) Documentary, DV, 

12min. 

Råh (2005) DV, 02:30min, loop. 

The Lake (2004) DV, 8min, loop. 

Eden Is Burning (2003) Painting 2.5 x 0.9 m, acrylic. 



Further In Further Out 

HDV installation, 9’27’’, loop 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notebook Inside 

83 notebook pages mounted on wall in chronological order, 10 x 900 cm 

1995/2010 

174 175 



Background 

Every festive season has its traditions that function 

like cognitive development, providing the child with 

possibilities. Even though most parents do not utilise 

this function one still goes through with this exercise. 

A child who has not grown up believing in Father 

Christmas will perhaps never develop an imagination. 

For him/her nothing may exist except that which 

is literal and tangible. A child that is suddenly 

disillusioned by parents or siblings, teased for his/her 

belief and imagination, may choose to never believe in 

anything again and perhaps even permanently lose a 

sense of trust and wonder. 

But a child who is allowed to gradually let go 

of the illusion of Father Christmas, the tooth fairy 

and other invented characters can obtain the most 

important life tool. This child will recognise the 

power of his own reality, become his own authority 

and be the master of his own world and visions. 

I come from a non-academic background 

and grew up with my single, working-class mother. 

Hence it is quite normal that art didn’t play a great 

part in my life while I was growing up. But although 

there may have been a lack of cultural stimulation 

I was always encouraged to embrace my imagination, 

to use it in a continual creative process. It is this 

overactive imagination and my constantly taking 

refuge in my own world that became my points of 

entry into the art world – a need to work with my 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Tim Hansen 

Distorted Memories 

imagination instead of suppressing it. 

It was an obsession with photographs, a 

fascination with the power of the documentary image, 

that led me onto the art path. I had experimented with 

photography and wanted to link back to the fantasy 

worlds I had created as a child. My documentary 

images started changing and their reality became 

increasingly distorted. 

When I started studying at the art academy I felt 

a strong need to take my photography further. I felt 

fenced in by the lens-based medium and needed to 

find new ways of breaking free. In sculpture I found 

a new opening towards developing my still images, 

a way of giving the two-dimensional image a new 

expression, which invites the viewer in, in a different 

way. However, I do not see this digression from lensbased 

media as permanent but rather as part of a cycle 

which I hope will lead me back to photography some 

day with new methods and ways of seeing 

the medium. 

Memory 

With the help of the memorising capacity of our 

brains we have the ability to store experiences, which 

make it possible to recognise and learn. Memories 

become a part of us and give us a place in time. With 

the help of our recollections we can think through 

problems that we come across. But memories can also 

turn against us, become our enemies in the search for 

the truth. 

Early 1980s: dressed in a Minnie Mouse t-shirt, 

socks and Incredible Hulk pants one ambles into the 

kitchen to ask for a glass of water. But water is not 

enough, one wants to also have milk – in the same 

glass. This is at first refused but after enough nagging 

one gets one’s way. It’s quite strange how different 

liquids do not want to interact with each other. Each 

on its own is no problem but in the same glass it’s 

not quite the same thing. The half opaque fluid flows 

down the throat easily and ends up in the lilac sac. 

Pepsin starts attacking the liquid to break down its 

proteins but something goes wrong and an attempt at 

quenching one’s thirst is turned into a horror scene 

with vomiting and tears. 

Are memories real, or just imaginary children born 

from a real event but grown into a fantasy over time? 

If you repeat a lie often enough you start believing 

it. Can the brain hide away and repress memories 

only then to rebuild them into fantasies where real 

scenarios and surreal daydreams are interwoven? 

Photography and memory are strongly linked 

for me. Both collect memories in the form of images 

and both can lie and distort the truth. But however 

much these images are manipulated, staged and 

reconstructed after the event they always maintain a 

connection with some sort of reality. One can choose 

either to look for the seed of truth or to be content 

with that which has sprung from the seed. 

I am looking for a balance between total 

surrealism and reality, a kind of hyperrealism with 

surreal elements. This an ‘ism’ that I have pursued 

mainly through my lens-based work precisely because 

the medium lends itself to it – what is captured by the 

lens is just as real and at the same time unreal as the 

impressions that the brain captures. I have continued 

to apply my thoughts and ideas about memory to my 

non-photographic work. 

Recurrences 

Unease and some sort of threatening atmosphere 

constantly recur in my work. One way of interpreting 

these ‘recurrences’ is to see them as my attempts 

to return to a situation that causes anxiety in order 

to draw out the memory or the demon that haunts 

me. In The Return of the Real art theoretician Hal 

Foster presents an analysis of Andy Warhol’s Death 

in America, a series of works where images from the 

mass media, for example of accidents, are repeated 

over and over again in the well-known Warhol style. 

Inspired by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, 

Foster tries to understand the repetition as a trauma as 

well as a way of treating the traumatic experience. By 

repeating the image the reality behind it can become 

accessible once again. 1 

176 177 

The images used by Warhol are taken from 

contemporary life. My ‘recurrences’ are taken from 

another time, often from childhood memories. 

Although I do not use the repetition of images in my 

work one could apply Foster’s theory to the repeated 

‘return’ to a certain atmosphere in my work, one of 

threat and foreboding. My work is not about getting 

at the reality that I spoke of before, the one that is 

present in most of my lens-based and even in my 

sculptural work. Instead it is an attempt to conjure 

up a certain feeling of disquiet and a sense of the 

uncanny. 

Sigmund Freud’s thoughts on the term ‘uncanny” 

describe this atmosphere and its causes very aptly. 2 

The German term is unheimlich, making the uncanny 

the opposite to heimlich which can mean both 

‘homely’ and ‘secret’. Freud was very interested in this 

ambiguity, writing that the uncanny can be described 

as the opposite of the homely but of course not all that 

is foreign is uncanny. The ambiguity in the language 

captures the two sides of the uncanny. The safety of 

the home is naturally not uncanny but neither is the 

uncanny an unknown quantity: the uncanny is not 

secret. Freud describes the uncanny as that part of 

the frightening experience that once was well known 

and familiar. It is precisely this combination that 

makes it uncanny. An alternative description is that 

the uncanny is a secret that was meant to be kept, but 

which now has been made public and is plain to see. 

The uncanny is the return of that which one already 

knows. It is often precisely this homeliness that I seek, 

only to put a twist on it, to distort reality and expose 

the uncanny. Here the distorted memories often 

become enmeshed with the homely, quotidian reality, 

safety encountering something twisted 

and threatening. 

This homeliness is a distinct part of Robert Gober’s 

work, in which everyday objects are turned into 

something twisted, secret and unpleasant. A wash 

basin, something we see every day, lacks a drain 

and a tap, making the object seem foreign, suddenly 

menacing. I am very inspired by Gober’s work but, 

where his work draws on his political engagement and 

activism within the gay movement in the USA, I base 

my work more on myself and my own experiences 

than on an outside reality. However, his way of 

playing with mundane objects and situations that are 

twisted into something which while recognisable and 

homely has an edge of the uncanny, inspires me and 

sums up that feeling that I am inspired by. 

Self Portrait 

‘I don’t do self-portraits’, Cindy Sherman declared in 

an interview with Andreas Kallfelz in the magazine 

Wolkenkratzer, explaining that she always tries to go 

as far away from herself as possible in the images. ‘But 



it is possible that by doing precisely that, I portray 

myself, that by doing these crazy things with the 

figures […] I let out the crazy person in me.’ 3 

Sherman was one of my earliest and most 

important sources of inspiration. Her way of creating 

a world through her split identities reminds me of 

my childhood games where I was both the director 

and actor in my own fantasy world and which 

have influenced how I work today. Self-portraits 

are a recurring theme in my work, although, unlike 

Sherman I do not deny that this is precisely what 

they are. But this repetition has also led to a sort of 

backlash, an attempt to flee, to seek some distance 

and to remove myself from the picture. 

In the piece Deconstruction (Self-Portrait) from 

2009 I have possibly taken self-portraiture as far 

as it goes by allowing the work to be subjected to a 

deliberate process of destruction. This was an attempt 

to emphasise and open up a recurrence in order to try 

to destroy it. The process of destruction is, however, 

just a symbol of precisely this attempt at escaping from 

a recurrence. The fact that my memories, feelings and 

identity play such a decisive role in my work shows 

that this return will be my constant companion and 

instead of trying to flee from it I should perhaps make 

use of it, explore it and give it a twist in order to 

move on. 

The Mental Image 

My work is full of references to films and many of 

Sherman’s pieces read as cinema stills. I can see 

similarities between Sherman’s work and Hitchcock’s 

films. Gilles Deleuze attributes prophetic qualities to 

Alfred Hitchcock’s films since the famous director, 

in his opinion, succeeded in introducing the mental 

image into cinema. As opposed to the action shot, the 

mental image is not identical with the film’s plot; it 

hints at rather than showing a real image and hence 

contains something prophetic. 4 

Many of Sherman’s works seem to draw their force 

of attraction from the same source. This could be the 

feeling of latent threat in Untitled Film Stills (1977– 

1980), or the strong sense of unease present in much 

of her other work, a dormant terror which always 

seems to lie in the unconscious of Sherman’s art. Just 

like Hitchcock’s films, her pictures conceal more than 

they are willing to reveal. This is probably why I still 

feel drawn to her work and find inspiration in it, even 

though I consider it mainly as an early inspiration 

that has been very important for my way into the 

art world. 

It is for the same reasons that Robert Gober’s 

work inspires me. Even though his pieces do not have 

the same link to the cinema as Sherman’s do, they 

still share a penchant for disturbing the homely in a 

way that appeals to me and that flows into my own 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

way of working. I would like to give the viewer of my 

work a mental image, one that is separate from reality 

and that withholds ready answers, but which instead 

leaves a trace, in the form of a suspicion, a dormant 

feeling of unease. 

178 179 

Notes 

1. Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real. Cambridge, 

Mass: MIT Press, 1996, p.131. 

2. Nilsson, Håkan, preface to Charlotte 

Gyllenhammar, edited by Magnus Jensner and 

Evalena Lidman. Stockholm: Carlsson, 2004 

(pages not numbered). 

3. Kallfelz, Andreas (1984), ‘Cindy Sherman: “Ich 

mache keine Selbstportraits”’ (‘Cindy Sherman; 

“I Don’t Do Self-Portraits’”), in Wolkenkratzer 

Art Journal no. 4. Frankfurt am Main, 1984, 

p.49. 

4. Bronfen, Elisabeth, Fotografiska arbeten 1975– 

1995, Cindy Sherman (‘Photographic Works 

1975–1995, Cindy Sherman’). Malmö: Malmö 

konsthall, 1995, p.10. 



A Familiar Scene 

Wax and steel, 200 x 200 cm 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

180 181 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Nina Jensen 

The Other as Subject and Artist 

My flowery isle on your bosom you hold, 

You tranquil and darkling blue seas! 

While June twilight shadows so tender, enfold 

All the slumbering bushes and trees. 

You’re dancing so quietly, sweet little miss – 

I think that all men you despise. 

It trembles, that small childish hand that I kiss, 

While in minor the waltz softly dies. 

But hey, all you fellows who visit my bay 

I’m really a sober old man, 

When morning has come I must stack up my 

hay, 

And catch all the fish that I can! 

The deuce take you, twilight; the morn 

you disclose 

In fir tops agleam one by one 

(From Calle Scheven’s Waltz by Evert Taube 1 ) 

I want to write about the term outsider, in 

relation to the images I draw and paint, as well as to 

my thoughts on art from a wider perspective. I am 

interested in power relationships between people, 

people and animals, the experience of living on the 

margins of society, as well as my role as subject and 

spectator and how as an artist I objectify others 

through my pictures. I also want to attempt to create 

a link between notions of the Other with my ideas 

about the outsider role in the art world. 

I have chosen to illustrate this text with an extract 

from lyrics written by Swedish singer Evert Taube. 

Here he represents the subject, the man who creates, 

travels, observes and describes the Other. My thoughts 

are mainly based on the structure of Swedish society 

and so I think it is interesting to use Evert Taube as a 

symbol, since he is such a big part of Swedish culture. 

The experience of alienation or marginalisation 

in relation to architecture is a theme in my work. 

Swedish Modernist architecture can be seen to 

stand for order, control, purity and high ideals. My 

fascination with the aesthetics and ideals of the 1930s 

can be likened to my interest in gymnastics. I grew up 

in a residential area built in the so-called functionalist 

style of the 1930s and I did gymnastics for several 

years. My associations with both of these areas of my 

life are positive but I still have mixed feelings. I am 

attracted to the ideology and the aesthetics while at 

the same time I think they can have an oppressive 

effect on society and the individual human body. I 

deliberate on what possibilities there are of moving 

freely in the controlled city/society/body and what 

has changed since the societal planning of the 1900s. 

Using architecture and gymnastics/the body as 

motifs, I deal with a physical feeling of limitation. 

This limitation is found in part inside the body, in 

the innards and organs that control me, in part in 

the physical mass and weight of the body, in the fact 

that I have an unwieldy, heavy body that prevents me 

from moving freely and that makes it more difficult for 

me to become a subject. Another aspect of physical 

limitation can be the experience of inhabiting a body 

in a city, where the buildings, architecture and spaces 

can be seen as disproportionately big, where one is 

pushed around in a system of paths and patterns and 

where one is always too small to get an overview. I 

like to work with panoramic views of the cityscape. 

Gymnastics is a way of controlling the body and 

functionalism is a way of getting an overview of the 

city and society. They are methods for turning chaos 

into order, as are drawing and painting. 

Disorder and Dirt 

What are object/subject; inside/outside; under/over; 

nature/civilisation; chaos/order; dirty/clean; female/ 

male; animal/human; body/spirituality/psyche? 

In Purity and Danger (1966) cultural 

anthropologist Mary Douglas wrote about how 

enhancing the differences between opposites such as 

the ones I have listed here, helps to create order in a 

society. To define, separate and limit is a method of 

systematising the unstructured impression we have 

of our environment. In the process of systematising, 

taboos and rules are created to emphasise boundaries. 

The mixing of terms can have the opposite effect of 

the ordering, and provoke feelings of disgust and 

horror. For example, an image of innards that should 

actually be inside the body and not be visible, or a 

figure that is neither clearly human nor animal. 

Shapelessness and form could also be part of this 

list of opposites. When it comes to working with art 

I think that shapelessness can be a good point of 

departure. Douglas writes that dirt can be a symbol for 

a creative shapelessness and that to confront dirt and 

shapelessness is to cross a boundary. She continues to 

point out that the danger connected with this crossing 

of boundaries is also a power. These sensitive border 

zones and their powers, which threaten to destroy 

order, represent powers present in the cosmos. The 

rituals that use them in the service of good can be 

successful in taming very strong forces. 

The provocative feeling of disgust or disorientation, 

which can occur in the confrontation with chaos and 

shapelessness, is something I seek out at times in my 

work process. My interpretation of Douglas is that one 

can work with the lack of order that exists around us 

in a ritualising way, e.g. through art. Making images is 

for me an attempt at systematising my surroundings or 

reformulating my worldview. I draw innards in order 

to see them from the outside, despite everything. I 

plot them like a cityscape. Through this work process, 

or ritual if you will, I also shrink the city which I can 

never get a grip on, get an overview of, so that it in 

turn fits inside me. 

182 183 

Purity 

When Douglas talks of our striving for purity she 

describes it as being the result of rejection. Hence, 

she argues, that since purity is not a symbol but 

an experience it has to become both empty and 

meaningless. The purity we strive for shows itself to be 

hard and stone dead once we have achieved it. I think 

that the striving for purity in architecture and art has 

often led to an end result that is dead. Modernism’s 

striving for simplicity in architecture, and also at times 

in painting and sculpture, can be an example of this. 

It is difficult to tidy away chaos and still communicate 

something that people can relate to. 

I want to break order in my thoughts and my 

pictures, partly through my choice of subject matter 

and in part by choosing not to use linear perspective. 

I emphasise my own hierarchy and order and explore 

my values through the choice of perspective and 

the composition. I think of my figures as moving 

freely in the landscape and between drawings, at 

times influenced by geography, gravity and rules of 

perspective, and at times not. 

Spruce patterns on the brick gable. (Nature 

in its ordered form on the architecture.) A naked 

indigenous woman, but wearing some sort of string 

pants is nursing a monkey. No, Zlatan (the border 

between animal and human). A blonde woman with 

a monkey on her T-shirt is holding a serval. No, she 

is posing with a serval. Someone outside the frame 

is holding the chain. The man who is taking the 

photograph? (The border between object/subject/ 

animal/human. The man is holding onto the animal 

and photographing the woman and the animal.) In 

the city. Between the buildings. Small in comparison 

but still too big. And the animals become laughable 

or repel me when they are mixed, confused, women, 

insides. Who’s who, do they live in the buildings, am 

I one of them, are they part of me, can they be got 

rid of? (What is nature/civilisation/outside/inside/ 

over/under?) The Swedish. Spruce and backbone. 

(Controlled and pure nature.) 

The Artist as Subject 

The figures in my images, the animals, women and 

the football player, are the Other. They are my objects 

and my main characters. But when they constitute the 

world that I create, where is then the subject? They 

are all me and I am the subject. Or, is he standing 

there behind me and looking, is it he who is reading? 

Am I Evert Taube, or is it him? 

He is the given subject that observes and judges. I 

think that my picture is populated by the objects but 

lacks an observer. He is Sweden and the man and the 

norm; he can take liberties and travel and become 

whatever he wants. He sings of women, nature and 



traveling around the world. I think about the balance 

between my own actions and passivity and what kind 

of power position I have. I can create and travel. I can 

objectify. I think I maybe am Evert Taube to a certain 

extent. 

In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir writes that 

every subject concretely asserts itself through projects 

as a form of transcendence and that it can only fulfill 

its own freedom by constantly impinging on others’ 

freedom. There is no legitimating current existence 

other than through expansion towards an eternally 

open future. I interpret this as saying that women 

have a tougher time being a subject, since the project 

of becoming a woman is always a goal for personal 

striving and development. I imagine that creating 

order out of disorder and shapelessness can be a way 

to transcend, but must one objectify to create, and 

thus become a subject? Does one have to impinge on 

the freedom of others to expand and develop? 

I wanted to go out to sail and catch 

the smell of the sea, 

So I bought a schooner and set off 

to Queensland 

I started fishing for pearls, and lost all my gold, 

Lost half a million for the sake of a woman. 

She was from Fiji Island, I fell into her net, 

And she had twins, the two were almost black. 

Then came a third boy, but he was white 

believe it or not. 

I sailed to San Francisco and took the boy 

with me. 

This is where I have my business now, 

a butchers. 

I wanted the boy to run the shop, 

But he slept all day and drank all night. 

His skin was white, his eyes were blue but 

his soul was black. 2 

The Role of the Outsider in the Art World – 

the Artist as Object 

Outsider art, the art of the mentally ill, and the work 

of autodidacts or eccentrics, are all lumped together 

in a marginalised but at the same time important 

genre. The common denominator is that the artist is 

outside the art establishment but has been noticed by 

those who are part of it. The art and the artists may be 

included in the art world but they have a special role 

as outsiders within it. 

The value of their art depends on an objectified 

and romanticized outsider status and is difficult to 

compare with art by established artists. Images from 

older cultures, so-called primitive cultures, as well as 

by children, can also be included in this genre and 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

historically even art made by female artists. It is the 

Other who is producing the work and the viewer 

cannot, or perhaps will not, understand outsider art, 

even if he is inspired by it, tickled by the madness and 

perhaps confirmed in his own normality. 

Another interpretation is that these artists have an 

unusually easy access to their unconscious and their 

imagination and so to truths that are difficult to get at 

for most of us. They can even be seen to have access 

to the collective unconscious. 

The interest in outsider art grew during the period 

of Modernism, at the same time as a great interest in 

psychoanalysis, the subconscious and the collective 

unconscious was growing. Many artists wanted to 

get back to the source in order to find something 

universally human. There was a notion that art can 

communicate something original and genuine, only if 

one can find a source that has not been poisoned by 

civilisation and the super ego. Artistic training became 

a bit of a paradox from this perspective. Untrained 

artists, especially those with as little contact with 

society as possible, were considered to have the best 

access to the authentic, the primal and the collective 

unconscious. If there are fundamental human notions 

then the outsider artist would have the answers. 

I have read catalogue texts and other literature on 

outsider art written in recent decades and the idea of 

making art without being aware that one is making 

art still occurs today. To be free from all influence, 

not to work for a public, not to seek approval and 

to be driven more by a certain mania than artistic 

ambitions, are laudable characteristics. Words such as 

innocence and independence recur in the texts and 

the sale, exhibition and commission of these works 

are seen as concessions made by social reality. 

Outsider art is bound to the artist and his/her 

intention rather than the artwork. In the exhibition 

catalogues the artworks are often illustrated with the 

artist seen posing in front of them. 

When I visited the exhibition Annan konst (‘Other 

Art’) at Göteborgs Konstmuseum in the spring of 

2009, I was fascinated by the art but left the museum 

with a bitter aftertaste. The artworks seemed lumped 

together without context or explanation. Evocative 

sculptures made by hermits in the forest rubbed 

shoulders with photos of trucks decorated with 

airbrushed bikini babes and sharks, and homemade 

models of mosques. 

Both the hanging and the presentation seemed to 

lack basic respect and when the guide who showed 

us around happily slapped the sculpture of an animal 

on the rump, I really wondered why this exhibition 

had been made. The value seemed to lie more with 

the artist than the artwork. I wonder why authenticity 

is so important in the art context and why there is a 

contemptuous attitude to the established art scene, 

which emerges in relation to the romantic view 

of the outsider. Where do art, education and the 

establishment collide? 

The idea behind the exhibition could have been to 

question the hierarchy of the art world, to ask what art 

is and who gets to decide. But instead I had the feeling 

that they were reinforcing the hierarchy by showing 

art in this way. The artists are labeled and objectified. 

They are the Other. 

Conclusion – Both Cynical and Naïve 

We can systematise and order the world’s chaos 

by defining and emphasising difference. The art 

world preserves its order by marginalising outsider 

artists. They are objectified, defined and borders 

can be drawn. Taube preserves order for example by 

objectifying women and defining them as the Other 

when he sings about them. 

I think I can draw a world with a subject, where 

the objects can move freely without a viewer. I want 

to mix up the objects so that they lose their defining 

features and hence are set free. 

184 185 

Notes 

1. English version by Helen Asbury, Stockholm 

1940. Translation found on http://www. 

everttaube.info/index.php?lang=en&id=13 

2. Taube, Evert, Balladen om Gustaf Blom 

från Borås (‘The Ballad of Gustaf Blom from 

Borås’), 1928. 

Bibliography 

Backlund, Staffan and Håkansson, Borghild eds., 

Annan konst. Konsten är ett mystrium/ Other Art: 

Art’s Mystrious. Gothenburg: Postfuturistiska Förlaget, 

2009. 

Beauvoir, Simone de, The Second Sex, translated by 

Richard Howard. London: Vintage Books, 1989. 

Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of 

Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London/New York: 

Routledge, 2003. 

Kjellgren, Thomas, ed., Särlingar (‘Outsiders’). Malmö: 

Malmö Konsthall, 1991. 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

186 187 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Tomas Lundgren 

This Is How Long It Has Been 

My work at the Academy has mainly been focused 

on painting. I often start out from various related 

issues: what painting means, what it can be used for, 

how painting is perceived, its temporal aspects, its 

relationships to various source materials, and what 

happens when the source materials are reworked. 

I consider time an important element of painting. 

This is a non-linear time, which is related to the 

process and the subject, how they relate to each other, 

and to seeing painting as a way to encapsulate the 

period of time that you spent working on the painting. 

The painting becomes like a logbook or notes in a 

journal. My interest in memory is related to this. 

I am intrigued by how we recall and recreate our 

memories, and by memory lapses, lost and distorted 

information, time and space. Time travel is often an 

element in my work; also the ways we choose our 

paths and navigate by them, temporal markers and 

their inherent relativity. 

A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, 

the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates 

the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away 

our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its 

meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in 

all the manifold significance and infinite variety 

that preclude the emergence of any single 

meaning and view. 1 

Gerhard Richter’s painting fascinates me, and he 

became an important influence early on, especially 

his uncompromising attitude to painting and his use 

of reference photos. He has described the process of 

transforming a photograph into a painting as breaking 

something down into components and then building 

it up again. 2 This led me on to Jacques Derrida and 

deconstruction, reinterpretation and subjectivity. 

Almost everything I do is based on various source 

materials, something that already exists. It has almost 

become my motivation to paint in the first place, the 

fact that it’s not about creating something completely 

new, but rather picking up where something left off, 

or reworking it. What interests me is the subjective 

aspect, what happens when I take over and rework 

the source material. Anchored to reality, it is filtered 

through me. 

Another important influence on the way I look at 

painting is Luc Tuymans. There are a lot of similarities 

between Richter and Tuymans, and what I like about 

Tuymans is the way he uses reference photographs 

as more of a starting point. He always manages to 

remind you that painting is what it’s really all about. 

A lot happens along the way from reference photo 

to completed painting. The way he paints makes his 

often rather disquieting subjects come apart, step 

back, and leave center stage to the actual painting. 

He also takes shortcuts when choosing his subjects. 

Often, they are details, peripheral, or shadows of some 

other, more important event. 

Colour is very important to me when I paint. Since 

I often start from reference photos, there are usually 

already colours there for me to consider. I am 

interested to know what will happen if you distort a 

colour, move it in one direction or other, or replace 

it entirely. Colour selection can also be used as 

an associative tool, or a reference. In Fragments, I 

deliberately chose to tone down the colour saturation 

in the reference photographs, making the painting 

look as though the colours were a little faded. I often 

use grey, in all of its varieties, in mixtures of too 

many colours, and the ways that layers of colour and 

subjects can be combined in a grey lump of paint. 

Painting is the making of an analogy for 

something nonvisual and incomprehensible: 

giving it form and bringing it within reach. And 

that’s why paintings are incomprehensible. 3 

The unpredictable and ungraspable, things that 

you can’t help or plan for and that reveal themselves 

as you go, are characteristic of painting. It could be a 

matter of intuition, that you compose a painting piece 

by piece and view it subjectively. In certain cases, 

the unpredictable element can be the real essence of 

a painting, what makes it interesting, while in other 

cases it’s more of an entry point or sidetrack. The 

unpredictable is also something permissive, a way to 

keep an open mind about what you are doing, and 

an exploration. Luc Tuymans mentions this when 

discussing weaknesses, or holes, in his paintings, 

where the unpredictable becomes a kind of point of 

entry. 4 

Fragments is a sequence of paintings based on 

family photographs of my childhood. The paintings 

were sectioned into a grid of the kind you use to 

transfer a picture or sketch to a canvas or something 

similar. The grid divided the canvas into triangular 

fields, and I painted one field at a time until I had 

filled the whole canvas. Each triangle was masked off 

with tape before I began painting, and even though I 

tried to stick to the reference photo, subtle variations 

appeared between the fields that I couldn’t have 

predicted, as well as some displacements and colour 

shifts between the sections. 

I was interested in the relationship between the 

time when I worked on the paintings (2008–2009) 

and the early 1990s, when the photos were taken. I 

thought of it as a timeline with markings at specific 

events, or vast gaps in time between encapsulated 

intervals of time. I managed to work with my own 

personal experiences in a structured way, using a 

system and following rules. 

Wilhelm Sasnal: Do you wash over [your 

paintings] when you are not happy with the 

work? 

188 189 

Luc Tuymans: I used to. I had to because I 

didn’t have the money to buy new canvases. 

A painting like Man Drinking (1998) or La 

Correspondance (1985), there are about ten or 

twelve other versions underneath, but now I 

have the luxury to just throw them away. 

Wilhelm Sasnal: The piece can be more timeless 

when it is washed over and painted again. 5 

Painting over something can often be a kind of 

failure, but it doesn’t have to be a destructive thing. 

It even helps, especially when I’m fascinated by the 

way a painting is progressing. Since the unpredictable 

elements are characteristic of painting, failure is a part 

of the process, something you have to try to relate to, 

or allow to happen. In this medium, the end result 

isn’t predetermined. By constructing and covering 

over different layers of paint, you can begin to think of 

your painting as a kind of palimpsest. 

In the Academy’s Annual Exhibition in 2009, 

I showed one of the paintings from Fragments, along 

with two other pieces, A Brief Moment of Standing 

Still Before Moving on Again (a painting that was 

shown as a work in progress) and After Image 

(a mural that had been painted over). 

After Image was shown as a projected slide that 

documented the mural before it was painted over. The 

projection covered the exact same wall-space that the 

mural had occupied. The result was a piece where the 

painting was replaced by a documentation of itself. 

And yet, it was present, although not visible as it was 

covered by a layer of white paint. I am fascinated by 

this way of working with the layered construction 

of painting; by the way a painting is changed as it 

is created, what is concealed by the top layers of 

paint, how the painting you’re working on will end 

up looking when you’re done. Each layer tells a new 

story, a continuation of the layer underneath it: a new 

starting point. 

In the last year, I’ve taken a few steps away from 

painting, to explore other techniques I can use to 

work with things that interest me. I’ve started to use 

text in my works, or as separate works on their own. 

I’ve also used text as way to extend my painting. 

There are many similarities in the ways I use text 

and painting, but at the same time, they are two very 

different techniques with parameters of their own. For 

subjects where I don’t feel painting is just right, or an 

interesting choice, I’ve used text, for example, and this 

openness has had an effect on my painting when I 

returned to it. 

This is how long it has been. 

This is how old I am. I am younger than the 

trees. 

I am younger than most trees. 



[…] 

If you wind a rope around the trunk, you can 

see the circumference of time. My arms can’t 

reach around it. 

I am younger than most of the trees that will 

live longer than I will. 

[…] 

My hand only reaches this far. I can reach this 

far across the surface of time. 

Can you see? Here am I, and here is time. 

Here we are. And here is the time that has 

passed. This is how long it has been. 6 

Red Wood is a series of works by Swedish 

writer Lotta Lotass, published online by Autor 

Eter. 7 The works contain text and images, and is 

a ‘slowly growing artwork about time.’ 8 The texts 

are loosely based on the old postcards of redwood 

trees that accompany each segment. The texts on 

the postcards that relate historical facts, references 

and descriptions, are broken up by forceful strains 

of fiction. Lotta Lotass’s texts often include minutely 

detailed environmental descriptions, not unlike the 

descriptions used in interpretations of older paintings, 

where every single component is related and described 

in terms of color, meaning, structure, including the 

writer’s conclusions and reflections. Her texts always 

include some kind of experiment involving form 

and content. 

My latest works are parts of an ongoing project 

where I am using different techniques to combine 

elements that have interested me artistically in various 

ways. Vision, memory, time travel and navigation 

are all starting points that I try to approach without 

preconceptions. The first part of this project is a 

montage of four different texts, where disassembled 

sentences are rearranged into a text that resembles a 

description of, or manual for, something that is never 

mentioned by name. What this creates is an entirely 

new text, where all that remains is references to the 

source materials. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notes 

1. Richter, Gerhard, Writings 1962–1993. London: 

Thames and Hudson, 1995, p.35. 

2. Ibid., p.177. 

3. Ibid., p.99. 

4. ‘I like to find the hole in the picture, the weak 

point through which you can enter it.’ http:// 

bombsite.com/issues/92/articles/2733. 

5. Sasnal, Wilhelm and Tuymans, Luc, ‘When Luc 

Tuymans Met Wilhelm Sasnal…’, in Art Review, 

February 2008, pp.42–49 

6. Parts of a text from the piece 32:89, 32:90, 

33:93. Next to the texts are postcards of 

redwood trees that have been cut down. There 

are people standing next to the trunks, to give 

the viewer an idea of the enormity of the trees. 

http://www.ordfabriken.org/autor/autoreter/ 

redwood/32.89_32.90_33.93.htm 

7. http://www.ordfabriken.org/autor/autoreter.htm 

8. http://www.dn.se/dnbok/tradets-sang-1.807307 

190 191 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Transport 

Oil on canvas, each 55 x 71 cm 

192 193 



†††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††† 

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Life is a long ride. They say that you’re young when 

you’re under 30, but when you are you know that 

you’re really not. Obviously you’re older when you’re 

older but still. Being under 30 and over 20 I feel that 

I’ve lived for quite a long while. How much I’ve seen 

and felt. I find death interesting because it is the 

opposite to everything I know. 

Dear Mersad, It’s weird when what is embarrassing 

is also serious, or even deadly. How does one cope 

with dying from something related to the Anal? How 

do you live on when no one dares to laugh about 

your jokes meant to be jokes? It’s been a while. I am 

dying. I hate it that we don’t live in the same city. You 

are the only person I can think of that would have 

anything comforting to say on the subject. Maybe you 

would have said something nice about the Anal of 

society and my butt within it. Maybe you would have 

been quoting our hero John Maus singing, 

It's time to die. 

And everybody knows that you cant ask why. 

And even if the answer could be supplied, 

It wouldn’t change the fact that it’s time to die. 

It’s time to die. 

Listen to your body. 1 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Stine Midtsæter 

Maybe we would have shared embarrassing 

moments, and death would have been just 

another one. 

I do not write you because I want sympathy. This 

is a thesis. This is a text that is supposed to explain 

my work. And therefore it is also a contributor to 

the increasing itch inside my butt. I happen to find it 

a bit hard to explain myself as it takes a lot of navel 

contemplating. But here I go. I will say that my work 

most often is based on some sort of a dialogue with 

another person. This can be recorded dialogue, as a 

starting point for something; an interview or some 

sort of work based on a compromise. It can also be 

something meant to be a dialogue but being more like 

a monologue. This happens when I approach a person 

I admire and that I will not be able to get in contact 

with, as when for example the person is a famous 

and important one, or even a dead one. I therefore 

approach this person in a one-way direction. It can be 

an attempt to compare myself with the idol or getting 

deeply into the fan-role and its ways of worshipping 

and similarities with being in love. 

Fan is short for fanatic. I am very fond of the 

phenomenon of exaltation. I want to glorify, praise, 

honour something, preferably someone. I guess it’s 

similar to the need of religion. The love that lies 

in admiring someone based on them giving you 

inspiration, which in turn gives your life meaning. I 

think I find a paradoxical inspiration in this. When 

I see a work of Art that I like, I feel sad that I wasn’t 

the one who made it, rather than being able to see 

the work as inspiration. The work will probably 

subconsciously influence me, but I am more interested 

in becoming a fan of the artist. This way the idolizing 

becomes my work, as I want to look at this kind of 

relationship, and take it further. A sort of theoretical 

way of stalking. The word wannabeism came to my 

head about a year ago when I realised what I was 

doing, and today, when I google it, I can find only one 

definition, and it’s on Urban Dictionary. It says: 

Wannabeism – a cult following that emulates 

their leader but fails miserably. 2 

For me, it is simpler. As the word says: It’s about 

wanting to be something, but it doesn’t necessarily 

have anything to do with trying or failing. The 

interesting thing lies in the desire to be something 

else and the sincerity in trying to achieve this. 

Wannabeism is my ism and where I place myself in 

Art, and in the world. 

We are supposed to categorise ourselves in this 

text. Maybe I see pop music and mainstream culture 

as my main inspiration instead of Art-art. A culture 

where fandom plays a bigger part than it does in the 

Art-world. But as an example of Art-fandom I will use 

my story about Kenneth Anger. I started to adore his 

artistic practice (or what he would call experimental 

film-making) when I discovered his early avant-garde 

films many years ago. I wanted them to be mine. I 

wanted to be Anger. But then he was. And therefore I 

had to love him instead. In late 2008 I found out that 

he was coming to Copenhagen in person to present 

his new film Ich will! at the National Gallery, and my 

interest in him as a person grew stronger when I knew 

that I would be in the same room with him and hear 

him talk in Real Life and even, if it hadn’t been for 

my big-time social skills, walk up to him and touch 

him. 

The story goes like this. I went to Copenhagen that 

day, but I didn’t have the money to pay the entrance. I 

had written a song about my relation to Anger and my 

frustration about the high entrance fee of 295 DKK. I 

performed it outside the National Gallery with backup 

vocals from a dear friend. Not many people saw this 

as we performed behind a big statue by the entrance, 

hidden from the people standing in line. After our 

performance I borrowed money to get in to see the 

screening anyway. When Anger had introduced Ich 

will! and the screening started he sat down on the 

stair step in front of me. I got very nervous and started 

to write him a letter on the back of a Photoshopped 

picture of him and I that I carried on me for some 

reason. With shaky hands I formulated words of love 

and admiration, and my email address. As I leaned 

over towards his back to give him the paper my hand 

was shaking so badly that it flew away, passed him, 

and landed on the side of the stage. He said nothing, 

194 195 

I don’t know if he noticed and I kept quiet and redfaced 

in the dark. 

When the screening was over he disappeared 

backstage and I went out to drink my shakes away. 

I’ve never seen him again, but have secretly been 

hoping that he might have picked up my paper after 

everyone left the room and considered writing me 

an email. He never did. And I have just learned that 

he only uses real mail. After all, he’s over eighty. So 

recently, I wrote him a handwritten letter. Excerpt to 

prove point: 

Dear Kenneth, 

You got a great persona. I love your work and 

I wish I was you but I am not so I love you 

instead. I want us to be together. I am aware 

of you being into guys and me being a girl and 

you being 82 and me being 24 but I think we 

can work it out some way. The most important 

thing is that we have the same aim in life and 

I believe that we do. Tell me what you think. 

Yours Sincerely, 

Stine 

Michael Taussig writes in Walter Benjamin’s Grave: 

There must be rules for the management of 

death, yet death tests the rule as well. With 

each death, society itself dies a little, said the 

anthropologist Robert Hertz in his now classic 

1907 study of the collective representations 

of death. But what is it about society that 

dies? Death is especially awkward for 

modern intellectuals who are likely to find 

themselves swept over by traditions they fought 

and measured themselves against. To visit 

Benjamin´s grave or even just timidly approach 

its outermost waves of force in the periphery 

of Port Bou, at the massive railway station 

and shunting yards surrounded by tunnels 

opening onto the looming mountains, to stop 

there and hesitate to go further, as I did, to 

wonder how to proceed - all this suggests a 

fundamental inability to deal with death and 

the need to reinvent procedures acknowledging 

it. Nietzsche pleads in vain for historians who 

can write histories equal to the events they 

relate. We need to do the same with our dead. 

Benjamin says something similar where he 

cautions that truth is not a matter of exposure 

that destroys the secret but a revelation that 

does justice to it. He was referring to the work 

of truth in the passage of love from the body to 

the soul in Plato’s Symposium. Death poses the 

same issue. 3 



What Taussig discusses here is maybe not directly 

related to my subject but I like it a lot and I think 

I kind of disagree with all of them, Taussig, Hertz, 

Benjamin, and Nietzsche. I think it is absolutely 

necessary to add a little juice to our stories of the 

past and to our deceased ones. When it comes to 

Benjamin’s point about the nature of truth, he is 

probably right, but as I haven’t read the passage of 

love from the body to the soul in Plato’s Symposium I 

will not elaborate on it. What I have read is Kenneth 

Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon, the legendary 

underground classic of Hollywood’s darkest and bestkept 

secrets, stories about the decadence of the early 

Superstars. Supposedly they’re all true, still gossipstyle 

juicy – but then again, fame beats all. Anyway, I 

think that in Art, fake can be just as good as the truth 

if not better. And I hope, Mersad, that you will add as 

much juice to the story of my supposedly average life 

after my demise. 

My Butt Within It 

For the BA degree show I am making a video about 

life after my death. And my death being caused by 

Anal cancer as a fact or as a metaphor. 4 The Anal 

as a concept symbolises for me a certain form of 

narcissism. I think narcissism is more or less always 

present in an Artwork, and it isn’t necessarily a bad 

thing, but still in some cases it feels important to be 

aware of it. How can I contemplate my own navel 

and make it interesting for other people at the 

same time? 

With this video where I want to discuss my own 

death this question is relevant. But I do believe that 

the subject should be interesting for everyone, as it is 

about death, which we all share. Death and eventually 

life after it or not. I want to be you, Mersad, talking 

to people after I’m dead and gone. You will talk to 

friends and relatives, teachers, strangers, and hopefully 

some celebrities. You will talk about death in different 

ways, about what it is and what it is not. About 

people’s different relationships to it and about respect 

and fear and belief. And about the juicy story of 

my life. 

Taussig on Benjamin again: 

Didn’t Benjamin himself in his famous essay 

on the storyteller spend a good deal of time 

propounding the thesis that it is death that 

gives authority to the storyteller? In the shadow 

of 9/11 none of us need to be reminded on 

that score. Taken a step further we might even 

assert that this is what scares us about death 

yet tempts us as well, as if the story can be 

completed yet also amputated by the absence 

that is death, forever postponing the end to the 

story that was a life. 5 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

We all have our thoughts about how we will be 

remembered and what we will leave behind us. And it 

can feel like a big deal when you’re an artist or maybe 

especially in the case of making Art with the intention 

of becoming a name. Becoming famous. As I do. I 

appreciate my role as a fan and a wannabe today, but, 

paradoxically since I am dying, with a little hope that I 

have what it takes to get my own fans in the imagined 

future. I want to be on TV. I want fame and I want to 

become more of a Diva. I want attention and beauty 

around me. Ironically enough it took a lot of navel 

contemplating to understand that this is what I want. 

And a lot of studying my own approach to understand 

that I, myself, am the Anal in the subject that I’ve been 

working with. I need to quote Lady Gaga: 

I can’t help myself; I’m addicted to 

a life of material. 

It’s some kind of joke; I’m obsessively 

opposed to the typical. 

All we care about is runway models, 

Cadillacs and liquor bottles. 

Give me something I wanna be, 

retro glamour, Hollywood. 

Yes we live for the Fame. 

Doin’ it for the Fame. 

‘Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and 

famous. Fame. Doin’ it for the Fame. 

‘Cuz we’ve got a taste for champagne and 

endless fortune… 

Don’t ask me how or why. 

But I’m gonna make it happen this time. 

My teenage dream tonight. 

Yeah I’m gonna make it happen this time. 6 

My Teenage Dream Tonight 

I want to be you, Mersad, because you are my brother 

and what I am not. I want to have you in mind while 

writing because I know you have the basic knowledge 

to understand my point. Also I want to find out if 

there’s a difference in you being my brother and in me 

being you. The brother-aspect is based on my interest 

in insiderism. 7 How you communicate with different 

people differently, depending on what planet you 

are on together and what you share. I thought about 

this when we were told that this text is supposed 

to explain how our works should be read. You can 

always try to explain. But you cannot always give 

out the secret codes for how to become a brother. I 

mean that there always needs to be a basic interest 

to be able to understand. As when Swedish people 

talk about gemensam idébakgrund. A common-idea 

background. The Art world often works like this. 

Like the rest of the world. And here again comes 

the Anal, the introvert. Inside-jokes are only funny if 

you’re an insider. 

In the late darkness of 2008 a brotherhood was 

founded on the internet. I didn’t know much about 

it then but I felt a strong urge to become a member. 

After I joined, things started to seem clearer. We 

meet once in a while and have open ceremonies 

under the concept Midnite Service. What we do is 

based on a shared suffering in life which makes us 

able to understand each other. We are all students 

of fine art with serious problems of concentration 

and suppressed anger. We see our brotherhood as a 

necessary thing, maybe a movement, to try to help 

ourselves and others out of what can often seem to 

be problems of unknown causes. Symptoms include a 

conflict between the search for something holy in life, 

and a constant feeling of defeat and embarrassment. 

How we do it is that we preach to the people and 

to each other in the midnight hour. We are aware of 

how this relates to religion and this relation can also 

be seen as part of the point. But we are never ironic 

or critical. We are very aware of the contradiction in 

our doubt and quest. And in this something cheesy is 

born. It happens that we fail when attempting to reach 

out to people but we choose to embrace this cheese 

instead of rejecting it and this way we are able to face 

each other and the world. 

The Wrap 

Dear Mersad, I will not be dead at the opening. Just 

the part of me that died in the making of the video 

will be dead. I wonder if that’s the part that imagined 

death so clearly on the bus crossing the bridge to 

Copenhagen two months ago. Being ready to die is 

not the same as wanting to die. Being ready to die is 

a way of living. A way of living where – maybe – you 

expect nothing? Life and death are the biggest clichés 

and it is hard to avoid sounding preacher-like when 

writing about it. But life and death are also the most 

serious things we know of. And I am very serious. I 

love the thought of being ready to die. You will not 

be scared and you will not care. I think being ready 

to die is the same as having Inner Peace and I wish I 

had the time to go through the New Age-section of my 

bookshelf to do some rightful quoting here. 

The last time I was in Germany, I was walking around 

in the little town of Braunschweig, two Autobahnhours 

away from Berlin. 7 I passed an old building, 

perhaps it used to be some sort of a school, and over 

the entrance it said, in stone letters: Frisch im Herzen, 

frei zu sterben. ‘Fresh at heart, free to die.’ 

Sincerely yours, 

Stine 

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196 197 

Notes 

1. John Maus, ‘Time to Die’, in Songs. Upset the 

Rhythm, 2006. 

2. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define. 

php?term=wannabeism, accessed 15 March 

2010. 

3. Taussig, Michael, Walter Benjamin’s Grave. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, p.7. 

4. In the United States an estimated 710 people 

died of anal cancer in 2009 (American Cancer 

Society’s homepage, accessed 15 March 2010). 

5. Taussig, Michel, op. cit., p.6. 

6. Lady Gaga, ‘The Fame’, in The Fame Monster. 

Streamline/ Interskope/ Kon Live, 2009. 

7. The characteristic behavior of insiders, 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/insiderism, 

accessed 15 March 2010. 

8. Brown and silent, I saw myself sitting there. 

Braunschweiger. The ‘Open Sesame’ of this 

name, which was supposed to contain all the 

riches of the earth in its interior, had opened 

up. Smiling a smile of infinite compassion, I 

now began to think for the first time of the 

Braunschweigers who lived a wretched life in 

their little central German town, in complete 

ignorance of the magic powers they possess 

thanks to their name. (Benjamin, Walter, 

‘On Hashish’, in Selected Writings Volume 2 

1927–1934, translated by Scott J Thompson. 

Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 

2002, p.146. 



Anal Death Movie Poster 

Watercolour, 60 x 40 cm 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

198 199 



Man wends his way through forests of symbols 

which look at him with their familiar glances. 1 

A comfort, maybe. A childish hope. 

A quest for the things that make everything 

resonate and break apart at the same time. 

The key to the secret door, the final piece of 

the puzzle, the missing word in the sentence. Aha. 

Language as an Instrument 

We know now that a text is not a line of words 

releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the 

message of the Author-God) but a multidimensional 

space in which a variety of 

writings, none of them original, blend and clash 

[…] Refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate 

meaning, to the text (and the world as text) 

liberates what may be called an anti-theological 

activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary 

since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, 

to refuse God and his hypostases – reason, 

science, law. 2 

Literature is my great source of inspiration. Here, 

more than anywhere else, I find that imaginary 

place where everything comes together. Language, 

or text, provides the starting point for many of my 

works; language as concrete materiality, through 

aesthetic adaptation and as a phenomenon, through 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Isis Mühleisen 

Fixing Meaning 

experiments with deconstruction and reconstruction. 

Among examples of the processes I use to create text 

are ‘automatic poetry’ and ‘automatic text’ generators 

that work according to various rules and patterns 

that I choose to apply. These represent an attempt 

on my part to dislocate the conventional frames of 

verbal expression either by distancing myself as far 

as possible from the process of creating meaning, or 

by testing the limits of what can be correlated. I also 

modify existing texts to investigate what meanings 

may be contained within them. 

One example is Under och mysterier i världen 

(‘Wonders and Mysteries in the World’), where I have 

transformed a factual text into poetry by making 

selective deletions. For me, the main attraction in my 

work as an artist is not necessarily the end product, 

or ‘point’. Nor is it the conclusion – if indeed there is 

one – but the process of searching, finding and losing 

the thread again, of illustrating the coincidental nature 

of these juxtapositions. I prefer to use found material 

to distance myself from the basis for the material and 

the potential this has to lend it meaning. One example 

of this is my BFA project, Inverted Perspective, where 

I use an old typewriter ribbon and focus on one of the 

sentences from the ribbon’s ‘stream of consciousness’. 

I am neither the typewriter nor the author. So, in 

other words, I am not directly responsible for the 

creation of the material. Instead, I am more like a 

compositor of sorts; a translator between the material 

and the observer, who forces the observer to take an 

active part in creating/interpreting the meaning. 

For the most part, I see my text-based production 

as visual works: or I find it difficult to differentiate 

between visual and textual. I can’t see the need to 

do so, nor the distinction in doing it. Words are 

metaphors that we process rationally, but they are also 

symbols that we consume visually. For this reason, 

I would contend that my methods of working share 

certain similarities with those of Concrete Poetry. 

In his Manifesto for Concrete Poetry (1953) Öyvind 

Fahlström writes: 

Poetry can be not only analysed but also 

created as structure. Not only as structure 

emphasising the expression of idea content but 

also as concrete structure. […] It is certain that 

words are symbols, but there is no reason why 

poetry can’t be experienced and created on the 

basis of language as concrete material. 3 

All texts are combinations of these familiar, 

recycled words: can we really create any new 

meaning? Doesn’t everything mean the same? If 

I have all the words that exist gathered together 

somewhere, haven’t I then in theory also 

said everything that can be said? Or will new 

combinations of words continue to shock us with 

their connotations? I am interested in the unintended 

creation of meaning, or intentional meaninglessness. 

The idea of being able to create meaning – or expunge 

it – and the implication that our language is limited to 

a certain number of symbols. I’m interested in what 

this means for our opportunities to express ourselves, 

for the confines of our communication. And language, 

of course, also sets the limits for reflection. Without 

language we cannot formulate complex modes of 

reasoning, so what consequences does this have for 

our ability to comprehend, understand and figure 

things out? 

That is precisely why deconstruction, or 

‘playing with language’, is so important; because it 

challenges, develops and enriches our established 

trains of thought and patterns of thinking. American 

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry also focuses on this 

issue. David Melnick wrote about this poetry: 

The poems are made of what look like words 

and phrases, but are not. I think these poems 

look like they should mean something more 

than other wordless poems do. At the same 

time, you know that you can’t begin to 

understand what they mean. 4 

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets work to open up 

language, open up new ways of creating meaning. 

They force the reader to participate actively in 

constructing a meaning instead of simply being a 

passive recipient of a message. 

200 201 

Among the artists who interest me and influence 

my work are Sophie Calle; in particular her project 

Take Care of Yourself, which involved asking 107 

women of different professions to interpret a breakup 

mail the artist had received from her ex. This is an 

interesting way to look at a text, as an inexhaustible 

source of interpretation and meaning. I also find 

Jenny Holzer’s work with texts appealing. Her 

Truisms revolve around questions of truth/untruth, 

the significance of assertions and norms – so called 

‘accepted truths’. Holzer’s method of using text as 

a central element of a visual work is fascinating; 

an examination of the power of projection and the 

force that is inherent in the way a text is formulated. 

Examples of writers who work with text in an 

interesting way include Lotta Lotass, e e cummings 

and WC Williams. All adopt an unconventional 

approach to the texts they work with, using a raft 

of different methods that include deconstruction, 

the disconnection of words and letters, abstractions, 

reshuffling the internal order within sentences, etc 

– each an attempt to open the door to new ways of 

reading/using text. 

Apologia for Navel Contemplation 

Love, life and death – all of that is the most 

mundane material for artists. It amuses me 

because people often say, doesn’t it bother 

you to show your private life? I say, well if 

you ruled out private life, you would have to 

eliminate all poetry. 5 

And then – and perhaps this is the worst 

deceiver of all – we make up our pasts. You 

can actually watch your mind doing it, taking 

a little fragment of fact and then spinning a tale 

out of it. 6 

For me, too, the story of my own life often provides 

the point of departure or the inspiration for what 

I do – and that includes the private sphere, or the 

autobiographical. You should be personal, but not 

private, we are told. But what the presentation of my 

self and my personal story is, seems to me to be rather 

unclear. The tale of myself, my past, this material from 

which I emerge. This timeline in which I seek security 

and a firm foothold. Abdications of responsibility, 

digressions, excuses. Isn’t it simply just a story that 

is being told? How can anyone ever tell it correctly? 

What is truth, when it comes to what has passed? 1 + 

1 = 2. That event and that one equals me. Is it my own 

personal story that created me? Or am I the one who 

is continually creating my own personal story? 

My video Du och jag (‘You and I’) is an example 

of how I set about making use of what is private. 

The video tells the story of my sister and me and 



our shared past. I made it in an attempt to describe 

a time that has now passed, a kind of ‘retrospective 

documentary’, a staged documentary, in which 

we sought to recreate the atmosphere and the 

circumstances of this place in the past. I tried to 

impose a kind of uncompromising honesty on my 

attitudes to my recollections, without gilding the lily, 

without censoring. I wanted to move what was private 

out into the public sphere without embellishing it 

in any way. I felt this was of interest to more than 

just myself, because it is importunate, creating in the 

observer discomfort that is tempered with voyeuristic 

desire. It is like peering into a window at nighttime, or 

reading someone else’s diary – things we can all feel 

the unpalatable temptation to indulge in. It tests the 

limits for what we can share with the world around 

us and challenges the language that is customarily 

acceptable in these situations. The film straddles the 

intersection between documentary and fiction, in 

order once again to pass comment on the stories we 

flesh out on the framework of the past, the truths that 

are spoken into existence only when we utter them 

and that vary depending on where the observer is 

standing. 

En sida av saken (‘One Side of the Matter’) also 

shows my predilection for what is private. In this work 

I printed pictures from my childhood in a dictionary, 

on pages with a word that was related to what the 

picture showed. The intention was to show how 

all of us are the culmination of our experiences, an 

accumulation, like the pages in a book. On the wall 

hung a page with the keywords where the pictures 

were printed, so that the observer could turn to 

these pages herself. Getting to know a new person 

is like reading a manifesto: ‘You must accept these 

propositions and these truths in order to understand 

the totality that is me.’ But what is shown and visible 

is frequently only momentary, and swims in an ocean 

of other situations. 

Telling the truth or not telling it, and how 

much, is a lesser problem than the one of 

shifting perspectives, for you see your life 

differently at different stages, like climbing 

a mountain while the landscape changes 

with every turn in the path. […] Besides, the 

landscape itself is a tricky thing. As you start 

to write at once the question begins to insist: 

Why do you remember this and not that? Why 

do you remember in every detail a whole week, 

month, more, of a long year, but then complete 

dark, a blank? How do you know what you 

remember is more important than what you 

don’t? Suppose there is no landscape at all? 7 

Memory is deceptive and deficient, inconsistent in 

the choice of which details to focus on – like history, 

in fact. Taking an interest in your own history, trying 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

to understand it, to recognise it and to be aware of 

its unreliability and tendency to constantly change is, 

in my eyes, a responsibility that is an essential part of 

what it means to be a human being. 

I am, as it were, always other to myself, and 

there is no final moment in which my return 

to myself takes place. […] I am invariably 

transformed by the encounters I undergo; 

recognition becomes the process by which I 

become other than what I was and so cease to 

be able to return to what I was. There is, then, 

a constitutive loss in the process or recognition, 

since the ‘I’ is transformed through the act of 

recognition. Not all of the past is gathered and 

known in the act of recognition; the act alters 

the organisation of the past and its meaning at 

the same time that it transforms the present of 

the one who receives recognition. 8 

The discussion about what is private leads me 

to contemplate an idea about the co-existence of 

different languages. The language of the private 

sphere is exclusive and does not concern other 

people. There’s a whiff of a claim of being able to 

convey something genuine, unsullied by the private. 

Something purer. But is the language of the private 

sphere any less true than the language of objectivity? 

Is there really such a dichotomy? Are not both 

languages equally constrained within the limits of 

expression drawn up by words? The same words, 

the same limitations. We are all locked within our 

bodies; we are all subjects. And so all impressions 

and expressions are subjective; there is no objective 

narrator’s voice, but everything is communicated from 

an ‘I’ to a ‘you’ within the same linguistic constraints. 

‘I’ am not a unique entity with an original story to 

tell. ‘I’ am created by and only recognisable to ‘you’ 

through our shared norms, and thus ‘my’ story is not 

private, but a kind of random reflection of what has 

surrounded me before and what surrounds me today. 

What am I? Tied in every way to places, 

sufferings, ancestors, friends, loves, events, 

languages, memories, to all kinds of things that 

obviously are not me. Everything that attaches 

me to the world, all the links that constitute me, 

all the forces that compose me don’t form an 

identity, a thing displayed on cue, but a singular, 

shared, living existence, from which emerges – 

at certain times and places – that being which 

says ‘I’. 9 

The history of my creation is just as much an 

ongoing construction as any other concocted story. In 

the light of that, I feel that my private history is also 

relevant for other people, who have their own private 

lives to understand, and that it functions more as a 

point of departure, a catalyst for more stories, than 

any intimate truth that I am trying to reveal. 

The writer can only imitate a gesture that is 

always anterior, never original. His only power 

is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the 

others, in such a way as never to rest on any 

of them. Did he wish to express himself, he 

ought at least to know that the inner ‘thing’ he 

thinks to ‘translate’ is itself only a ready-formed 

dictionary, its words only explainable through 

other words, and so on indefinitely. 10 

202 203 

Notes 

1. Quoted in, On some motifs in Baudelaire, 

Walter Benjamin, translated by Harry Zohn. 

Published in Illuminations: Essays and 

Reflections, edited by Hannah Arendt. New 

York: Schocken, 1968, p.333. 

2. Barthes, Roland, The Death of the Author, 

Translated by Stephen Heath, 1977. New York: 

Noonday Press, 1988, p.146. 

3. http://www.fahlstrom.com/05_poetry_04_swe. 

asp?id=5&subid=2 

4. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine, no1, 1978, 

p.13. http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/projects/ 

LANGUAGEn1/pictures/013.html. 

5. Quoted in article by Angelique Chrisafis in The 

Guardian, 16 June 2007. 

6. Lessing, Doris, Under My Skin. London: 

Flamingo, 1995, p.13. 

7. Lessing, Doris, Under My Skin. London: 

Flamingo, 1995, p.12. 

8. Butler, Judith, Giving an Account of Oneself. 

New York: Fordham University Press, 2005, p.27. 

9. The Invisible Committee, ‘The Coming 

Insurrection’, in Interventions Series No 1. 

Paris: Semiotext(e), 2007, pp.31–32. 

10. Barthes, Roland, op. cit., p.146. 



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204 205 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Max Ockborn 

Investigating Hidden Caves 

I am constantly trying to deny resemblances of what 

I do now with what I considered to be the best things 

I knew when I was a kid; I wish to find something 

equally good right now though, to hold on to and 

to investigate. Something like the hidden caves I 

searched for in forests then but only partially found. 

But at least then, the diamonds I found were real. The 

notion of considering something as real is now very 

rare for me, almost so much that I have to construct 

detours around actual detours to find it, which should 

be a contradiction. 

This text is partly to be read as an allegory about 

deconstruction. Fields that I intend to consider 

are collecting and categorisation, with or without 

making an impact on the collected and categorised; 

distillation and rephrasing of material, in order to be 

able to narrow it down to a structure and apply it to 

something, or to show the structure on its own. 

What it might reveal I am not sure of yet. 

I have a sincere wish to go on an adventure but 

I am unsure where to start, where to find that small 

thing that holds the key to it. I have at times thought 

that it might be an object of some kind, so I keep 

things to be able to think about and around them. 

Usually I end up with the thought: what is 

an adventure? 

The word itself is based on the Latin adventurus, 

about to happen, from advenire, to arrive. But will the 

biggest journey that you embark on be inside yourself, 

or is it as the band Grace said, just the first one? 1 

The next hibernation is sure to come soon, about 

spending time in Hell (where Hell should be regarded 

as a dead metaphor for sadness or even desolation, 

but still with a spark of optimism and a will to be 

dedicated to something). The extent that it borders 

on dreams is more uncertain. (My favorite dream is 

one where I try to jump over a whale that is almost as 

big as the swimming pool it lies in, but I never make 

it across, I wake up before I touch its wet, watery, 

black surface when I fall. Watery because of the 

resemblance to water, but it’s not water on the whale, 

only around it.) 

Regarding Questions of Affection and Levels 

of Engagement. Allegorical Part of the Text 

I’m sitting here trying to bind the length of the lines 

into a structure similar to the pyramids and castles 

of olden times in South America, on paper stolen 

from the Devil’s brethren. The accumulated length 

of the lines is the same in each image. The paper is 

inflammable, otherwise I would have to hide it in 

Hephaestos’s cave, where there is pure water. We 

could bring one thing to the summer camp; I brought 

two pens glued together. 

There is black dust inside of my nose constantly, 

but I can do my triangular breathing anyway. The 

three-headed dog Cerberus is poor company; he 

spends his time rehearsing his barking skills in a 

choral-sounding way. The head in the middle has 

the deepest voice, the left one has the highest pitch 

and the right one is almost completely silent. He is 

annoying, but he is all I’ve got. 

During the day I construct machines for torturing, 

but at night I have time for my own work. I wonder 

if they will ever build these Castles that I make 

blueprints for? Maybe I will have a chance to 

show some of them to the Devil himself before the 

summer camp is over. I mistrust his sense of taste in 

architecture though; for instance he is very rigid in 

his thoughts about balconies, he doesn’t want many 

balconies at all in his land. His Son on the other 

hand is more open to the idea of balconies, but that 

is mostly because he likes to demolish them as soon 

as they are built. I hope they might both change their 

minds, if I get a chance to talk to them. The Son is 

away for summer school in Dubai so it’s not possible 

to reach him, and from what I have heard the Devil 

himself is very busy at the moment, doing schemes in 

Romania. I don’t know why he bothers; I guess it’s 

nice for him to have hobbies. They are both neglecting 

Cerberus and he needs more attention to be secure in 

his duties, at least he wrote that once in another dog’s 

blood, a dog that was his friend before he died, above 

his house. 

Even if the veil that cloaks this land one day might 

find its way to the surface above, the location of Hell 

remains a mystery to me. I know I arrived by car here, 

but there must have been something in the soda I 

drank and the driver was mute. The car looked similar 

to an old Rolls Royce but it had no sign whatsoever 

that could give me a clue about who manufactured it, 

it was very precise and easy to maneuver it seemed. 

I passed out somewhere in Belarus and woke up in a 

sulphur-scented bed. Now the drawings just sit there, 

framed and idle in various locations. 

One thing that’s struck me while being here in Hell 

is that they drink coffee much of the time, in cafes 

or at home or basically everywhere. This is not at all 

unusual for a big town, but since it is a bigger town 

than the one I came from it’s possible to get hold of 

very many different brands of coffee from (I hope) all 

the countries in the world that grow them. 

Note Regarding the Travelling of Objects and 

Matter; How It Can Get Dispersed and Reunited: 

What I now intend to do is to find out which 

countries grow these beans, see if they are all 

represented in the town, get hold of the coffee, and 

put all the different fluids into one container. The 

same volume of each type of coffee. After this is done, 

I will distill it by boiling it, until it solidifies. Then I 

will put it in another transparent container, to be able 

to look at it through a layer of glass. I will thus have a 

sample of beans that have travelled for a long time in 

different directions brought together as a whole. This 

substance will have been traveling more than I will 

ever do myself probably, only now I can bring it on my 

206 207 

own journeys with me in my pocket. Like Lawrence 

Weiner says high up on a wall in Berlin: ‘Milk and 

Honey Taken Far Far Away.’ 2 Only I would like to add 

to that sentence: ‘to be friends again’. 

Could this mean that nothing is more simple than 

a tribute consisting of a symbol or a letter? When I 

later got to meet the son of the Devil we went to one 

of the smaller pubs in town, and he told me a tale 

about a method of training that I found interesting. 

What can you find within a process in a best-case 

scenario? 

I intend to find that out by trying out the method 

he told me, an ancient martial-arts training method 

that was used to strengthen the body and mind. For 

one year or more you carry on your back a shield 

that weighs about one quarter to one fifth the weight 

of your own body, except when you are sleeping. 

You wear the shield during practice, in your quest 

to improve for a chosen reason. With your muscles 

developed from the practice, when you finally remove 

the shield, you will feel as if you are walking on 

clouds. Only I would do it under more contemporary 

circumstances. I have asked various persons in jobs 

where you carry a lot of equipment and protection: 

policemen, firemen, security guards and the military. 

The persons carrying the most weight are in the 

military. 

I want to get in touch with a military person who 

is not currently working. Then I will meet this person 

when he/she is not carrying around the ‘shield’ and 

is therefore more in the state of ‘walking on clouds’. I 

will spend time with this person, doing what he/she 

wants to do in their spare time, and observe as well as 

participate. Maybe he/she wants to pursue a hobby, 

or spend time with his/her family. I would consider 

it like going on an adventure and hoping to find 

something out. I hope to retrieve some kind of object 

from this encounter. And if that doesn’t happen, 

maybe we can just pee together so it looks like a cross, 

then a nice cusp of fluid would occur? 

The allegoric part of this text ends here. Now I 

will try to present some thoughts on the concept of 

what a room can be in different settings. By room I 

mean a defined volume of space, no matter in what 

environment, both real and imagined. 

Rooms and What Surrounds Them 

What difference does it make depending on where 

and in which buildings or surroundings for instance a 

murder takes place? Does the presence of such events 

affect the room’s aura? Would these and other actions 

performed there stick to the walls? 

A certain object as a complement for common 

dreams, is there any use in separating the two? In 

the best case a piano tune sounds to me as if it is 

as powerful as a killer whale but also subtle like a 



humming bee, not as cute as a squirrel but shiny like 

a freshly caught salmon. When that sound appears, 

is there also something about the fingers? Beautiful 

fingers, that wouldn’t object at all to caressing entire 

masses of water (if given the opportunity). Listening to 

the tune from the piano will create a good atmosphere 

hopefully and add to the aura of the room. But to say 

that the emotions that have taken place in a certain 

room affect its aura is one thing, to try to explain why 

it feels that way when entering a room is much harder. 

Sometimes it’s just there. 

In the house where I grew up there was a cellar 

with a very dark, spine-tingling sensation about it, I 

was afraid to go down there, it felt as if it was in the 

walls somehow. It was much later that I learned that 

the house had a long time ago been a mental hospital 

and that there had been bathtubs made out of stone in 

the basement, where the patients were put in ice-cold 

water if they were not able to calm down when having 

a seizure. My father destroyed these bathtubs with a 

sledgehammer shortly after we moved in there but 

that room still had a very disturbing aura. 

On this wooden box there are patterns similar 

to that of my own drawings. What the box contains 

is unknown to me. Inside the framework there is 

a looping pattern with no end or beginning. The 

framework goes around the box in a structure of a 

very angular eight, a familiar sign for eternity, only 

here it’s more elaborate. Besides the figure eight, there 

are five squares in the pattern, two are separate, but 

intersected by the line which makes the three other 

ones. It works as a unification of the two separate 

ones. The waves in the pattern make me think of 

Walter Benjamin’s thoughts of the masses as a whole, 

and so does its red colour, for he saw himself as a 

communist. 3 (The mass being that of a mutual cultural 

body.) 

The true image of the past flits by. The past 

can be seized only as an image that flashes 

up at the moment of its recognisability, and is 

never seen again. ‘The truth will not run away 

from us’: this statement by Gottfried Keller 

indicates exactly that point in historicism’s 

image of history where the image is pierced by 

historical materialism. For it is an irretrievable 

image of the past which threatens to disappear 

in any present that does not recognise itself as 

intended in that image. 4 

The popular appreciation of realism in still life 

painting is illustrated in the Greek legend of Zeuxis 

and Parrhasius, who are said to have competed to 

create the most life-like images. Greek artists had 

for centuries been advanced in the arts of portrait 

painting and still life. One of them, Peiraikos, painted 

barbershops and horseshoe makers’ stalls, vegetables 

and such. For this reason he came to be called the 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

painter of vulgar subjects. Even though these works 

are altogether delightful, regarding the possibility they 

were never made at all, there are numerous clues that 

encourage us to trust in them being more than just 

myths. 

Hopefully they will stay in our hearts anyway, or 

at least until the sun sets and we are ready for them 

again. I will continue to try to capture the aura of my 

collected objects with my camera in any case. 

When showing documentation pictures from a 

project, I try to make every picture validate itself by 

showing the next step intended in the process. I hope 

that this produces an aesthetic by the functionality. 

What is considered beautiful in that sense is then 

more about what there is to find inside the picture 

series, than the pictures themselves. 

Thoughts as Containers for Objects 

Regarding my making of boxes, areas of concern: 

material displacement, material knowledge, an object’s 

inherent history, affection regarding objects, a object’s 

real time and transformation, distillation and objects 

when people are not around. 

One way to dislocate materials is to assign them a 

function that they are not associated with at first, or 

to pair materials up in a way that would rule out one 

function they might have had separately as a way to 

link them with another one. So, how many kicks does 

it take until you get to the centre of what we intended 

to do, but instead it turned out nice and the abyss 

just wasn’t there anymore? 5 It might have changed 

its position though, if material and energy really 

are constant. We make wars within that go boom, 

boom boom boom. 6 I might want you in my room, 

depending on the volume of it and if the cusp of our 

intentions turns out to be what we both intended. 

If you were here I would very much like to 

produce some songs with you, meant to be played 

on the radio, and hopefully later listened to at a 

convention for addicts of various kinds. A convention 

that would be the opposite of that of a rehabilitation 

situation, to embrace what will happen there is like 

lacking a key ingredient for a dish but still wanting to 

eat it. I would serve a soup made out of veal cutlets 

that can barely fit inside the bowl. 

There are two opposites that I find more 

interesting then others when thinking about the 

purpose of containers: disenchantment (Devaluation 

of mysticism. Is scientific understanding more highly 

valued than belief?) versus re-enchantment (Coming 

to terms with metaphysics. Is it antithetical to the 

empirical sciences?) 

A time capsule is a historic cache of goods and/ 

or information, usually intended as a method of 

communicating with people in the future. The phrase 

‘time capsule’ has been in use since about 1937, 

but the idea is as old as the earliest civilisations in 

Mesopotamia. Intentional time capsules are buried 

on purpose and are usually intended to be opened 

at a particular future date. Unintentional ones are 

archeological in nature, for example, Pompeii. 

Walter Benjamin was interested in cameras to get 

‘inside’ objects, to try to see their aura. Photography 

and the industrial era changed the way art is 

approached. I find the aura he speaks of very elusive 

and hard to grasp, but I do believe in it being there 

still. About the new possibilities with cameras he says: 

‘For it is another nature which speaks to the camera 

rather than to the eye; ‘other’ above all in the sense 

that a space informed by human consciousness gives 

way to a space informed by the unconscious.’ 7 With 

the new technology at hand at that time, nobody had 

ever been able to see things in slow motion, or as close 

ups, but now they could. What would a contemporary 

equivalent to that be? I’m still very fascinated by 

the possibility of seeing things through cameras that 

cannot be seen with the eyes alone. Will we some day 

adapt to technology? Do our storytellers transform 

mysteries into other things, and is it so that as soon as 

you predict the future you are daydreaming? 8 About 

the aura, Benjamin says: ‘A strange tissue of space and 

time: the unique apparition of a distance, however 

near it may be.’ 9 

If the universe is considered endless, does this 

mean that everything exists at the same time, that 

everything is inside everything, no matter the size of it, 

at all times? That there is a mirror of all aspects, the 

positive and the negative reflections or dimensions? 

The opposite of covering something is to reveal it. 

Both these actions are about what they cover 

or unfold, so what would the opposite be, of 

what they hide or unfold? The material’s negative 

opposite would be the same volume it takes up in 

air or a vacuum. But if it is an object, can it exist 

without having any value of emotional attachment, 

if not found, produced and hidden by a machine, 

unperceived by human senses? It would be like 

saying; if the tree falls in the forest without our 

presence, does the sound exist? 10 But then again, 

machines are built by humans, would it be possible 

to know what’s inside of the box? And what does the 

phrase ‘I give you my word for it’ mean? 

I can relate to Robert Smithson’s viewing of his 

environment when he comes to the run-down hotel 

in Mexico, Hotel Palenque. 11 His take on the hotel is 

that there is no actual center to it because it is both 

rebuilt and in other parts torn down. Instead he is 

very interested in how the surroundings look, and he 

pictures it as a building that acts as a continuation 

of the way that the Mayan civilisation used their 

buildings, which he describes in a humorous way as 

cruel. He walks by a pool in the hotel and connects 

the look of it and the situation to where the Mayan 

people stored their bodies after sacrifices, where they 

208 209 

rolled down from the temples and piled up. When he 

sees this he documents it with a photo. 

This is a really old hotel and you can see that 

instead of just tearing it down at once they tear 

it down partially so that you are not deprived 

of the complete wreckage situation… Evidently 

they wanted a swimming pool at one time and 

they built this swimming pool but actually, 

when you come to a place like this nobody 

wants to swim…It is really bluntly made and 

it calls up all the fears and dreads of the ancient 

Mayan Aztec culture, human sacrifice and 

mass slaughter. 12 

What is it in a situation like this that starts a 

train of thoughts? He can’t possibly have been there 

himself as a witness, it is imaginary. The first things 

we remember are said to be those connected to scent. 

Rooms are connected to time, how long they exist in 

a current setting. There are so many factors to how 

we see or interpret situations we experience, both 

consciously and unconsciously. If you aren’t the one 

who built a room, it has a previous history, and even 

so, before it reaches a state where you consider it 

done, how can you know what has happened when 

you weren’t there? This goes for dialogue also, is there 

first-hand information at all? 

It could come down to the context: when you visit 

a room, or when you talk about certain ideas, in the 

best case, a combination of factors that are relevant 

to what you wanted to come out of it will happen. But 

it could also be that a mistake leads you forward in 

the intended quest, like when the X-ray or penicillin 

were created. In some ways it would be like a loop 

of all that has ever happened, like empirical studies 

in physics. This could also be close to what Walter 

Benjamin says about his wave, a body of thoughts. 13 

To advance research everything is regarded as 

hypothetical, new and old, but they still might lead 

somewhere. And who decides? Does the winning 

side write history? Historians might fix the event to 

a precise year eventually, but the population might 

not even have noticed the change, it takes time to 

adapt. In that sense, is an unintentional time capsule 

to be considered more pure, considering that nature 

creates it? 

Still, when dug up you can choose to at least edit 

the findings, alter them. Is it then just vanity, a mirror 

outside of the bathroom, to make an intentional 

time capsule? At least it freezes a certain moment 

of time and actions, leaving some room for thought. 

And when opened, hopefully to start a new base for 

thoughts. The actual cover of an intentional time 

capsule is not to be evaluated for its quality to sustain 

attacks, that would mean that it’s considered lost, or 

a myth. No matter what the cover consists of, is it 

the opening of it that counts as an action? But if the 



material making the cover withers before it’s opened, 

what happens then? If the cover for it is a thought, 

how is it then breached if the knowledge is forgotten? 

Three Examples or Case Studies 

Regarding Boxes 

Black Box #1. Creating a time-capsule. An attempt to 

put an object’s history and the persons related to its 

actions inside of a vessel to preserve it for the person 

who opens it. 

October 2007. I built a throne for the student 

kitchen at the Malmö Art Academy, to see if someone 

would sit in it and thereby ‘assume power’ through 

that gesture. I painted it in happy primary colors and 

green. I arranged the furniture in the room, placing 

the throne in the center, as a leader is always placed in 

the center. As it turned out, it wasn’t a popular place 

to sit. I asked Gertrud Sandqvist, currently Professor 

and the former Director of the Academy, to sit in the 

throne. She accepted and then told me afterwards it 

was uncomfortable. 

Later, I placed the throne outside of the kitchen. 

I added a short text to the chair, as a slogan for the 

‘domain’ it represents: ‘When all else fails, use fire.’ 14 

This phrase is quoted from the video game Zelda 

II: The Adventure of Link. In the game, an old lady 

says this to the protagonist–hero as he enters the 

first virtual town in the game. She tells him to seek a 

tool that can light up the dark places of the land. It 

turns out that the item he must find is a candle. When 

something fails, you can always burn it and forget 

about it. 

The staff at the Academy asked me on numerous 

occasions to move the chair from where it was 

standing, outside the kitchen. I approached some of 

the students and asked them what they thought about 

that but most of them said that they wanted it to 

remain there. I assumed at that point that the throne 

had become part of the Academy’s environment, and 

that the students felt a certain familiarity towards it. 

So I kept it there. 

September 2008. The following autumn, at the 

welcome dinner, I asked Anders Kreuger, the current 

Director of the school, if he would sit in the throne 

throughout the dinner. It was placed at the end of 

a long dining table. He refused to sit in it, and it 

remained empty throughout the dinner. After that, I 

brought it up to the top floor of the academy. 

October 2008. Even though I changed its location, 

one of the staff members put a note on my throne 

saying: ‘Please move this or throw it away. Thank 

you/Kristian.’ After that, I brought it into my studio. I 

decided that it was time to burn it. 

I called the fire department to get a permit for 

burning the throne in the schoolyard. I made five calls, 

and my request was passed on to different authorities. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

The last one was forwarded to the Environmental 

Department of Malmö. I was supposed to call 

them to see if the paint of the chair would exceed 

approved toxic levels for contaminating the air. The 

Fire Marshall of Malmö asked me why I wanted to 

burn the throne. I told him that it was part of an art 

project I was working on. He asked me: ‘Is that art? 

To burn a throne?’ My attempt to get a permit to burn 

something suddenly turned into a discussion on ‘what 

is art’. 

November 2008. I never received a burning permit. 

I decided to shatter the throne into small pieces with 

a baseball bat. To do this, I had help from my friend 

Maximilian Boss. Then I gathered the flat wood 

shivers and made a cup out of them shaped after an 

octagon. I burnt the remaining pieces except for the 

four legs of what was once a throne. I preserved the 

ashes in a glass jar. The only information I annotated 

on the jar is the quantity it contains: 446 ml. 

I put the four legs of the throne inside a box and 

sealed it. Then I put the pillar and the jar on top of it 

and held a ceremony for Anders Kreuger and Gertrud 

Sandqvist. Anders was rewarded with the jar with 

the ashes for not sitting in the throne. Gertrud was 

awarded the cup for sitting in it. 

I cut the bottom of the box open and put the jar 

and the cup inside it, and then I filled the box up with 

expanding foam, turning the object into a solid piece 

once again. I had two witnesses when I sealed it this 

second time. Nothing rattles around inside it except 

the metal ball inside the empty expanding foam can 

that I placed alongside the other objects inside the 

box. Someday, if this box is ever burnt again, it will 

probably explode due to the gas inside the can. 

Black Box #2. An attempt to preserve the working 

process of an artist from another country, visiting my 

home country, with an interest in the travelling of 

objects. 

The first time I met Lily Benson, in September 

2008, was outside of a container in which we stored 

our studio furniture over the summer. She had just 

arrived in Sweden for a one-term exchange at Malmö 

Art Academy, she came from the Cooper Union for 

the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly 

referred to as the ‘Cooper Union’. I gave her a desk 

that she sat and worked at almost daily while she was 

here. When she left in December I took the desk back 

to my studio and took it apart. 

The only physical trace she left on it was her full 

name written on a scratched sticker. I dismantled 

the desk. I sorted it into the different materials it 

contained, happy that it was four different ones: 

wood, metal, plastic, rubber. 

During the sorting I found the date stamp 

indicating the date the desk was made or dispatched: 

1985-05-29. This made it about one year older than 

Lily. The stamp was not visible when the table was 

still assembled; it was situated in between the upper 

side of the drawer and the desk’s underside. 

The brown logotype reads N.K.R.. I hadn’t heard 

about the company before and I thought that it 

seemed a bit strange to have an extra dot after the R. I 

found out that the company had changed their name 

to European Furniture Group, EFG, in 1992. They 

supply many Swedish companies with furniture. 

I cut the different materials into 8 cm long pieces 

and put them into piles to measure the volume of 

the separate materials, without the negative spatial 

volume created inside the various shapes when the 

desk is intact. In the end I managed to make the table 

about seven to eight times smaller in overall volume, 

that is if you count the whole structure as a cube with 

the positive/negative space that it uses. The box still 

contains all the parts of the desk and is again one 

solid shape. 

The order of the materials inside the box is by 

volume, first the wood, followed by metal, plastic 

and finally rubber. I used expanding-foam to fill the 

remaining empty space in the box to pressure the 

materials back into one unit. The box itself is not 

made out of material from the desk, so the desk is 

no longer accessible or touchable. My intention was 

that the last person utilizing the desk in its original 

function was to be Lily. There are many pieces to 

assemble together to restore it to its original shape. 

I painted the box black because it is the colour that 

absorbs the most light, making it less visible. It has 

a coat of transparent lacquer to create a reflection, 

making it even less visible. The viewer will see him/ 

herself in the surface of the box. I did this to make it 

somewhat inconspicuous in the environment where 

it will be displayed. Its inside/history indicates that it 

has the qualities of a monolith, but its volume might 

be too small to be one. 

The four rubber feet that slightly hoist the box 

make it seem as though it is floating, just a little, in 

the air. When I installed these two boxes in a group 

show I placed them part way into the room, with a 

compendium sitting on the wall with accompanying 

texts and documentation series in it. The compendium 

was accessible about 2 to 5 metres from them, because 

they were placed with a distance of about 3 metres 

between them. I did this as an attempt to see if it 

would seem as if they were to destroy themselves, 

make them less visible in the presentation. There were 

no labels in the show either, only a map. One of them 

was placed centered in front of another artist’s screen 

for a video and at the opening an old woman sat on it, 

watching that video. I asked her if she liked the video 

and she said that she did. It felt like a success; she 

didn’t know, or knew exactly my intention with the 

installation. 

The third example has a very descriptive title (this 

version of the title is from the first time I exhibited 

210 211 

it, which was in a group show in Malmö 2009 called 

Authentic Forgeries): 

BLACK BOX #4 

An attempt to deal with the measurements 

of capacity, and to activate negative volumes. 

Containing the six different materials of a 

dismantled couch, carefully sorted and placed 

on top of each other according to density, with 

the lightest layer at the bottom. Some metal 

parts have been removed, but this has been 

compensated for with expanding foam. The 

box is disguised as a standard white museum 

pedestal, except that its surface is glossier and 

it is hoisted 2 cm above the ground with rubber 

feet. It is presented with another artist’s work 

on top of it. Documentation of the working 

process is presented on a standard pedestal of 

the same size (but empty) in the next room. 

A photo of the black box as it is installed in 

the show is presented on the wall, above the 

documentation. The two rooms are the same 

size and the two pedestals are placed in exactly 

the same spot in the different rooms, as a 

dislocated duplication. 

I find it very interesting to see how things react 

and respond in different settings and rooms, the 

relations and interactions between objects, people, 

animals and different culture manifestations and the 

time they appear. It’s fun to experience a déjà vu and 

to try to remember what actually happened in the 

previous similar situation, it could be a very funny 

loop to be stuck in, to have a déjà vu about having a 

déjà vu. 

Could it be that we are contemplating certain 

moments while bonding in various areas through 

theories on how it’s possible to change the conditions 

for how we read between the lines, and at the same 

time searching for means to communicate the 

categories being developed by doing that? Hopefully 

we will arrive where it’s about to happen eventually, 

would that be what adventurus, about to happen, 

and advenire, to arrive, would mean if they were put 

together? 

Goethe and Faust were sitting in a tree, K–I–S–S– 

I–N–G. 15 Who gave up the soul and who’s got the 

crack? 16 Because they were not the kids sitting on the 

couch. 17 They probably didn’t mistake the steak for a 

chicken and the demons gets worse when the night 

comes. So who can bend the Devil? 

Who are you, then? I am part of that power 

which eternally wills evil and eternally 

works good. 18 



I am part of that which once, when all began, 

was all there was; part of the Darkness 

before man. Whence light was born, proud light, 

which now makes futile war. To wrest from 

Night, its mother, what before was hers, her 

ancient place and space. For light depends on 

the corporeal worlds – matter that sends visible 

light out, stops light in its stride and by reflected 

light is beautified. So, light will not last long, I 

fear; Matter shall be destroyed, and light shall 

disappear. 19 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notes 

1. Grace, Ingen kan älska som vi (‘No One Can 

Love Like Us’). CBS, 1988. 

2. Weiner, Lawrence, MILK AND HONEY 

TAKEN FAR FAR AWAY, 1994/1996. 

3. Benjamin, Walter, exchange with Theodor W 

Adorno on ‘The Flâneur’, in the section ‘The 

Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire’, 

in Selected Writings Volume 4 1938–1940. 


2002, p.200–214. 

4. Benjamin, Walter, ‘On the Concept of History’, 



2002, p.390–391. 

5. Lil’ Kim, How Many Licks? (featuring Sisqo). 

Atlantic Records/Queen Bee Entertainment, 2000. 

6. Vengaboys, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom! 

Breakin’ Records/Violent Music, 1998. 

7. Benjamin, Walter, ‘A Little History of 

Photography’, in Selected Writings Volume 

2 1927–1934. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard 

University Press, 2002, p.510. 

8. Benjamin, Walter and Arendt, Hannah, 

Illuminations. London: Pimlico, 1999, p.7–58. 

9. Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Work of Art in the Age 

of Its Technological Reproducibility, Second 

Version’, in Selected Writings Volume 3 1935– 

1938. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University 

Press, 2002, p.104–105. 

10. Believed to have been said by George Berkeley. 

11. Smithson, Robert, ‘Insert Robert Smithson Hotel 

Palenque 1969–72’, in Parkett No 43. Zurich: 

Parkett Publishers, 1995, pp.117–132. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Benjamin, Walter, exchange with Theodor W 

Adorno on ‘The Flâneur’, in the section ‘The 

Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire’, 



2002, p.200–214. 

14. Miyamoto, Shigeru, Zelda II: The Adventure of 

Link. Nintendo, 1988. 

15. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust Part 1 and 

2, translated by David Luke. Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1994 & 1998. 

16. Moldy Peaches, Who’s Got The Crack. 

Sanctuary Records/Rough Trade, 2001. 

17. Moldy Peaches, Steak for Chicken. Sanctuary 

Records/Rough Trade, 2001. 

18. Quote from Goethe’s Faust in Bulgakov, 

Mikhail, The Master and Margarita, translated 

by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. 

New York: Penguin, 1997, p.3. 

19. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust Part I, 

translated by David Luke. Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1994, p.42. 

Bibliography 

Benjamin, Walter, Goethes ”Valfrändskaperna” 

(‘Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”’), translated by Carl- 

Henning Wijkmark. Stehag/Stockholm: Symposion, 

1995. 

Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Margarita, 

translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa 

Volokhonsky. New York: Penguin, 1997. 

Englund, Peter, Tystnadens historia och andra 

essäer (‘The History of Silence and Other Essays’). 

Stockholm: Atlantis, 2003. 

Freud, Sigmund, ‘En djävulsneuros från 1600-talet’ 

(‘A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis’), 

in Samlade skrifter av Sigmund Freud, band XI. Konst 

och Litteratur (‘Collected Writings by Sigmund Freud, 

Tome XI. Art and Literature’). Stockholm: Natur och 

Kultur, 2007, pp.353–386. 

von Gerber, Jan, Hedqvist, Hedvig and Jacobsson, 

Rikard, Modernt Svenskt Tenn (‘Modern Swedish 

Pewter’). Stockholm: Atlantis, 2004. 

Gibbon, David and Smart, USA. A Picture Book to 

Remember Her By. New York: Crescent Books, 1978. 

Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust Part I, translated 

by David Luke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1994. 

Gööck, Roland, Alle Wunder dieser Welt (‘All the 

Wonders of This World’). Gütersloh: Präsentverlag 

Heinz Peter and Bertelsmann Sachbuchverlag 

Reinhard Mohn, 1968. 

Hansson, May and Junghagen, Eva, Le journal de la 

coiffure (‘The Journal of Hair-Styling’) No 4 1960. 

Malmö: Andersson & Co, 1960. 

Jansson, Tove, Pappan och havet (‘Moominpappa at 

Sea’). Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1998. 

Kelly, Richard and Matheson, Richard, The Box. 

Darko Entertainment, 2009. 

Lynch, David and Frost, Mark, Twin Peaks TT Series 

Definitive Gold Box Edition. Twin Peaks Productions, 

2007. 

Marx, Ursula, Schwartz, Gudrun, Schwartz, Michael 

and Wizisla, Erdmut, Walter Benjamin’s Archive 

– Images, Texts, Signs, translated by Esther Leslie. 

London: Verso, 2007. 

Miyazaki, Hayao, Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli, 

1999. 

212 213 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

214 215 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Niklas Persson 

Attempts at Shared Experience and Autonomy 

Introduction 

This being an essay (‘an attempt, endeavour’ 1 ), 

I will try to accomplish several things: explore some 

recurring issues in my own practice; investigate how 

other artists – whose practice I find adjacent to mine – 

relate to the issues that I have experienced; elaborate 

on ideas concerning autonomy and sharing of 

experience; draw an outline for future work through 

the experience gained so far. 

Part One: Shared Experience? Autonomy? 

The work and concepts of a group of artists: Hélio 

Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Victor Grippo, Alberto Greco 

and – in this quintet quite alien and notably younger 

– Heath Bunting, are hard to collect under a common 

term, but this is not even desirable as it would tame, 

undermine and maybe even extinguish the very core 

of their practices. I will, however, try to examine some 

common characteristics of these artists’ practices, 

the clearest of which is their individual ambitions 

for collective work – for proposing unfinished, open 

works 2 and participatory processes rather than closed 

works (finished by the artist in the studio and put on 

display for an ‘interpassive’ 3 audience). 

This in particular is what interests me the most. 

Another shared characteristic is found in the many 

implications for the future interrelationship of art and 

life 4 in their works and a mutual seeping of one of 

these into the other – as in the yin-yang disc where 

the lozenge of dark contains a seed of light, and vice 

versa. 5 A space where experimental processes can find 

a (temporary) refuge. I find this being something often 

ignored and/or frowned upon as a contamination of 

the pure, something I see as an illusion incubated by 

a strong (Western) belief in Dualism 6 (good and evil, 

light and dark, art and life etc.), while the following 

takes place behind the smokescreen of Dualism: 

‘from Chaos comes the “myriad things”, like the seeds 

in a gourd or the chopped-up goodies in a wonton’ 

7 as each individual experience of the process 

is incorporated and ‘the water in a spillover-vessel 

which flows out, letting each stream find its own 

channel, fertilising the earth, bringing everything 

into becoming.’ A first breath of the new air is drawn 

and at once fills the lungs of the collective work. 

This is effectively demonstrated, both literally and 

metaphorically, in Clark’s Air and Stone (‘not an 

art object but a proposal: simply inflate an ordinary 

plastic bag, seal it, place the stone in one corner and 

squeeze the bag between your hands’ 8 ). 

The interplay of solid mass and empty space, 

of weight and lightness, sums up the whole of 

sculptural history, yet the object is analogous 

to a body, breathing between our hands and 

sustained by our gestures. ‘We are the mould: 

the breath inside the mould is yours: the 

meaning of our existence.’ 9 

Growing up as white, lower middle class and male 

in a small but quite wealthy town in south-western 

Sweden effectively screened me from any existing 

organised search for autonomy. But regardless of that 

I always felt in opposition to claims of authority and 

moral absolutism. Provoked by hierarchies around me 

and the requirement to position myself inside these 

I searched for autonomy in everything around me. 

Usually I ended up feeling that the autonomy I found 

was not much more than a façade in front of a brick 

wall of authority, but nonetheless one, I observed, 

which was full of small cracks through which 

something shone from just behind the bricks. When I 

came into contact with political parties whom with I 

shared some viewpoints I was often repelled by their 

togetherness – I could for some reason not imagine 

myself in any such band of brothers. Instead, some 

years later I found myself on the verge of adulthood in 

the nearest city, Gothenburg. 

During this time I also first encountered the 

concept of psychogeography, stumbling upon Guy 

Debord’s Théorie de la dérive in some corner of 

the internet (originally published in Internationale 

Situationiste #2 Paris, December 1958). I was 

unemployed at that time and occupied myself with 

activities something like those the drifting Debord 

wrote of many years earlier; exploring corners, 

pathways and hidden islands in between the used 

spaces of the city. I was also occupied with creative 

writing for my own pleasure, inspired by the lyrics 

and poetry of Saul Williams, Sufi masters (Hafiz, 

Rumi) and the beat generation (Kerouac, Ginsberg 

etc.) The synthesis of creative writing (as a window 

to imaginary spaces) and music (as enchantment 

and pathway to bodily movement) was interesting 

to me, but was not close to me in a direct way e.g. in 

jamming, musical composition and/or writing lyrics. 

Instead I found myself working with words, drawn 

imagery and temporal unauthorised installations here 

and there – often in the same islands I had earlier 

been drifting among – something which had become 

a sort of quasi drifting-scouting-crafting-documenting 

activity. This specific synthesis of activities and the 

continuous search for spaces to operate within seems 

close to what Hakim Bey writes about the in The 

Temporary Autonomous Zone, of being in search of 

‘“spaces” (geographic, social, cultural, imagined) with 

potential to flower as autonomous zones.’ 10 

My drifting/scouting/crafting/documenting 

eventually morphed – through the photographic/ 

documentary part of the activity – into working with 

The Photograph as Contemporary Art (the title of a 

Thames & Hudson book I read around this time). 

I became a student on an advanced vocational 

education and training in photography and performed 

a sort of dance during this time – distancing myself 

216 217 

from the previous activity, into pure photography and 

then going closer to the first multi-faceted activity 

again. After about two years I began distancing the 

work from being photography, something which ran 

parallel to studies at the School of Photography at 

Gothenburg University for a Bachelor of Fine Art in 

Photography. I continued to distance myself from 

the photographic image as core of my practice and 

applied for a transfer to Malmö Art Academy as I felt 

my work would benefit more from the framework of 

fine art (in Swedish fri konst which literally translates 

as ‘free art’, a term I find more liberating.) 

In this liberation of the photograph as essential 

to my work I rediscovered my interest in the ideas 

of the Situationists, something which has been 

continuously interesting to me. It is perhaps not a 

shock to hear that I also encountered Fluxus now and 

then, but it did not really hold my interest very well 

even though the ideas of the event often seemed close 

– something which has repeatedly been pointed out to 

me by others. 

It now seems logical that I would at some point 

be reading material published by Autonomedia (a 

publisher of books concerning anarchism, autonomy, 

cyberfeminism etc.) Recommended by Joachim 

Koester I started to read Hakim Bey’s The Temporary 

Autonomous Zone, in which Bey draws from the 

praxis of the pirates (not modern day piracy – Somalia 

or copyright infringement – but the 18th century’s 

swashbuckling kind) and from the history of attempts 

at autonomy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Early 

in that text his point of view felt strangely familiar; 

he writes in the introduction to the concept of the 

Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ): 

I have deliberately refrained from defining 

the TAZ – I circle around the subject, firing 

off exploratory beams. In the end the TAZ is 

almost self-explanatory. If the phrase became 

current it would be understood without 

difficulty […] understood in action. 11 

It seemed to me Bey was not interested in absolute 

truths and I continued to explore with him how a TAZ 

could be started and how it would inevitably vanish 

‘leaving behind it an empty husk, only to spring up 

again somewhere else, once again invisible because 

indefinable in terms of the Spectacle’ 12 as soon as 

it had become ‘named (represented, mediated)’. 13 

The core difference between Bey’s TAZs and other 

attempts to reach the (anarchist) dreams of a free 

culture lies in its invisibility, making it utterly effective 

and ensuring that ‘the State cannot recognise it 

because History has no definition of it.’ 14 The reference 

to Debord’s spectacle made me curious and I soon 

found out that what had brought me to this text 

had obviously been the events in Paris around 1968 

and specifically the notion of how the use of poetry 



effectively forms the basis of revolutions. 15 Wherever 

I go I seem to return to being interested in poetry (in 

both a literary and very broad definition) as potent 

motor and even as change agent. I wouldn’t call it 

the sole source of my view of poetry, I remember 

sometime during my growth encountering, through a 

newspaper article concerning some demonstration or 

black/red/green political rally, a piece of anonymous 

graffiti (remediated as printed text) from Paris 

sometime during the uprisings in 1968: Sous les 

pavés, la plage! which can be translated as ‘Beneath 

the paving stones the beach!’ 

My search for autonomous spaces was very much 

my everyday life and was also my daily work (without 

of course earning any money for it and trying to live 

cheap, hosted by my patient father and extended 

family for a while until I could get an income from 

the government’s grant/loan for students). Creative 

writing (or what I reluctantly would call ‘poetry’) 

became for me a potent agent for channeling my need 

for poetic/political/philosophical stimuli. 

I secretly allied myself with the beat generation, 

the Situationists, drifters, municipal workers, squatters 

and as a matter of fact anyone doing anything (that I 

encountered while drifting through the city). Perhaps 

it was precisely my lack of forced work tasks that 

made me interested in voluntary and autonomous 

ones. The attraction I felt towards these actions 

generated a sort of quasi-occupation where I would 

simply carry out tasks in public spaces that were 

not ordered by anyone but me. Had I become a selfemployed 

and autonomous nomad/voluntary worker/ 

poet/vandal/philosopher/artist? Perhaps it was a sort 

of ‘psychic nomadism’? 

These nomads practice the razzia, they 

are the corsairs, they are the viruses; they 

have both need and desire for TAZs, camps 

of black tents under the desert stars, 

interzones hidden fortified oases along secret 

caravan routes, ‘liberated’ bits of jungle and 

bad-land, no-go areas, black markets, and 

underground bazaars. 17 

The experience of these actions was always 

between that of vandal and voluntary community 

worker, with a tingling feeling in my stomach 

sometimes and a proud feeling of doing good things 

before disappearing from the scene into the masses 

or shaded corners of the city. Bey suggest the act of 

disappearance as a very logical radical option for our 

time: 

[…] to mine it for useful strategies in the 

always-ongoing ‘revolution of everyday life’: the 

struggle that cannot cease even with the last 

failure of political or social revolution because 

nothing except the end of the world can bring 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

an end to everyday life, nor to our aspirations 

for the good things, for the Marvelous. And as 

Nietzsche said, if the world could come to an 

end, logically it would have done so; it has not, 

so it does not. 18 

I find my own work to be continually looping 

back into and operating within borderlands between 

western dualities. For the exhibition Information 

Wants to Be Free in London my practice consisted 

of ‘leaving everyday objects, carefully composed 

according to a complex set of binaries and word 

pairs’ 19 My attempt was to source pre-existing objects 

from all over everyday life and simultaneously 

organise these (and their specific sites, specifics of 

installation etc.) according to a quasi-taxonomic 

practice and create a chaotic self-destructive field of 

objects that are ‘stubbornly defying fixed meaning.’ 20 

A poster was presented in the space of Platform 

One Gallery with photographs depicting the objects 

installed and their environments overlaid with (con) 

textual material: council bylaws, notes concerning 

the selection and strategy for specific items and their 

placement, a text describing Abraham Maslow’s 

Law of The Instrument, practical information of 

Wandsworth Common Railway Station, an alchemical 

poem, an article concerning the Philosopher’s 

Stone, notes concerning three important strategic 

decisions for the project etc. My efforts to counteract 

the expected process of creating a work (physically, 

conceptually, politically) was a way of taking actions 

to a point where sense and nonsense fused into 

something which wouldn’t fit into a Dualist world 

(thus proving it false, an illusion). 

For a long time my practice was dependent on a 

mind-over-matter attitude where the realization of 

autonomy, or anything else for that matter, depended 

on the ability to use a self-actualizing mantra which 

transforms virtual into actual. This ‘now-realised’ (exvirtual) 

state is not a strategy for bringing about actual 

change (at least not in the common sense meaning), 

but to reap the benefits of such a change before it 

has actually been carried out. Bey suggests leaving 

one exhausted temporary space for another more 

beneficial one before resistance is met. 21 It is a sort of 

‘surgical stealth strike’ probably used for as long as 

there has been a system to operate within, something 

which is of course nothing new (looking at capitalist 

entrepreneurs, assassins, civil-rights activists etc.), but 

yet a very potent strategy similar to a self-treatment 

with placebo medicines; 22 a realisation of how 

everything floats, how everything is in a constant flux 

where only disbelief can dispel it 23 – and even ‘adverse 

effects reported after administration of a placebo’ 24 

supports the argument of the strategy as a potent one 

(the result of a disbeliever practicing mind-over-matter 

with a destructive or negative outcome). 

The transformation of virtual into actual was for 

me, until recently, a solo activity. Now it changed 

into a participatory one. I came to a realisation that 

the sharing of actual experience was essential to my 

practice, something which I had severely neglected 

for a long time. I was at the beginning of working 

with a project concerning autonomous seating and 

was in contact with an artist named Lina Issa. She 

was currently in a residency at IASPIS in Stockholm, 

working on her project What If, If I Take Your Ålace? 

Issa writes about her work that it ‘explores issues 

of place, otherness, personal histories and relations 

(psychosocial cartographies)’ 25 and this specific work 

was both very clear and simple, yet with promises 

of an infinite depth and width: to replace someone, 

to take someone’s place in a certain situation ‘for an 

hour, a day, a month…’ 26 

Her openness to the project appealed to me and 

therefore I contacted her to see whether she was 

interested in trying to explore a recurring issue in my 

practice: searching for autonomy and shared personal 

experience. I suggested exploring this issue through 

her replacing me as the performer of my preconceived 

(or perhaps even scripted) events. She was positive 

and our discussions headed towards what I now 

know was the inevitable outcome: the realisation 

that I wouldn’t solve this issue by simply outsourcing 

its execution to someone else (enabling me to direct, 

observe and document them, making them a subject) 

but what was really of importance was a mutual 

sharing of experiences gained through a certain 

event. This evaluation of two or more individual 

experiences within a given spatial and temporal 

framework was what my practice had been lacking 

for a few years, working with something I didn’t want 

to call performance, masquerading in the form of 

photographic works, text works, traces of events or 

promises of events-to-come in the form of objects and 

so on. 

Thus far my recent discovery has only resulted in 

a shared experiment and interviewing (on location 

with a portable audio recording device) that other part 

and vice versa. This interchange of notions, inquiries 

and outlooks with the other(s) involved has for me 

promises of something unique: jointly discovering new 

meanings using the two thought spaces resulting in a 

sort of montage of outlooks. This is of course nothing 

unique seen in a larger perspective, but certainly 

something to me very pleasant and positive to work 

with. This interchange is interesting in relation to 

my previous work (and frustrations in the process of 

its production): a participatory practice which can 

be for example a single collision of thought between 

two individuals over a glass of tea or something like a 

larger space for joint experimentation reaching over a 

longer period of time. 

At the School of Photography I remember one 

particular turning point of frustration and ambition 

during a talk with artist-photographer Anna Kleberg. 

218 219 

We discussed a proposal I had made to host a tea 

party in the lobby of the school. I had high ambitions 

for this cautious ‘festal’ activity 27 but it has remained 

an unexecuted proposal for reasons which had for 

me until recently been unknown. The problem was 

in the format of the work, or perhaps evens my 

outlook on art, where the strong dichotomy of user/ 

author hindered both me and others (co-supervisors/ 

co-subjects/co-observers of joint experiments) from 

actualizing the work: 

Art in the World of Art has become a 

commodity; but deeper than that lies the 

problem of re-presentation itself, and the 

refusal of all mediation. In the TAZ art as a 

commodity will simply become impossible; it 

will instead be a condition of life. Mediation 

is harder to overcome, but the removal of all 

barriers between artists and ‘users’ of art will 

tend toward a condition in which (as A K 

Coomaraswamy described it) ‘the artist is not 

a special sort of person, but every person is a 

special sort of artist.’ 28 

Part Two: Shared Experience, Autonomy! 

Let’s try this modest proposal: The venturing to jointly 

investigate a specific (but not necessarily clear, verbal 

or distinct) notion resulting in events similar to field 

trips, tea parties, lunches, workshops and classes with 

a lack of hierarchy or what might be called an open 

structure. 

In these spaces everyone uses himself or herself as 

a test subject and takes turns in interviewing and being 

interviewed, a practice which will hopefully result in 

fruitful discussions concerning the experiences of a 

specific event (from a specific point of view, physical 

locality and time). These experiences can be recorded 

using a plethora of different techniques: as individual 

accounts or group discussions and recorded as audio, 

video, written accounts, still photography, drawing, 

bodily reenactments etc. The event is already past, 

the experience of it remains: its source has vanished 

before it could be seen, while the resulting experience 

of it is irreversible. One space is exhausted, yet an 

infinite of possible future ones remains, granting 

whoever wishes to ‘a way of always occupying an 

autonomous zone’ 29 , climbing from one step to 

another as they disappear behind one’s feet. 

Oiticica suggests two different modes of proposing 

a collective art: ‘to throw individual productions 

into contact with the public in the streets (naturally, 

productions created for this, not conventional 

productions adapted)’ 30 or ‘to propose creative 

activities to this public, in the actual creation of the 

work.’ 31 

Now for something you might not have expected, 



but which I find closely connected to concepts of 

performance, autonomy and shared experience: 

a specific outlook of the Clown as performer and 

change agent. The fundament of the Clown’s practice 

is love and care for its audience. The wearing of 

a mask is not to protect the one behind it from 

responsibility, humiliation and shame but is instead 

assuming a state of vulnerability – as a strategy 

for being able to face one’s audience with a great 

honesty, to access a communication which has the 

sincerity of the young child in which all subjects 

(even those which are taboo) become accessible and 

actual. Wearing a mask enables the Clown to pass 

through social barriers, this transgression infuses 

the audience’s gaze with that of the child, making 

them all transparent. The Clown is naïve and cannot 

understand social conventions and it is therefore 

not really to be blamed for breaking them. However, 

with this freedom from responsibility in the Clown 

comes the need for another, new and transparent 

responsibility for the one behind the Mask: to achieve 

trust in, and to care for, both the Audience and the 

Clown’s own actions. 

‘Cause we represent a truth, son, 

that changes by the hour 

And when you open to it, vulnerability is power 

And in that shifting form you’ll find a truth that 

doesn’t change 

And that truth is living proof of the fact that 

God is strange 32 

Could the Clown be used as an agent for instituting 

the Temporary Autonomous Zone? Could the 

parangolés of Oiticica have a similar function as 

the mask of the Clown? And are they both a sort of 

personal micro-TAZs? Regardless, where and how 

can the TAZ be located and initiated? Bey believes 

‘[the] TAZ as a conscious radical tactic’ 33 will emerge 

only under a few conditions: when we ‘realise (make 

real) the moments and spaces in which freedom is 

not only possible but actual’; 34 when the counter-Net 

(the illicit web woven in between the intersections 

of the existing Net/infrastructure) contains a more 

significant amount of information on ‘concrete 

goods and services necessary for the autonomous 

life’; 35 when the ‘apparatus of Control – the “State”’ 36 

continues toward making its power disappear by 

simultaneously solidifying and liquefying ‘in which 

hysterical rigidity comes more and more to mask a 

vacuity, an abyss of power.’ 37 

But out of chaos comes order 

Out of chaos comes order, 

out of chaos comes order 


out of chaos comes order 


BFA 3 BFA 3 

out of chaos comes 

Fake niggas run for the border 38 

Out of borders comes chaos, repeat the mantra 

‘the land lays open, bare, there is no border’ until 

the land lays open, bare, there is no border. Study 

this transformation, for here grows a strange plant: 

‘an aesthetic of the borderland between chaos and 

order, the margin, the area of ‘catastrophe’ where the 

breakdown of a system can equal enlightenment.’ 39 

It is clear to me that the works of Hélio Oiticica, 

Lygia Clark, Victor Grippo, Alberto Greco and Heath 

Bunting ‘will either infiltrate the media and subvert 

“it” from within – or else never be “seen” at all.’ 40 

The ability to move rootlessly, to be a psychic 

nomad, to be able to freely move ‘from philosophy to 

tribal myth, from natural science to Taoism’ 41 seems to 

me an essential part of the search for an ever-fleeting 

autonomy, for the ‘war machine’ must surely have 

wheels (or at least feet). I propose using a conscious 

strategy in which multiple individual experiences and 

the sharing of that experience form a collective work, 

thus enabling each and every one of us ‘to see for the 

first time through the eyes like some golden insect’s, 

each facet giving a view of an entirely other world.’ 42 

220 221 

Notes 

1. essay, 5: OED Online, http://dictionary.oed. 

com/cgi/entry/50078118, accessed 14 March, 

2010, 

2. Oiticica, Helio, Hélio Oiticica. Rotterdam: 

Witte de With, 1992, p.119. 

3. ‘interpassivity, in its opposition to interactivity 

(not in the standard sense of interacting 

with the medium, but in the sense of another 

doing it for me, in my place).’ Žižek, Slavoj, 

The Interpassive Subject, http://homepage. 

newschool.edu/~quigleyt/vcs/interpassive.pdf, 


4. Brett, Guy, ‘Life Strategies: Overview and 

Selection—Buenos Aires/London/Rio de 

Janeiro/Santiago de Chile 1960–1980’ in 

Schimmel, Paul, ed., Out of Actions: Between 

Performance and the Object, 1949–1979, New 

York: Thames & Hudson, 1998, p.204. 

5. Bey, Hakim, ‘The Temporary Autonomous 

Zone’, in Bey, Hakim, ed., T.A.Z.: The 

Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological 

Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: 

Autonomedia, 2004, p.141. 

6. ‘the areas are not separated by the straight line 

of Dualism, but rather by the snaky, sinuous, 

and ambiguous line of dyadic movement. 

Western dialectics analyse in order to 

synthesise, whereas Taoist dialectics begins with 

the synthesis in order to analyse’. Ibid. 

7. Ibid., pp.138–139. 

8. Brett, Guy, op. cit., p.204. 

9. Ibid. 

10. Bey, Hakim, op. cit., p.101. 

11. Ibid., p.97. 

12. Ibid., p.99. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Concerning the beliefs of Kurt Eisner (martyred 

founder of the Bavarian Soviet Republic), see 

Bey, Hakim, op. cit., p.125. 

16. On what Bey compares to ‘the war machine’ of 

Deleuze and Guattari, see Bey, Hakim, p.105. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid., p.126. 

19. Hellberg, Fatima, Information Wants to be Free, 

press release, http://iloapp.malmoartacademy. 

se/blog/www?ShowFile&doc=1252650655.pdf, 


20. Ibid. 

21. ‘because the TAZ is a microcosm of that 

“anarchist dream” of a free culture, I can think 

of no better tactic by which to work toward that 

goal while at the same time experiencing some 

of its benefits here and now.’ Bey, Hakim, op. 

cit., p.99. 

22. placebo, 4: ‘A drug, medicine, therapy, etc., 

prescribed more for the psychological benefit 

to the patient of being given treatment than for 

any direct physiological effect; esp. one with 

no specific therapeutic effect on a patient’s 

condition, but believed by the patient to be 

therapeutic (and sometimes therefore effective)’, 

OED Online, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/ 

entry/50180494, accessed 15 March 2010. 

23. dispel, 2: ‘To become dissipated or scattered, 

as a cloud or the like’. OED Online, http:// 

dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50066552, 


24. nocebo, n: ‘A detrimental effect on health 

produced by psychological or psychosomatic 

factors such as negative expectations of 

treatment or prognosis, cultural beliefs about 

illness, personality traits, etc.; spec. adverse 

effects reported after administration of a 

placebo’, OED Online, http://dictionary.oed. 

com/cgi/entry/00325565, accessed 15 March 

2010. 

25. Issa, Lina, artist’s presentation, http://www. 

konstnarsnamnden.se/default.aspx?id=13241, 

accessed 19 February 2010. 

26. Ibid. 

27. Concerning an image by Stephen Pearl 

Andrews ‘of anarchist society, the dinner party, 

in which all structure of authority dissolves in 

conviviality and celebration’, Bey, Hakim, op. 

cit., p.102. 

28. Ibid., p.130. 

29. Ibid., p.122. 

30. Oiticica, Helio, op. cit., p. 118. 

31. Ibid. 

32. Williams, Saul, Talk to Strangers, audio CD. 

New York: Fader Label, 2004. 


34. Ibid. 

35. Ibid., p.131. 

36. Ibid. 

37. Ibid. 

38. Williams, Saul, op. cit. 


40. Ibid., p.130. 

41. Ibid., p.104. 

42. Ibid. 



Bibliography 

Brett, Guy et al. ed., Hélio Oiticica. Rotterdam: Witte 

de With, 1992. 

Bey, Hakim, ‘The Temporary Autonomous Zone’, in 

Bey, Hakim, ed., T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous 

Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism,. New 

York: Autonomedia, 2004. 

Brett, Guy, ‘Life Strategies: Overview and Selection— 

Buenos Aires/London/Rio de Janeiro/Santiago de 

Chile 1960–1980’, in Schimmel, FULL FIRST 

NAME, ed., Out of Actions: Between Performance 

and the Object, 1949–1979. New York: Thames & 

Hudson, 1998. 

Flusser, Willem, Towards a Philosophy of 

Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2005. 

Kwon, Miwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific 

Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT 

Press, 2002. 

Higgins, Hannah, Fluxus Experience. Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 2002. 

Žižek, Slavoj, The Interpassive Subject, lecture at 

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1998, http:// 

homepage.newschool.edu/~quigleyt/vcs/interpassive. 

pdf, accessed 14 March 2010. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

222 223 



Passage No 1 (Cherry Blossom Trail) 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Passage No 3 (Walking for Ten Minutes between One Lane and Another) 

224 225 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Danilo Stanković 

A World beyond Our Senses 

I found myself being drawn down into the 

woods, and I climbed the hill 1 where I sat down 

on the couch-shaped root and started the music 

in my headphones. I looked at the pictures in 

the cassette case and brought my knife out. 

Then I carved a symbol they’d taken from an 

American native tribe, on the back of my left 

hand. I didn’t cut myself, I just scraped the 

skin off. The feeling of being in the present, all 

senses focused, was overwhelming. Then I filled 

the wound in with a red marker. It hurt a lot. 

Now I had a secret symbol that only those in 

the know would recognise. 

On the day of the Serbian Orthodox holiday Slava, 

each family celebrates its own patron saint. Father 

pours red wine in the shape of a crucifix onto a round 

loaf of bread, mumbling blessings the whole time. 

We break the bread, and then send the glass around 

so we can all take a sip. Then, father takes out incense 

made from thyme, holy water and a basil sprig (basil is 

a commonly used plant in religious rituals, and it has 

the added benefit of repelling insects and other pests). 

He lights the incense and walks from one room to 

another, all around the house, mumbling incantations, 

and splashing the holy water around with the basil 

sprig. This is done to drive out evil spirits, vampires 

and ghosts, to bring fortune and happiness for the year 

to come, and to bring peace to all on earth. Some of 

my relatives, including my closest family, keep garlic 

cloves above the doorposts of their homes. Just to be 

safe, I have a garlic bulb tattooed on my leg. 

Many anthropologists and historians emphasise the 

importance of song and dance in human evolution. 

Only those of our ancestors who danced and sung 

together survived. Their collaboration, and their everexpanding 

communication networks, made these 

humans invincible. Some say this is the whole story 

of human evolution. Dance came first, strengthening 

the group, and language came later, making it easier to 

stay friendly within the network. 

Our communal dancing rituals became such 

a powerful spiritual force that they established a 

connection between us and our ancestors. The 

greatest human invention in all of history, without 

comparison, is the spirit world. It has been central to 

human thought for many tens of thousands of years, 

several times longer than any existing religion. Very 

early in our history this successful connection was 

made between the spirit world, our ancestors, and 

communal dancing to rhythmic singing and music. 

All of these things provided an intense sense of 

wellbeing and happiness, which guaranteed the 

continued cohesion of the group. This was how 

we began to become human. Eventually, it also 

gave rise to a new profession: people whose job it 

was to make sure that the spirits were on our side. 

Every civilisation since then has been based on this 

fundamental idea that there is a spirit world, and that 

it must be appeased. 

Something happens to people when they spend 

extended periods of time together as a group, moving 

the large muscle groups in their legs and arms to 

the same beat. Medical research has shown that 

they secrete hormones that cause strong feelings of 

euphoria. These hormones also produce the sensation 

of leaving your body and becoming one with the other 

participants. Many contemporary religions have used 

this primal force in humans for their own purposes. 

For example, ecstatic singing, handclaps and dancing 

are emblematic of Pentecostalism, the Christian sect 

that has had the most success in the third world. 

Dan Graham reveals these obvious connections 

in his video Rock My Religion (1984), where he 

compares Rock’n’Roll to popular culture and the 

Shaker movement. 

I took my most valuable possessions, and 

made myself comfortable in the corner behind 

the tree. Once I’d sat there for a while, my 

perspective and depth of vision changed. My 

gaze would wander along the branches, as 

though it was out for a walk. I was able to 

dream my way through microcosms in a plate 

of ice cream and meringues, and I would 

pretend to be exploring caves. 

This is something many experience as children, 

but lose the ability to do as time goes by. Maybe 

that is because children play with dolls and toys, 

and transform their views of their surroundings by 

internalising the perspective of the doll. This is a 

lesson I learn anew every time I work with drawing 

or painting. 

When I had stood for a while in contemplation 

of the painting Mountain Landscape with Rainbow 

(1810) by Caspar David Friedrich, I felt as though I 

was physically transported into the painting. Inside 

the body of the small figure, who stands in a bright 

area on a hill, watching the dark, unnerving sky, I felt 

the greatness of the rainbow, and the dark closing 

in around me. In another painting by Friedrich 

that I have seen, Neubrandenburg (1816–1817), the 

landscape is in dark outline against the light, and the 

intensity was enough to blind my eyes. The clouds 

virtually explode with powerful light, in swirling 

motions across the sky. An absolute sensation of 

Divine presence. 

It is not hard to see the impression Friedrich 

made on Werner Herzog. In many of his films Herzog 

seems to be trying to recreate scenes from Friedrich’s 

paintings, using solitary figures with their backs to the 

viewer, contemplating dramatic landscapes at dawn 

or sunset. Herzog often speaks of the magical light of 

dawn, the finest light of all. A born-again light. 

Things that used to be in the background began to 

take on more prominent roles in Northern European 

painting towards the end of the 15th century. In 

226 227 

works by Joachim de Patenir and Albrecht Altdorfer, 

from the beginning of the 16th century, fantastical 

imaginary landscapes began to dominate the pieces, 

whereas they had previously only been glimpsed 

through windows, or behind groups of people. 2 Most 

of all it was the mountains, with their bizarre shapes 

and dramatic scale, that emphasised the greatness and 

space of the landscape, contrasting with the smallness 

of plants, houses and people. In the end the figures 

became so small that you had to search for them to 

find them in the composition. 3 

Two other artists whose paintings I easily become 

immersed in are Peter Doig and Niclas Winmalm. 

Here it is more a matter of travelling between various 

historical and literary references, in something 

resembling a multi-levelled hallucination, often veiled 

by several layers of corrosive colours. So it is not just 

the dreamy motifs that function as catalysts, it is also 

a matter of how the paint is applied to the canvas. 

In Doors of Perception Aldous Huxley speaks of the 

effects of perceiving colour and light as surrounded 

by darkness. He claims that certain paintings have the 

power to transport us far into our consciousness, to 

Another World, beyond our senses. 4 

Human awareness is a spectrum, which even under 

normal circumstances is constantly moving between 

different stages of consciousness. When we speak 

on the phone, for instance, we may slip into a state 

where we are unaware of our surroundings, but we 

gesticulate as if the person we are speaking to were 

right in front of us. Daydreams are another early stage 

of altered consciousness. Sleep is also an altered state, 

where we experience dreams of varying depth and 

intensity. 

One day we were given the assignment to 

make masks out of papier mâché. I was going 

to paint my mask like Gene Simmons in 

Kiss. But the day care teachers didn’t like 

the idea and wouldn’t let me do it. I was 

very disappointed with their resistance and 

felt misunderstood. I had no other ideas for 

decorating the mask, and any ideas that did 

pop up died immediately. Instead, I mixed all 

the paints into a dark muck and painted the 

mask black. 

This chapter was supposed to be about Onkel 

Kånkel, Eddie Meduza, Nikanor Teratologen, Jake & 

Dinos Chapman and Paul McCarthy, but it was too 

bad. 

A framed picture shows of a group of people on 

the porch of a red house with yellowish window 

frames. They embrace each other intimately, 

lovingly. They gaze happily at whoever is taking 

the photo. They radiate a sense of calm and 

contentedness. 



I have rarely felt so content about life as during my 

nights at the cottage. Going out in the middle of the 

night and seeing the cotton candy pillar of smoke 

outlined against a starry sky, feeling the stillness with 

all my senses, made something archaic within me 

come alive. This sensation can be compared to the 

one I have when I look at works by Caspar David 

Friedrich, and it is something I also try to recreate in 

my own work. A struggle to visualise a silence that 

makes us contemplate a reality beyond the visual. 5 

Why be so obsessed by a reality beyond the visual? I 

started relating to materials in a completely different 

way. Buying mounted white canvas in a shop did not 

feel very exciting anymore. When I found a pile of 

delicate yellowed sheets of paper in a plant press it 

seemed only natural that I would begin to draw again. 

You see what you want to see. Decomposition 

is also life. In the uppermost layer of the earth, 

where leaves and cadavers decompose, we also 

find the most nutritious soil, humus. 

I want to reconnect to Friedrich here. In his 

paintings, earth is often represented by deserted 

ruined cemeteries, stone mounds, traces of human 

activity and approaching death. The importance of the 

sky in Friedrich’s cannot be denied. The sky is where 

we find hope. But something interesting also happens 

at the point where the earth and sky come together. 

The heavens penetrate the earth, and the divine is 

embodied in nature. 

The pantheistic idea of all creation as organically 

connected, of a God who permeates nature and 

is embodied in each of its parts, was central to 

romanticist natural philosophy. Nature was a divine 

apparition, and contemplating it was a way to deepen 

one’s understanding of immanence, or God’s presence 

in all things. 6 

After Nangijala comes Nangilima, but what 

comes after that? 

I thought I would make a film about our utopian 

dream in the cottage. But the film turned out 

differently. A mental state dependent on the wish to 

always be somewhere else. ‘Like a bad acid trip’ and 

‘a mixture of Kenneth Anger and Tarkovsky’, as my 

professors put it. Perhaps it wasn’t our attempts to 

become self-sufficient by growing organic vegetables 

or the simple lifestyle that interested me most as I 

was working on the film, but rather the myths and 

mysteries that surround collective living, groups, and 

families. The visions and the dreams. When does the 

vision consume the individual? When has it gone so 

far that you let the vision control, and perhaps even 

replace, your personality? When does the harmless 

collective become a cult? 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

There are numerous examples of utopian 

communities that have functioned well and still 

exist today, such as the Moder Jord (‘Mother Earth’) 

collective in southern Sweden, Christiania in 

Copenhagen, and Hog Farm in the USA, and others 

that have functioned less well, such as Drop City 

(the hippie community in California inspired by 

Buckminster Fuller to build the first village of domes 

based on ‘idealism, trippy visions and material from 

scrapped cars’). In less than ten years it became a 

ghost town. 

I got out of bed in the middle of the night to 

pee in the bathroom. Time stopped, and I was 

smothered by an eternal darkness. I was drawn 

deeper and deeper into a black void, and at the 

same time I saw myself an inch or so away in 

the bathroom mirror, staring at my own face 

and beyond, into the deep, quiet nothingness. 

I understood that I was about to die, and that 

I was completely alone. Slowly, slowly I left 

my body, and everything was quiet and dark. 

The terror was unbelievable, and I screamed 

at the top of my lungs. Suddenly everything 

became bright. I had wet the floor, and mother 

and father were standing there, alarmed and 

wondering what I was doing. I suspect father 

made a round with the incense the day after. 

People holding hands, groups of people dancing in 

circles and taking part in rituals. Churches, national 

costumes, mountains and forests. I use strong symbols 

and I am interested in what happens when they 

are placed in different contexts. Religious ritual is 

drained of content, just like the national costume, 

but its symbolism and mystique live on. Symbols are 

worshipped and create bonds between people, or 

keep them apart. The artist becomes priest, shaman, 

witch-doctor. The work of art becomes ritual, holy 

sacrament, spiritual entreaty. The boundary between 

criticality and fascination is blurred. Something is 

generated by this uncertainty. 

228 229 

Notes 

1. A location at Pukeberg in Nybro, Sweden. Puke 

is an old Swedish word for the Devil. 

2. Meyers, Bernard S and Copplestone, Trewin, 

The History of Art. London/New York: 

Hamlyn, 1985, p.567. 

3. Knuttel, Gerard, Nederländskt måleri (‘Dutch 

and Flemish Painting’). Stockholm: Natur & 

Kultur, 1946, p.120–121. 

4. Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception. 

London: Chatto & Windus, 1954, p.76. 

5. Gunnarsson, Torsten, ‘Ensam med landskapet 

och Gud’ (‘Alone with Landscape and God)’, 

in Gunnarsson, Torsten, ed., Caspar David 

Friedrich – Den besjälade naturen (‘Caspar 

David Friedrich – Animated Nature’), 

Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 2009, p.43. 

6. Clason, Synnöve, ‘Den tyska romantiken’ 

(‘German Romanticism’), in Caspar David 

Friedrich – Den besjälade naturen (‘Caspar 

David Friedrich – Animated Nature’), 

Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 2009, p. 14. 

Bibliography 

Berg, Lasse, Gryning over Kalahari (‘Dawn over 

the Kalahari’). Stockholm: Ordfront, 2005. 

Gunnarsson, Torsten, ed., Caspar David Friedrich 

– Den besjälade naturen (‘Caspar David Friedrich 

– Animated Nature’). Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 

2009. 

Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception. London: 

Chatto & Windus, 1954; Heaven and Hell. London: 

Chatto & Windus, 1956. 

Kahn, Lloyd, Shelter. Bolinas, Ca: Shelter 

Publications, 1973. 

Knuttel, Gerard, Nederländskt måleri (‘Dutch and 

Flemish Painting’). Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1946. 

Meyers, Bernard S and Copplestone, Trewin, The 

History of Art. London/New York: Hamlyn, 1985. 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Sunrise (Detail) 

Ink and chlorine on sheet, framed ink paintings on paper, dimensions variable 

Sunrise (Detail) 

Beetroot juice and yerba maté on sheet, glass, dimensions variable 

230 231 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Maiken Stene 

Mr. Gustav Jebsen’s Adit 

adit ( d’ t), in mining, underground passage 

excavated nearly horizontally, with one end 

open to the earth’s surface, usually used to 

service a mine. 1 

A door is broken open. 

I am looking at the entrance to the mine, a 

rusty, ramshackle construction, blocked off three 

or four metres further in with a concrete wall. In the 

middle of the wall, a door. Steel. And a tiny square 

aperture with a grating at the bottom right-hand 

corner. From this vent trickles a poisonous stream 

of clear mountain water. Some green algae-plants 

are carried along with the water, dancing lightly above 

the glittering sun-mirror of the stones. It is red from 

reinforcing rods, rust and crumbling concrete along 

the ground. Over the entrance a staircase has been 

built. It ascends to the left and descends on the righthand 

side. It is a collar, a wreath of concrete and an 

echo of the heavy protective boots of the workers on 

their way up the steps to charge the batteries in their 

miners’ lamps on the other side of the entrance. 

A constant, damp, ice-cold wind is coming 

from the tunnel. It comes from the vent and goads 

the stream and the ripples on the surface, out of 

the darkness, into the daylight and back again into 

the ground. 

Outside the mine is a bed of sand. Green grass is 

growing further away, but where the draught of cold 

wind seeps out, there is nothing but dead sand. A 

large patch of bare ground bleeds out far across the 

yard, and illustrates precisely the extent of poison 

that leaks out of this mine into which no one should 

ever been able to stray, had it not been for the greedy 

dynamite-thrust of industry. Pick-axes and dynamite, 

lamps and dirty overalls. Big, coarse hands. Dust. Dust 

and darkness, a haze deep within and the sound of 

one another’s footfall in the depths, together to dig 

out the value, the grey iron ore, the white refrigerator 

and the contented smile of the housewife as she serves 

dinner for her newly washed husband with his newly 

ironed shirt and a circle of snotty kids around the 

table, staring intensely at what their father is staring 

at; the big, billowing female breasts behind steaming 

pork chops which she so proudly serves her hungry 

family on a Sunday afternoon. Yummy! 

I am so heavy, so inhumanly heavy. Will I sink into 

the ground, through the coarse sand beneath my feet? 

Everything around me is quiet. The sky hangs with its 

infinite blue and high winds above a round yard, the 

trees sway gently, perhaps a few birds twitter, but it all 

feels still. 

Suspended in time, I look at a rusty machine that 

stands next to me, it is at least five tons, maybe more. 

It does not sink. But I feel as if it ought to now, since 

I am sixty kilos and I am sinking, sinking into the 

awareness that I am at this very moment looking at 

the entrance to Hell. 

It has dawned on me, come as a surprise, but 

something inside me is telling me that… the door has 

been opened! Someone has broken open the door 

that separates the inside from the outside. The outside 

is this flat, open field where everything rises up and 

outwards, a warm summer wind, fresh humid air that 

has soared through the wide green forests of the Earth 

over mountains and oceans and that now dances 

around me and the heavy rusty machine that is about 

to sink through the ground because we discovered 

that there is a depth an infinity not only outwards into 

bright clear day in air and sight and openness but into 

the deepest tunnels within the mountain within our 

own bodies and souls where the light from day and 

summer and openness cannot reach. 

Unless a door is broken open. 

What happens when a visual or emotional 

fragment of something that is distinctly outside of 

myself is incorporated into my personal inner world? 

I find myself in a place. I experience in this 

place, through my senses, a combination of different 

aesthetic elements that form a mental or physical 

fragment. This fragment could occur as a glimpse of 

a movement, a physical place in nature, a film-still or 

a sound far away on the horizon, or it might appear 

while I am gazing at the entrance to the mine… 

It is as if what defines this fragment corresponds 

with something that is already inherent within me. 

This correspondence or association between the 

external and the internal hits me with an immediate 

sense of connection. It is just as difficult to determine 

or predict when such a meeting will take place, as it is 

to anticipate how it will look or feel, because in form 

and in time its appearance is always a surprise – a 

strange, almost supernatural chance encounter with 

something within myself. 

These moments of recognition or understanding 

are stored within me as elements of my inner visual 

world. Their individual value depends on how they 

are placed in relation to what already resides in my 

memory. What I see or feel is in other words made 

my own through the way I register and archive 

information. Can this experience be described as 

‘receiving a vision’? Or is that an outmoded concept, 

no longer valid given the way modern humanity seeks 

to orient itself in this brave new world? 

The connection that is established from the 

relation between the external and the internal, serves 

as an underlying link between different revelations 

and components in my own imagination. I understand 

what I have seen, but have yet to put it into words or 

action. It is through the negotiation and construction 

of the artistic expression that this meeting with 

something outside myself can lead to a deeper 

understanding of what the world is and can be. In 

other words, I have the opportunity, through art, to 

put together my own representation of a subjective or 

objective reality. 

The artistic freedom that I am trying to describe 

is reminiscent of Rudolf Arnheim’s description of the 

232 233 

poet’s method in Film as Art in 1938: 

The poetical word refers directly to the 

meaning, the character, the structure of 

things; hence the spiritual quality of its 

vision, the acuteness and succinctness of its 

descriptions. The writer is not tied to the 

physical concreteness of a given setting; 

therefore, he is free to connect one object with 

another even though in actuality the two may 

not be neighbors either in time or in space. 

And since he uses as his material not the 

actual percept but its conceptual name, he can 

compose his images of elements that are taken 

from disparate sensory sources. He does not 

have to worry whether the combinations he 

creates are possible or even imaginable in the 

physical world. 2 

What do these individual fragments consist of, 

and what kind of story do they tell? What happens 

in instances where they are placed in relation to one 

another? Do they, in this way, form a narrative? 

And, if so, can the narrative that occurs through this 

combination be likened to that of a film? 

I draw a parallel between ‘the fragment (or the 

vision) in relation to my own narrative’ and ‘the still 

image in relation to the film from which it is taken’. 

Common to both is that the fragment and the still 

image properly belong within a broader context, 

which then again is about a representation of reality, 

about the world seen from different perspectives and 

through different ideas. 

A still from a film belongs to a course of action. 

It can work on its own, but it is not intended to be 

removed from its context and thus alludes to the 

film as a whole, to the feeling, the place, a narrative. 

The film-still carries within it an innate relevance to 

a broader context. Some stills are more complex in 

their symbolism than others, because they are used to 

constitute a particular climax in the course of action, 

moments where the film summarizes itself or its 

themes. One very good example of such a still is the 

sandpit in Invaders from Mars (1953). Patrick Lucanio 

describes it in this way: 

This scene introduces the major image in the 

film, the sandpit and its eerie musical sound 

effect. The image serves much like the Gothic 

cemeteries in horror films. Constructed in a 

studio, with forced perspective in a fashion 

similar to Dr. Caligari, it is a desolate and 

dreary place. The scene not only looks like a 

Gothic cemetery; it also functions like one: vile 

monsters are lingering below. This is the place 

of the Martians, an underground fortress. It 

functions as the unconscious, particularly the 

collective unconscious, for below the sand can 



be found the shadow archetype, the Martian 

invaders. They are vile and corrupt, dangerous 

and terrifying. 3 

The fragments that I choose to incorporate into 

my inner visual or emotional world fit into a common 

spectrum of feelings, as if they were related in form 

and meaning: interlinked by some mysterious force. 

When I discover a fragment, I instantly know about 

its unique quality. It is as if I have seen it before, as if 

it was already present in my subconscious landscape 

until I got to see it again, manifested outside me for 

the first time. 

How are the aesthetics and the symbols in my own 

visual vocabulary decided upon, chosen? What makes 

me attracted to certain colors, shapes and places? 

To see and to express happens in the exchange of 

stories, in the meeting between feelings or thoughts 

through different representations of reality. But how 

are the borders of my own personal visual orientation 

set up? Why am I interested in one thing more than 

another? Am I blind to all the other things, or simply 

uninterested? 

It is not, however, a question of extending my 

own visual orientation for the sake of it, but rather 

a matter of examining and understanding the 

significance that already exists and that appears all 

the time through the accretion of new fragments 

or visions. It is interesting that there is a natural 

selection, or censorship if you will, for each and 

every one of us. My challenge is to create a context, 

a connection, through and between the artworks, 

so that these fragments may be re-circulated and 

perhaps even incorporated into new personal worlds 

of the observer. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

Notes 

1. Columbia Encyclopedia, http://www.answers. 

com/library/Columbia 

2. Arnheim, Rudolf. Film as Art, Los Angeles: 

University of California Press, 1938, p.206. 

3. Lucanio, Patrick. Them or Us: Archetypal 

Interpretations of Fiftie’s Alien Invasion Films. 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, 

p.58. 

Bibliography 

Arnheim, Rudolf. Film as Art. Los Angeles: 

University of California Press, 1938. 

Lucanio, Patrick. Them or Us: Archetypal 

Interpretations of Fifties Alien Invasion Films. 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 

Illustration: Still from the film Invaders from Mars, 

directed by William Cameron Menzies, USA, 1953. 

234 235 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

236 237 



BFA 3 BFA 3 

Johanna Stillman 

While Connecting the Shiny Stars 

One by One I Was Looking for 

Your Shape 

From: Toki Wo Tomete 1 

Text: Shinjiroh Inoue, 2009 

Performed by: Dong Bang Shin Ki 2 

Postcards with images of famous artworks were 

placed in an ordinary sitting room and proclaimed a 

museum in 1968. Artists, critics and collectors were 

invited by its creator Marcel Broodthaers to come 

and see it. Section XIXe siècle 3 is said to have created 

a fictitious museum. This fiction was integrated into 

the art world because the same people who visited 

institutional art museums also visited the sitting room. 

Rachel Haidu, professor of art at Columbia University, 

cites Section XIXe siècle as an example of the art 

world creating a fictitious sphere. A sitting room is 

transformed into something more, the fiction changes 

everyday objects into art. It makes it possible for 

art to discuss and investigate things in a way that is 

impossible outside the art world. 4 

I didn’t want to become a poet, actress, illustrator, 

academic or journalist. I wanted to become all of 

those things and that’s why I chose art. I did not 

like to categorise and thought that the art world was 

where there were fewest expectations or templates 

for knowledge and expression. In the beginning, the 

art world’s possibilities were infinite but after a while 

narratives started recurring. A range of references but 

always the same names, thinkers one should have 

read, artists one should be familiar with, exhibitions 

one should have seen. Marcel Broodthaers’s museum 

was based on an idea written down but never 

executed by Marcel Duchamp. 

In academia writers provide notes when they 

borrow an idea. The bibliography lists all the titles that 

the author has based his/her thoughts on. In artworks 

we find built-in references but no lists of other works 

I should look at if I like a specific piece. There is an 

understanding that anyone can reflect on an artwork. 

Whoever you are, you can look at a painting and 

see it in relation to your own experiences. When I 

entered the art world I also entered a logic that made 

it possible for artists to have discussions with one 

another. But I also noticed that the same logic made 

it difficult for them to have discussions with other 

people. People outside the art world rarely relate 

artworks to their own lives; instead they assume that 

they just don’t understand. Art became a paradox to 

me, as to many other artists. I started yearning for 

something else. 

A hand-held camera captures two young men 

whispering to each other. If you half close your eyes 

it looks like they are making out. The one takes the 

other’s hand. The clip was broadcast on YouTube. The 

guys involved are Kim Jaejoong and Jung Yunho from 

Asia’s biggest boy band Dong Bang Shin Ki hanging 

out during the South Korean TV channel M.Net’s 

annual music gala. 5 

Fan fiction is similar to the art that I like. The 

creators use different phenomena from popular 

culture in order to develop, re-use and create 

something of their own. This can take the form of 

texts, video, images or sound. Phenomena with a rich 

fan fiction culture include Star Trek, Harry Potter, 

Japanese manga and various teenage heartthrobs 

across the world. Fan fiction is used to entertain and 

to discuss and deal with real problems. Things that 

do not seem logical to the ordinary world can in the 

world of fan fiction become quite plausible if they are 

thoroughly illogical. In many novellas about Dong 

Bang Shin Ki guys fall in love with other guys, it’s like 

their inner logic. The fact that it is highly problematic 

to be gay in South Korea in the real world does not 

seem to matter. The film clip with Jaejoong and Yunho 

was used to prove that they are in love with each 

other. The event is re-used in the narrative that has 

been created around Dong Bang Shin Ki. 

When I discovered fan fiction, the Western variety 

to begin with, I realised how much it had in common 

with my own art. It was 2004 and I had worked on 

different projects based on the TV series Beverly 

Hills 90210 (amongst others there was a poetry 

project in which the narrator perceived the series’ 

protagonists to be real people in his/her Swedish life). 

I was fascinated by how people took mass culture 

and made it their own by applying it to their lives 

and projecting their own ideas onto it. I saw how a 

culture considered by those around me to be dumbing 

down could at times be filled with radical ideas. 

Fourteen-year-old girls created their own fantastic 

love story with the pop star Darin based on mutual 

understanding. Harry Potter saved Eslöv from rightwing 

politics and Scarlett Johansson lived in Paris and 

spoke Swedish. 

Two residential looking buildings are furnished to 

resemble homes using a collection of artworks by a 

range of artists. One house is supposedly for sale. It 

is furnished in a way suggesting that it is the home of 

a family with children. In the backyard of the other 

house a dead man is floating in an aquamarine pool. 

The details in the house seem to say something of the 

seemingly dead owner of the house. A typewriter 

with the beginning of a story about meaninglessness, 

a collection of homoerotic drawings by Tom of 

Finland behind thick glass, a bathroom-like sculpture 

and some bombastic paintings are some of the things 

on view. In the summer of 2009 Michael Elmgreen 

and Ingar Dragset put together the display in the 

Nordic/Danish pavilion at the Venice Biennale under 

the title The Collectors. 6 They use the same type of 

fiction created by the art world within a gallery to 

create the fiction of two different homes. 

My sister, who has not studied art, and I visited 

the Biennale. We lingered in the house that has 

the corpse in the pool for a long time. We allowed 

ourselves to be seduced. The work can be seen to be 

about a lot of things: a rich man who loves other men 

has committed suicide; Elmgreen and Dragset use a 

fictitious story to investigate how different art objects 

238 239 

are linked together and start reflecting each other. 

They explore the desire underlying the collecting of 

objects and reflect on a homosexual or queer longing 

for something outside hetero-normativity. My sister 

says: ‘It feels like something taken out of a yaoi 

fan fiction.’ 7 

According to the anthropologist Matthew 

Thorn, yaoi first emerged in Japan in the 1970s. 

Women started drawing fan fiction in which male 

manga heroes fall in love with one another. Many 

theorists read the first yaoi stories as parodies of 

patriarchy. Over time yaoi develops into more 

than just fan fiction and comes to include all kinds 

of homoeroticism for mostly a female audience. 

Nowadays these stories can be found in all types of 

media and include anything from hints at a romantic 

element in close male friendships to orgies with 

explicit sex scenes. The Western world’s version of this 

is slash, a small sub-culture that chiefly produces texts 

based in fantasy. In Asia most of the commercial boy 

bands are launched with the hungry yaoi audience 

in mind. 8 Because of the dissemination power of the 

Internet the phenomenon is increasingly spreading to 

the West, with people producing and consuming Asian 

yaoi. The story of Jaejoong and Yunho on YouTube is 

just one example of yaoi, or boys’ love as the genre is 

also called. 

The logic of the art world and the world of fan 

fiction may seem confusing for outsiders. According 

to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu this is because different 

spheres have their own inner logic. Rules and codes 

are created in order for those who are in the same 

sphere to understand each other. 9 On fan sites in 

English where one fantasises about Jaejoong and 

Yunho the needs of the outside world seem quite 

remote. There are no commercial or moral demands. 

The novellas are organized according to genre and 

with a special ranking system, allowing the initiated to 

know how much sex, violence or death occurs before 

they start reading, avoiding unpleasant surprises. 

Many sites are members-only. Fan fiction is not 

created for anyone other than those who choose to be 

part of that world. Many artists long to be understood 

by a large audience, a longing that is rarely fulfilled. 

Society places demands on artists to make accessible 

work, and many people outside the sphere get 

annoyed because art is elitist and immoral, while at 

the same time being state-funded in Sweden. 

The art sphere versus the rest of the world is a 

conflict I often get stuck in; I have difficulty deciding 

what I really think. Sometimes I long for a narrow 

field like English yaoi fan fiction, where you can 

create your own little world. And at times I would 

prefer the opposite, a wide field such as that of crime 

fiction where what one creates is enjoyed by many. 

Sometimes I get irritated with the fact that artists 

always have to defend the importance of what they 

do. Perhaps artists shouldn’t talk to the general public 



at all. Art is a way of thinking and a complex method 

of research that should be allowed to exist in society 

even if it does not appeal to everyone. 

Art lands somewhere between speaking to the 

inner circle and the general public, which means that 

artists have to choose how they relate to the general 

public’s ideas about art as well as the history and 

knowledge found within its own sphere. Those who 

only want to talk to people outside the art world often 

lose focus, the way of thinking that enables a dialogue 

with other artists, while those who do the opposite 

and disregard the general public often have to take 

a very small public into account as well as a certain 

amount of criticism. 

This chasm has recently made me understand 

why I am interested in seduction in art. While 

looking at one house in The Collectors my sister 

sees yaoi fan fiction while most members of the art 

world see something quite different. This is a good 

example of how most artworks can be read without 

any knowledge of the art world if the audience is 

allowed, and allows itself, to see things. My sister sees 

something in the house because Elmgreen and Dragset 

have worked with fiction as seduction. This fiction 

is built up around a building with large windows, 

wooden floors and a tree growing indoors. Dragset 

himself says that the building does not lend itself to 

exhibitions. When he first saw it he thought of how he 

would like to live there. The duo chose to elaborate 

on the idea that someone was living in the building. 10 

The seductive fiction that Elmgreen and Dragset 

have created is based on a mystery, like a crime novel 

where you yourself have to fill in the details. Who 

lived here? What has happened? 

Sharon Hayes spent five days reading five 

anonymous love letters aloud. She stood on a street 

in New York with a microphone and paper in front 

of her. This work from 2007 entitled Everything Else 

Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love may 

seem very private and desperate. 11 The artist has been 

deserted by her lover and asks the lover to come back. 

The text that Hayes read was compiled from a range 

of well-known texts about love. It is an investigation 

of love letters and love as a form and concept, as well 

as functioning as a call to passers-by to start loving. 

The piece is both inviting and multivalent. 

Just like art and fan fiction, love is a fictitious 

sphere with certain rules. When we think about our 

beloved it is important that precisely this person 

is the best in the whole world. There is a range of 

phrases that most of us use in relationships, the most 

important of which is: ‘I love you.’ I write ‘for most of 

us’ because love is one of those feelings considered 

the most universally human. I see love as a culturally 

created sphere that has been visited and experienced 

by many. Sharon Hayes’s love letters give me a lump 

in my throat. Not knowing that they are based on 

well-known texts about love, they seem vaguely 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

familiar and they speak to an internal longing in me. 

I am interested in what is considered universally 

human because this is connected to the rift found 

in the art scene. People outside the scene expect art 

to appeal to some sort of universal human feeling, 

making it accessible to all. I am interested in what this 

feeling could be, not just because it says something 

about the art world but because it says something 

about society in general. Love is a recurring theme 

when people speak of universal feelings. 

A yaoi writer describes her/his work as ‘from an 

unleashed imagination, a suppressed desire’. 12 I think 

we have been taught to think that love is the answer 

to loneliness and hence we construct love stories to 

feel less alone. We build romantic fiction to suit our 

desires. In a hetero-normative society with patriarchal 

problems the romantic longing for love experienced by 

women who consider themselves to be heterosexual 

becomes highly complex. I see yaoi fan fiction as a 

very specific way of handling a general problem. Fans 

create a fictitious sphere along with other women. 

They create sexual and romantic fantasies of the male 

body but avoid the gender problem by excluding 

the female body. The reader and the writer become 

simultaneously active and passive. In this fantasy the 

women can for example penetrate a man. 

The first time I saw Jaejoong take Yunho’s hand 

I shivered because the fans shivered. I observed the 

phenomenon from the outside and thought it was 

beautiful. I knew what the fans saw was a fiction: the 

real Jaejoong is most likely not in love with Yunho. 

There are no real facts proving that they have had 

sex. All there is, is a look here and there, that played 

in slow motion and accompanied by romantic music 

becomes a love story. I thought of this as I think of 

stories of people in love, a fictional sphere where the 

people involved create an image of the other that 

suits their own desires. But just as in love this attitude 

became frustrating. It is difficult to really fall in love 

if you are constantly thinking that one’s image of 

the chosen one is a romanticised fantasy. I started 

disliking my own distance. 

Fans of the couple Yunho and Jaejoong call them 

Yunjae. A recurring phrase in discussions, videos and 

stories is ‘Yunjae are real’. The fans together create 

a worldview where it does not matter that Jaejoong 

along with two of the five band members has sued 

Dong Bang Shin Ki’s South Korean music company 

for their unfair contract. This scandal has led to the 

group not being allowed to perform together anymore. 

And Yunho, who has taken the side of the company, 

has to work with other smaller projects while waiting 

for the court decision. In the stories they meet secretly 

and the whole mess is a misunderstanding, or the 

fault of parents, the media or the music industry. In 

the realm of fan fiction Yunjae’s love is true, as they 

proclaim time and again. But how does this fan fiction 

become reality? How does one allow oneself to fall 

head over heels in love without any distance? 

Between 1980 and 1981 Tehching Hsieh did one 

of his year-long performances. He is said to have set 

a stopwatch every hour and taken a photograph of 

himself. At the start of the year he had shaved off 

his hair. The work is presented as a documentation 

in which the photos form a 6-minute video of a man 

standing next to a stopwatch and letting his hair 

grow while time flows past him. The piece One year 

Performance (Time Clock Piece) is about the process. 13 

In the film we find an obsession, a will to hold on to 

an idea for a whole year even in the face of self-doubt. 

Performance art is often about the process of doing, 

and as much about how it feels for the artist to do as 

for the audience to see. Tehching Hsieh tests his own 

boundaries as an artistic investigation. I am interested 

in a work-method where one explores phenomena 

through doing, feeling and documenting in various 

ways. 

During the autumn of 2009 and the spring of 

2010 I consumed everything I could come across that 

had to do with Dong Bang Shin Ki – fan fiction, TV 

programs and live recordings. I have made videos, 

written fan fiction and discussed Korean popular 

culture with two friends who became as obsessed 

as me. We have created our own fictitious realm in 

which we speak a language that is a blend of what 

we have read on the English-language fan sites, by 

Korean fans, and from our own Swedish middle class 

cultural background. I have seen our discussions as 

part of my creative process and my striving to lose 

my distance. But people both inside and outside of 

the art sphere have started questioning me and my 

connection to Korean pop and fan fiction. ‘Why do 

you want to make art out of this?’ ‘In what way is 

this art?’ Recently I have felt trapped in a dead end, 

or in an unexpected opening onto something new. 

Everything leads back to questions: Why do I want to 

make art? In what way is my obsession with Yunjae 

art? What is art? If I want to be less distanced isn’t 

art a bad excuse, which in itself becomes a distancing 

filter, something that is in the way of real obsession? 

The only explanation I have right now is 

connected to my original reasons for wanting to make 

art. Despite all the problems involved, to me the art 

sphere is still the discipline that is the most open and 

the least restricted by expectations about knowledge 

and expression. Nowhere else could one devote one’s 

days to exploring a topic in so many ways. My latest 

method has been a combination of drawing and 

research. I have read a variety of feminist and cultural 

theory texts on slash and fan fiction, as well as reading 

the actual fan fiction about Jaejoong and Yunho and 

illustrating scenes that appealed to me. The drawings 

are rendered in the same light pencil drawing 

technique that I employed when I did drawings 

of Taylor Hanson, Leonardo Di Caprio and other 

beautiful men as a teenager. The execution reminds 

240 241 

me of the dreamy emotional state of being in love 

and makes it easy to lose my distance. I see this work 

as an exploration of what happens in the drawings 

when I feel a certain way, or try to feel a certain 

way. It is an investigation of love and the liberating 

possibilities of romantic dreams. I want to provoke 

longing, obsession and sexual desire in myself as well 

as the viewer. 

When I entered the realm of art I entered a 

mode of thinking in which it is possible to discuss 

and investigate things in a way that is impossible in 

the outside world. The art world is full of narratives 

that are somehow connected. Before I started my 

close-the-gap project I used this world to change 

and recount narratives that interest me. These were 

remakes of private photos, restaging of songs, films 

and pictures. It was all about time, longing, love and 

investigative work. 

Slowly a kind of disappointment grew in me. 

I had thought that art meant possibilities but started 

perceiving it as restrictive. I started longing for 

something else and tried to use that which I found, 

namely fan fiction, in an art context. But both I, and 

others, started questioning why I was doing it. 

The possibilities of dreams, utopias and other 

radical thoughts created in different fictitious worlds 

are important to me. I would like to see this possibility 

more clearly in art. It is the same with love and fan 

fiction – I need to lose critical distance. But how does 

one allow oneself to fall hopelessly in love if one has 

seen the irritating character traits of one’s love object? 

How does one go on without that accusing tone? 

I’m not sure – but possibly by looking at everything 

one likes, such as the artworks I have mentioned in 

this text, or through the feeling of true absorption 

that I get while working, when I forget to think about 

whether the result will be good, bad or even art. Or 

else you can take a break and meet again, when you 

have started missing the beloved to the extent that it is 

hard to breathe. 

In the process of writing this text I find an English 

translation by a fan of Dong Bang Shin Ki’s Japanese 

ballad Toki Wo Tomete. 14 One line stands out and 

becomes my motto as I write: ‘While connecting the 

shiny stars one by one I was looking for your shape.’ 



Notes 

1. Shinjiroh Inoue/Ichiro Fujiya. Toki Wo Tomete. 

Tohoshinki, Rhythm Zone, Tokyo, 24 March 

2010. 

2. Dong Bang Shin Ki (also spelled Dong Bang 

Shin Gi) is the group’s Korean name. In Japan 

they are called Thohoshinki and in China 

TVXQ, Tong Vfang Xien Qi. 

3. Broodthaers, Marcel, Le Museé d’Art Moderne, 

Departement des Aigles, Section XIXème 

Siècle, Rue de la Pépinière, Brussels 1968. 

4. Haidu, Rachel, from the lecture series 

Interdisciplinary Seminar, The Cooper Union 

School of Art, New York, 27 October 2009. 

5. e.g. HeavensWineE, MKMF 2008 – YunJae 

Touch Touch Touch!, 7 December 2008, 

accessed 15 March 2010: http://www.youtube. 

com/watch?v=vkwU3gOZ1vE 

6. Elmgreen, Michael/Dragset, Ingar, The 

Collectors, Nordic Pavilion, Venice Biennale 

2009. 

7. From a conversation with Emma Stillman 

during the Venice Biennale 2009. 

8. Thorn, Matthew, ‘Girls And Women Getting 

Out Of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of 

Japan’s Amateur Comics Community’, in 

Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer 

Culture in Contemporary Japan. Albany: State 

University of New York, 2008, p.170–181. 

9. Bourdieu, Pierre, Kultursociologiska texter 

(‘Writings on Cultural Sociology’), edited and 

translated by Donald Broady and Mikael Palme. 

Stockholm: Salamander, 1986, pp.244, 263. 

10. Ingar Dragset, Interview for Vernissage TV, 

Venice 19 June 2009. 

11. Hayes, Sharon, Everything Else Has Failed! 

Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love? New York, 

2007. 

12. Isami, Isami’s Writing, http://inidar.livejournal. 

com/31873.html, accessed 1 November 2009. 

13. Tehching Hsieh, One year Performance (Time 

Clock Piece), 11 April 1980 – 11 April 1981. 

14. Littlesuperdongbang, While Connecting the 

Shiny Stars One by One I Was Looking for 

Your Shape, http://mylittlesuperdongbang. 

wordpress.com/2009/11/06/mp3tvxqdbsktohoskinki-toki-wo-tomete-, 

accessed 

10 March 2010. 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

242 243 



Leave with Me 

From installation of 56 pencil drawings on A4 paper 

BFA 3 BFA 3 

244 245 



BFA 2 

246 247


BFA 2 BFA 2 

Daniel Peder Askeland Martin Berring 

Leland 

X-ray photograph of portrait painting, 108 x 81 cm 

248 249 



BFA 2 BFA 2 

Matilde K Böcher Nathalie Fuica Sánchez 

Every Time I Do Something Good 

Sound and video installation 

250 251 



BFA 2 BFA 2 

Tiril Hasselknippe Susanne Johansson 

Scott Carpenter 

Text, sculpture, 450 x 400 cm 

1-8 

Video and sound installation, 2’ 

252 253 



BFA 2 BFA 2 

Stine Kvam Henning Lundkvist 

When Hell Freezes Over I’ll Ski There Too 

Sound and wooden bench, 90 x 190 x 10 cm 

Material Description: 

Text 

Title: Futura Heavy, 33pt, C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:100; 

Body copy: Concorde BE, 9.5pt, C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:100 

Folio: Concorde BE, Italic Oldstyle Figure, 9.5pt, C:100 M:20 Y:0 K:40. 

Print 

Offset CMYK colour printing. 

Paper 

Colour?, Weight?, 210x270mm 

Binding 

? 

Position 

Page number 255. 254 pages before, 57 pages after. 

Full publication 

? 

________ 

Text: (font(s) + size(s) + colour(s) - the fonts and sizes and colours of the title, as well as of 

the material description and of my name, i.e. of all text on the page in question) 

Print: (which kind of printing? colour or b/w? digital?) 

Paper: (colour + individual paper dimensions + weight of the paper) 

Binding: (which kind of binding) 

Position (which page number + how many pages before and after) 

Full publication: (full dimensions, including the thickness + full publication weight + ISBN) 

254 255 



BFA 2 BFA 2 

Maria Norrman Eva Roel 

Reinhold Pettersson; Sigrid Holmquist 

Two videos, 6’35’’ and 21’27’’ 

256 257 



BFA 2 BFA 2 

Jessica Sanderheim Julia Stepp 

Disappearance 

Installation with plastic and plants 

Suspension of Disbelief 

Pencil on paper, 260 x 150 cm (cropped here) 

258 259 



BFA 2 BFA 2 

Stine Wexelsen Goksøyr 

Untitled, Part One 

HDV, 5’ 

260 261 



BFA 1 

262 263


BFA 1 BFA 1 

Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard Jóhan Martin Christiansen 

Distribute Yourself 

Video stills, text 

Colony Box 

MDF, wooden beams, paint, 244 x 244 x 244 cm 

264 265 



BFA 1 BFA 1 

Marten Damgaard Cathrine Hellberg 

Untitled 

Photograph and text 

Cookie Eating Cake 

Video, 3’45’’ 

266 267 



BFA 1 BFA 1 

Elsine Hoff Levinsen Emil Rønn Andersen 

Between floors 


Contractions Within Expansions 

Two LCD displays, 3mm acrylic plastic, wood, paint, dimensions variable 

268 269 



BFA 1 BFA 1 

Ihra Lill Scharning Jesper Weileby 

How to Knit Myself Smarter (Ongoing Project) and a Tribute to a Lost Passion/ 

The Blue Negro and I Are Terribly Sorry about FK Lyn and If We Had Known 

about It All the Time, We Would Not Have Been Smiling 

Photograph, 56 x 42 cm 

Malmö, Sweden/Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo 

270 271 



BFA 1 BFA 1 

Madeleine Åstrand 

Immaterialism 


272 273 



PhD 

274 275


PhD PhD 

Julie Ault 

Historical Inquiry as Subject and Object 

Each person who sits down to write faces 

not a blank page but his own vastly overfilled 

mind. The problem is to clear out most of 

what is in it, to fill huge plastic bags with the 

confused jumble of things that have accreted 

there over the days, months, years of being 

alive and taking things in through the eyes and 

ears and heart. The goal is to make a space 

where a few ideas and images and feelings 

may be so arranged that a reader will want 

to linger awhile among them…. But this task 

of housecleaning (of narrating) is not merely 

arduous; it is dangerous. There is the danger of 

throwing the wrong things out and keeping the 

wrong things in… 1 

Since the New York-based artists collaborative 

Group Material disbanded in 1996, I have continued 

its representation through live narration and writings, 

and responded to inquiries on a case-by-case basis. 

As the only founding member who remained until its 

conclusion I felt a responsibility to keep recounting 

the group’s practice. (Long-term member Doug 

Ashford has done likewise.) Group Material’s cultural 

practice was temporal and the forms employed were 

ephemeral. When the group ceased its activities I 

was intent on preserving its ephemeral quality so that 

it would not become history. Fearing a revisionist 

encapsulation in which conflicts and contradictions 

of collaboration are resolved in their representation, 

I resisted our work being defined or objectified in a 

monograph by an art historian, and reserved the right 

to cohere our history at some future point. 

Following a decade of active narration I decided 

it was time to relinquish responsibility (and control) 

and address Group Material’s history with lasting 

effect. I needed to confront the material traces that 

had infiltrated every closet, cabinet and spare spot 

in my apartment, as well as the psychic traces that 

permeated memory. Collecting material saved by 

other members and joining it all together in an archive 

would permit access to Group Material in a more 

coherent way than had been possible, and open the 

door for further historical representation. 

Tackling the mission of recuperating Group 

Material as a two-pronged ‘housecleaning’ operation 

involved gathering and organising the pool of material 

to constitute the archive, and simultaneously distilling 

from that body of information to make a book. 

While formalising the archive sought to make Group 

Material newly public, the process was also conceived 

as a laboratory in which to investigate the logic, 

structure, implications and practice of the archive. 

I spent several months processing the material in 

its soon-to-be permanent home – the Downtown 

Collection at New York University: handling, reading 

and looking at every paper, image and item; taking 

note, cross-referencing, recollecting and reflecting. 

The more I reviewed the more deeply I understood the 

malleable and fallible nature of memory, and memory 

repeatedly threw documentary fact into question. 

Alternatively edified and mystified, the experience 

demonstrated the utter insecurity of the categories 

‘subjective’ and ‘objective’. 

Looking back, I realise while telling the story of 

Group Material these past years I have unwittingly 

told some lies. This discovery occurred when 

encountering information in files that I had long 

since blotted from memory. Surprised, I read on and 

the divide between recollection and fact expanded. 

Certain retrieved information was basic while some 

signalled that Group Material is much more complex 

and debatable than I had meanwhile fabricated. It 

seems I had convinced myself that the streamlined 

storyline, which I repetitiously recounted for years, 

was accurate. 

Of course documents and artefacts are not 

intrinsically truth-telling either; they are fragmentary 

and disconnected from context. Archives set the stage 

for history writing, yet they can mislead and even lie 

through omission. Essential pieces of information, 

which might answer questions and redirect research, 

are not necessarily tangible or archived. 

While retrieving Group Material for myself, for 

the group and with the larger purpose of public 

representation in mind, inhabiting the dual 

roles of observer and observed created a central 

methodological challenge, which at times was 

confounding. Flipping between my own and 

other members’ muddle of memory as well as the 

accumulation of material sometimes felt like too much 

and not enough. But ultimately my insider relationship 

to the subject in conjunction with a more independent 

association to the potential for archives to shape 

historical representation seemed to productively 

balance one another. 

Each aspect of cohering the archive and making 

Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material has 

embodied specific and abstract purpose. A set of 

vexing questions fuelled the work. How does bringing 

documentation together imply shaping history, and 

writing history? How do artefacts – whether material 

or informational – communicate? Can contexts be 

in effect communicated? What archival structure 

and practices will animate and complicate without 

over determining meanings? How does the archive 

archive? What tense is the archive? Where does 

the archive end? What defines its frame? What 

can the collective subjective do when given the 

chance to write its own history? What is gained 

and lost in the process of subjecting ephemeral and 

peripheral activities to conservation, from inducting 

them into history? What kind of suitable forms can 

be shaped to embody the historicising processes, 

gathered knowledge and diverse purpose that drive 

this inquiry? How to make what is missing evident 

as a layer of historicising? How does the subjective 

276 277 

transform the material to a public sphere without 

manipulating it? Can one effectively challenge history 

writing while writing history? 

The book’s main section was conceived as a chronicle 

composed of reprinted documents and images, with 

a guiding text running throughout. Show and Tell 

takes its ingredients and methods from the archive, 

which embodies both private and public material. The 

making of the group as a specific context along with 

its structure and process is inseparable from its public 

creations, yet the bulk of existing representation 

focuses on Group Material’s projects. Show and Tell 

widens the focus to include conveyance of internal 

workings in each layer of material that forms the 

book, and stresses aspects of the collaboration that are 

otherwise invisible. 

Group Material comes to life in the archive. 

Working through the material, I was struck by 

the vividness and changing character of internal 

correspondence, minutes of meetings, exhibition 

proposals and press releases produced by the group. 

Emotional intensity is palpable in early communiqués, 

proposals and press releases are bombastic, topics and 

debates of the times are glimpsed through language, 

and graphic design bespeaks period styles. A selection 

of documents is reprinted in their original form and 

scale in Show and Tell. They are valued as ‘original 

language’, which vividly conveys what we perceived 

we were doing at the time far better than writing that 

depicts from the distance of time would, whether by 

someone inside or outside the group. This material 

would commonly be considered source for writing 

rather than substance for presentation. By design the 

book encourages that the documents be regarded as 

primary texts rather than ancillary illustrations. This 

method situates readers in the archive, inviting a 

multiplicity of interpretation. 

Contradictory evidence is at the heart of the 

archive and prominently figures into this portrayal of 

Group Material. A four-page incendiary letter written 

by cofounder Tim Rollins to the group in 1980 is 

fully reprinted alongside documents that represent 

a more harmonious collaboration. Tim’s letter rants 

and rails rhetorically. It evidences major clashes in 

the collaborative’s first months but it also shows how 

seriously he regarded the collaboration and articulates 

what was at stake for the group. As Janet Malcolm 

asserts, ‘Letters are the great fixative of experience. 

Time erodes feeling. Time creates indifference. Letters 

prove to us that we once cared. They are the fossils of 

feeling […] conduit to unmediated experience.’ 2 

The guiding text that filters throughout the 

chronicle was conceived as a non-specific voice 

imparting otherwise inaccessible circumstances, facts 

and anecdotes alongside the archive materials. It 

represents a close reading and distillation of multiple 

documentation and composite memory. This text 



captions, reports, digresses and discloses, coalescing 

subjective and objective knowledge into a seamless 

voice that augments the material. A depersonalised 

present-tense mode is used, intended to situate 

readers in the times of events and suggest collective 

subjectivity, distinct from first person retrospection. 

Trains of information such as the continuities and 

discontinuities of the group’s composition, conflicts 

and contradictions endemic to its process, and how 

Group Material structured itself and financed its work 

run throughout. 

While reading through the files I noted many 

interesting segments in all types of documents, 

initially regarding this as source material for the 

guiding text. The number of full documents that 

could be reproduced was limited by the budget, 

which led to creating a layer of diverse extracts 

varying in author purpose, length and style. Unified 

by typographic design treatment, these also filter 

throughout the chronicle. 

Image-wise, snapshots portraying the various 

members and incarnations of the group, although 

in some cases there are no photos, and formal 

installation photography of the collaborative’s 45 

projects are presented on equal footing. 

Despite the multiple layers of motley material 

that compose the chronicle, the goal was to bring the 

elements into a carefully designed formal system that 

stresses all the material as primary and equivalent. 

The book’s visual tone builds on Group Material’s 

aesthetic style. Analogous to the decentralised 

thematic exhibition format the group advanced, the 

chronicle is thought of as an exhibition space in the 

form of a book. 

Revisionist and interpretive tendencies have been 

restrained in Show and Tell in favour of creating a 

useful documentary foundation and introduction to 

Group Material’s archive. The organisation of the 

archive and the response to that process through 

the book provide a platform and base interpretation 

to use, negotiate and take issue with. The project is 

also a case study in archiving, historical investigation 

and history writing, shaped from the questions and 

problems enmeshed in an amalgam of personally, 

collectively and socially vested inquiry. 

PhD PhD 

Notes 

1. Malcolm, Janet, The Silent Woman. 

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. New York: 

Vintage, 1995, p.205. 

2. Ibid., p.109–110. 

278 279 



PhD PhD 

280 281 



PhD PhD 

Matthew Buckingham 

Sense of the Past: A Few Notes on 

My Doctoral Research and Project 

Memory 

You wake up each morning and there you are again – 

the same person you were yesterday, more or less. You 

squint your eyes and look around to get your bearings. 

Maybe you look at a clock. ‘What am I supposed to do 

this morning? What happened last night? What day 

is this?’ Scattered around you are the large and small 

personal archaeological clues that help you quickly 

piece things back together. We use memory and, by 

extension, the various constructions of time that most 

of us subscribe to, as primary tools for navigating our 

lives. Our sophisticated capacity for recall takes on 

countless forms, many of them unconscious. 

At the personal level we speak of short- and longterm 

memory, childhood memory, the shared memory 

of families, and of social or even collective memory. 

As we move from the personal to broader social 

spheres these memory-forms become increasingly 

cultural, representative, and symbolic. As the historian 

John Lewis Gaddis says, memory is ‘[…] the only data 

bank we have.’ 1 ‘We know the future only from having 

learned about the past: without it we’d have no sense 

of even these fundamental truths, to say nothing of 

the words with which to express them, or even of who 

or where or what we are. We know the future only 

by the past we project into it.’ 2 This calls attention to, 

and maybe even confuses, the lines we draw between 

past present and future while reminding us of the deep 

continuity that William Faulkner was referring 

to when he wrote ‘The past is never dead. It’s not 

even past.’ 3 

Problem 

The artist’s act of borrowing methods and 

methodologies from disciplines outside the field of 

art (such as geology, sociology, botany, anthropology, 

ethnography, etc) has become a key feature of 

contemporary art production. Many artists have a 

hybridised practice, working across disciplines. Others 

bring strategies from another field into the art context 

as a way of critically testing that discipline or the 

potential of visual art itself. 

The problem that I am setting for myself in my 

doctoral research and project is to ask what it might 

mean to borrow methods and strategies directly from 

the disciplines of history and historiography and bring 

them into the field of visual art. If we accept, even 

provisionally, the notion of the ‘artist-as-historian’, 

what are the implications of this figure and what 

assumptions are being made? 

In attempting to parse these questions I have been 

examining the range of historical modes and models 

that currently dominate our thinking about the past. I 

have begun this investigation by revisiting the history 

of history itself, retracing the lines of the discipline’s 

developments leading up to Leopold von Ranke’s 

19th century attempts to bring the status of science 

to history and, from there, looking at the relationship 

among successive and competing notions of historical 

memory including collective memory, social memory, 

Mentalité, the Annales School, the Frankfurt School, 

Metahistory, New Historicism, and the approaches 

to studying the past that are embodied in Feminism, 

Postcolonial Studies, and Queer Theory, among 

others. As Sarat Maharaj has pointed out to me, in 

doing this research, I’m querying the real effects that 

various modes of historical representation have had. 

History 

According to John Lewis Gaddis the long-running 

debate over history’s capacity or incapacity for 

objectivity – the controversy around its status as a 

science, so to say – can be misleading in that the 

comparison suggests that science itself has been 

constructed as objective or absolute. In his book 

The Landscape of History, Gaddis reminds us that 

as it developed in the 19th and 20th centuries it was 

science that moved closer to history rather than the 

other way around. Through the work of Charles 

Lyell in geology and Charles Darwin in biology 

science began to attempt to account for changes that 

occur over what were, up until then, unimaginably 

long periods of time, so called ‘deep time’. 4 Gaddis 

draws parallels between the discipline of writing 

history and these and other sciences that engage in 

thought experiment where reproduceable laboratory 

experimentation is impossible. He concludes ‘that 

science, history and art have something in common: 

they all depend on metaphor, on the recognition of 

patterns, on the realisation that something is “like” 

something else.’ 5 Elsewhere he continues: 

Culture, religion, technology, environment, 

and tradition can all [transmit acquired skills and 

ideas]. But history is arguably the best method 

of enlarging experience in such a way as to 

command the widest possible consensus on what 

the significance of that experience might be. 6 

In the hands of many writers the fiction of history 

is to imagine the real. History makes reality desirable, 

often creating the illusion that it is ‘speaking itself’ 

as if it simply ‘happened’. But upon more conscious 

examination we see that the fiction is always a 

construction, a story, that opens a debate around its 

own meaning. 

Stories are necessarily structured by silence. By 

the infinite number of things that every story leaves 

out. Silence occludes the ordinary, the implied, 

the everyday, the unexceptional – everything not 

considered important enough to be mentioned. Yet 

the significance of past events always appears in these 

282 283 

ordinary moments experienced by people whose 

names we rarely know. That’s why the quotidian 

becomes a limit of understanding – and a limit for 

speaking about the past. So, in that sense, according 

to Gaddis, even though it constitutes everything ‘the 

past […] is something we can never have. For by the 

time we’ve become aware of what has happened it’s 

already inaccessible to us: we cannot relive, retrieve, 

or rerun it as we might some laboratory experiment 

or computer simulation. We can only represent it.’ 7 

Positioning ourselves as closely as possible to these 

limits of narration we must ask ourselves if our 

narratives are adequate to our needs and if not how 

we may construct new ones. 

Mnemonic Space 

To be is to be somewhere, and ‘somewhere’ is always 

a place. 8 We use memory to navigate space as well 

as time and it is this mnemonic dimension of space 

inside and outside of the art context that interests me 

as a viewer and as an artist. 

In antiquity orators used imaginary palaces as 

sites for storing spoken words. Rather than read a 

speech off of a teleprompter or from sheets of paper, 

an ancient lecturer or politician gathered up their 

talk as they took a mental walk through a vast virtual 

architectural space designed to remind them of their 

own thoughts. The lecturer’s welcoming remarks to 

the audience were located at the front door to the 

palace. The introduction to the speech in the vestibule 

or foyer, the first argument or concept in the first 

room of the house, and so on. Each object in each 

room recalled an idea or even a composed paragraph, 

sentence, or word for the speaker. 9 

In the 16th century Giulio Camillo is supposed 

to have actualised this art of memory in the form of 

a physical theater laid up with scores of objects and 

images representing encyclopedic knowledge that 

public speakers could use to recall their thoughts. 10 

Even if it never existed Camillo’s memory theater 

lived on through the organisation of space and display 

found in the Wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities, 

and in the idea of the museum itself. 

Concrete relations of time and place are also 

endemic to – built into – the media of photography, 

film and video. Photography and film always insist on 

something that was, tying images to the people and 

places depicted in them. As Roland Barthes might 

have said, in terms of language: the tense of film 

and photography is: ‘this-will-have-been’. 11 A kind 

of paradoxical ‘future/past’ tense. This ambiguity 

always provokes speculation and interpretation and 

always concerns at least three points: the subject 

photographed, the photographer, and the viewer of 

the photograph. As Jean Paul Sartre wrote: ‘An image 

is nothing else than a relationship.’ 12 



Muhheakantuck 

Within my own work I began to articulate some 

of these problems in a project that I made in 2003 

entitled Muhheakantuck – Everything Has a Name, 

a 16mm film installation. In Muhheakantuck I 

was attempting to look at the Hudson River, or 

Muhheakantuck, as the Indigenous Lenape call it (the 

river that flows in two directions) as a ‘place’ through 

the lens of Dutch colonisation. I wanted to do that 

by looking at the relatively brief existence of Dutch 

New Netherland and its port city New Amsterdam, 

which the British renamed New York, in terms of the 

colony’s economy, in particular the exchange with 

the Indigenous Lenape people in the area. In the 

work I juxtaposed image and language, mapping and 

narration in the idea of a ‘dream of vertical ascent and 

hovering flight’ – that is the desire for an unnatural 

physical view that parallels the kind of mastery over 

time and space implied in story telling, filmmaking, 

novel- or history-writing. I then returned both 

narrative and image to their (non-) site, playing back 

the film on a harbor ferry in the Hudson River. 

Doctoral Submission 

I am preparing my doctoral work in two parts, 

tentatively titled The Sense of the Past, and 

Subterranean Pass Way. Both parts will be visual 

art projects that will explicate different relationships 

between theory and practice which will, in turn, be 

weighted differently in each. The Sense of the Past will 

be a sequence of writings embedded in a visual form, 

and Subterranean Pass Way will be a photo and film 

based work driven by writing and research. 

Henry James left his novel The Sense of the Past 

unfinished. 13 In 1900 he abandoned its protagonist, 

Ralph Pendrel, a young American historian, when 

Pendrel was on the verge of knowingly trading 

places with one of his ancestors – embarking on a 

fantastic time-travel voyage. James may have given 

up on the story because of the apparent incongruity 

with his own writing sensibility, or perhaps because 

of the potentially unsolvable time-travel puzzle he 

had created for himself its center. In any event the 

unresolved and incomplete state of the work leaves 

it open as fertile ground for reflecting on the task of 

the historian and the transference of one discipline 

into another. 

The ancestor that Pendrel believes he will become 

is portrayed in a peculiar family portrait showing a 

young man of the early 19th century who has posed 

with his back turned squarely on the artist and, 

subsequently, on all who view the painting later, 

suggesting that he has turned his back on the future 

preferring to look backward in time. 

Since beginning to make artworks I have been 

PhD PhD 

including research bibliographies with each project 

disclosing the sources of information that were 

formative to them. This technique of citation, 

borrowed from academic writing, has the dual purpose 

of pointing to my act of interpretation, to my reading 

of the material in each work and, hopefully reminds 

the spectator that they are also making a reading of 

the material. These bibliographies not only allow for 

‘checking up’ on me, but also imply that other projects 

could easily be made form the same sources, even by 

the viewer themselves. 

In The Sense of the Past I will expand this strategy 

of citation and respond directly to Henry James 

unfinished novel, comparing and contrasting the 

problem of James’s notion of the fiction writer as 

historian with the figure of Ralph Pendrel, a fictional 

historian, in the form of annotations, marginalia, 

footnotes, appendices, glossaries, and illustrations 

that, when taken together, may be read as an 

independent essay on historiography in the hands 

of artists as well as a commentary on the unfinished 

James work. 

Subterranean Passway will be a work with which 

I will test different models of historical thinking. I will 

ask what role does the social and historical memory 

of the anti-slavery Underground Railroad movement 

play in defining the present moment for a specific 

social group in North America? I will approach 

this as a case study (using the term advisedly) for 

understanding how a ‘sense of the past’ in relation 

to the Underground Railroad may function for a 

few specific individuals in a group. In asking this 

question I will pay special attention to the idea of 

moral community and the role of violence in the 

Underground Railroad narrative. I will ultimately 

juxtapose the reality of human trafficking today with 

the movement’s legacy. 

The Sense of the Past and Subterranean Pass 

Way will be produced side by side. Each will inform 

the development of the other and ultimately this 

path of inquiry will lead me toward identifying my 

‘problematic’ – in the Althusserian sense – in other 

words, the framework from which I and other artists 

might be working. 

In Henry James’s title there is a tempting 

metaphor: our perception of time-passing as sense 

perception itself. Gaddis sees history as a tool for 

navigating between oppression and liberation, as the 

means by which a culture has a chance to see beyond 

the limits of its own senses. The continuity of time 

that Faulkner wrote about means that ‘history’ is not 

over or resolved and any appearance to the contrary 

is an illusion. For Max Horkheimer and the Frankfurt 

School the task of the historian was formulated 

in part as the task of preserving ‘the memory of 

suffering in order to foster demand for qualitative 

historical change’. 14 Using the past as a roadmap to our 

present, at its best even deconstructing constructed 

oppressions, can the art context constructively 

reintroduce experience and contingency to historical 

thinking? 

As an artist I am proposing to experiment with 

history ‘reading’ art and art ‘reading’ history. If art is 

producing knowledge, or is a way of knowing, I see 

this as part of the process by which we make meaning 

from ambiguity or, when writing history, begin to 

lift the burden of the past. By bringing it into the 

art context I am not interested in putting history on 

display, but instead in experiencing history’s methods 

and problems, and in turning these problems over to 

the viewer. This exchange between art and history is 

perhaps mirrored in my work in the exchange between 

cinema and art, a deliberate mutual dislocation of 

the exhibition space with the cinema and vice versa. 

But what can happen when a story is (re)told at a 

specific time and place? When the viewer must partly 

become historian while seeing themselves as subjects 

at the same time. This would fail the objectives of 

written history while possibly expanding the tool kit 

for navigating between oppression and liberation. As 

Sarat Maharaj has questioned, what kind of historical 

thinking and consciousness is that? 

284 285 

Notes 

1. Gaddis, John Lewis, The Landscape of History: 

How Historians Map the Present. Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2004, p.8. 

2. Ibid., p.3. 

3. The character Gavin Stevens says this in Act I, 

Scene II of William Faulkner’s play Requiem 

for a Nun. 

4. Gaddis, op. cit., p.38. 

5. Ibid., p.2. 

6. Ibid., p.9. 

7. Ibid., p.3. 

8. Casey, Edward S, The Fate of Place: a 

Philosophical History, Berkeley and Los 

Angeles: University of California Press, 1997, 

p.IX: ‘Whatever is true for space and time, this 

much is true for place: we are immersed in it 

and could not do without it. To be at all – to 

exist in any way – is to be somewhere, and to 

be somewhere is to be in some kind of place 

[…] Nothing we do is unplaced.’ 

9. See Yates, Frances A, The Art of Memory. 

London: Routledge, 1966. 

10. Ibid. 

11. Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida. New York: 

Hill and Wang, p.96. 

12. Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Psychology of 

Imagination. New York: Citadel Press, 1966, 

p.8. 

13. James, Henry, The Sense of the Past. London: 

W Collins Sons & Co, 1917. 

14. Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: 

A History of the Frankfurt School and the 

Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973, 

p.51. 



PhD PhD 

Photograph of Henry James by Alice Boughton, 1906 

Reproduced in Mary Ann Caws, Henry James. New York: Overlook Press, 2006 

286 287 



PhD PhD 

Mats Eriksson 

A Visual Research Presentation? 

This is an attempt to present some of the questions 

that my doctoral research touches on and to give some 

idea of what the research is about. Although I might 

uncover new facts on the way, which could change 

the direction of my work, it is important from time to 

time to sit down and think about where the research 

is going and what the roadmap looks like right now. 

What is of major interest and what isn’t? 

The starting point for my doctorate research was 

my ongoing project An Architecture for the Poor 

(www.matseriksson.net/AFTP/aftp.html) which was 

to do with the planning and construction of housing 

for underprivileged people. I used this project as a tool 

to get into the research and see what might come of 

it. Such were my first steps. Questions came up. What 

kind of language was the doctoral research suppose 

to use and produce? Was it possible to retain my own 

voice, or would my research require efforts to adopt 

academic language? Would it become a mixture of 

voices? Should my doctorate be strictly academic or 

should I try to investigate and find my own method? 

Where could I find the tools I needed? In my own 

practice? Would the subject-matter lead me to the 

tools and methods I needed, as in my artistic practice 

I intuitively let the artwork become the creative drive? 

Was there a language in our small doctoral research 

group that we could translate and use together during 

our seminars, and then apply in our research? If so, 

how would that language be articulated? 

The questions raised outnumbered the suggestions 

of how to move forward. Methods would be 

individual, but how would we develop them? I think 

my first submission for the research programme was 

also a visual and practical device for me to realise my 

possibilities, or, perhaps more correctly, the different 

roads or structures that could be used for my doctoral 

research. New facts or subjects might come up, and 

these might change the direction of my research. New 

questions might be raised, and I might have to take 

them into consideration and revise my work. This 

often means that each step leads to the next, and that 

reaching conclusions takes longer than planned. 

The project An Architecture for the Poor was 

concerned with attempts to plan and build for a rural 

population. It investigated projects commissioned 

by the Egyptian state while it was still under British 

domination. The housing problems of the country’s 

poor and traditionally nomadic population were to 

be solved through design. The idea was to construct 

a city that would generate new cities, to launch a 

self-fulfilling template. This social experiment was 

contemporaneous with the development of the 

Swedish folkhem (‘The People’s Home’) but realised 

in a society that was different in many ways. What 

are the differences, and the similarities, between the 

Egyptian and Swedish projects? More specifically, 

how is it possible to take into account those who are 

less privileged in Swedish society and make them feel 

part of the transformation into a ‘better society’? Has 

the Swedish model been more successful than other 

modernist projects of social engagement? 

In the work that has come out of these questions 

and comparisons during my earlier research, the 

focus has shifted to Swedish society and how it has 

been transformed into its current form. The research 

still has an international perspective but is more 

concerned with Swedish circumstances and how they 

can be represented. The image of Sweden abroad 

is still very much that of a utopian, democratic and 

socially engaged state. A classless society. But how has 

this vision developed? How is it manifested in reality 

today, and what new issues or problems have occurred 

as this image has been transformed? 

Modernisation was the central project for Sweden 

in the 20th century. Society was to be transformed 

into a conscious, caring and utopian folkhem. Today 

it is easy to look back on this with nostalgia and not 

notice the criticism directed at the project and the 

tendency towards bureaucratic normalisation that to 

some extent marginalised the individual in society. 

What did this society mean for those who did not fit 

into a regulated relationship with the authorities? 

Who were these ‘others’ and what opportunities 

did they have to assert themselves? What were the 

heterotopias in relation to the regulated norms and 

how have such alternative microforms operated and 

developed in parallel with the changes in society? 

The people who were supposed to inhabit the 

‘architecture for the poor’ in Egypt went back to their 

old villages. In Stockholm young people left their 

new homes in the suburbs and went back to the city 

centre. What was the loss? Was their identification 

with the suburbs not part of who they were and how 

they wanted to be represented? Is it possible to adopt 

a programme of modernism, and make it part of the 

identity of a new, socially-engaged society, without 

creating new problems? Is the transition to a clean, 

advanced society always successful? Does it produce 

happiness? What is a happy society? Who is part of 

this society, who is included, and who isn’t? 

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PhD PhD 

Frans Jacobi 

Aesthetics of Resistance: COP15 

As part of my ongoing research I closely followed 

the activism surrounding the UN Climate Summit, 

COP15, in Copenhagen in December 2009. As a 

platform for thinking about these events iI established 

a blog, http://climate-action.blogspot.com. The 

following are extracts from this blog. 

7 December 2009 

They Came on a Flood of Light 

Yesterday on the news I saw a story about the 

Swedish corporation Vattenfall and their involvement 

in the German coal industry. How they where 

demolishing whole villages and huge areas of land to 

install large-scale coal mining facilities – facilities that 

keep global warming going on a gigantic scale. In the 

same newsfeed there was a presentation of a huge air 

balloon installed on City Hall Square in Copenhagen 

to symbolise the new global spirit of changing our 

attitude. On the balloon will be projected pictures of 

activists from all over the world, agitating for change. 

This balloon is the main symbol for ‘Hopenhagen’, as 

they call this campaign that is really dominating the 

streets Copenhagen these days. 

As I passed City Hall Square today and saw the 

balloon-globe, I also saw the signs of its two main 

sponsors: Siemens and Vattenfall. The idea that this 

whole climate conference is only a cover-up from 

the global corporations to continue their devastating 

activities imidiately came to mind. To have Vattenfall 

as a main sponsor certainly puts the agenda of 

Hopenhagen into doubt. 

A quick glance at the website of Hopenhagen 

reveals that ‘Hopenhagen is a movement generated 

by the International Advertising Association, 

representing the global advertising industry in support 

of the United Nations’. It is sponsored by Coca-Cola, 

Siemens and a whole range of other multinational 

companies. Its main goal is ‘to connect every person, 

every city, and every nation to Copenhagen. To give 

everyone hope, and a platform from which to act. To 

create a grassroots movement that’s powerful enough 

to influence change.’ 

How bizarre is that? A fake grassroots movement 

created by the global advertising industry to engage 

consumers worldwide? This is appropriation art 

taken to the streets. It also shows how complex the 

range of activism surrounding COP15 is; from the 

violent radicalism of NeverTrustACop through the 

creative civil disobedience of OperationBikeBloc, for 

instance, to the Coca-Cola-drugged, fake optimism of 

Hopenhagen. 

Who is acting on the behalf of whom? Who is 

representing whom? 

www.hopenhagen.org 


Are You in Action Now? 

I am one of seven participants in the artist’s parade 

Environmental Justice Walk. We are in the middle of 

Amager Commons, a huge natural park between Bella 

Centre and Copenhagen, walking steadily forward on 

our path with absolutely no one there to see us. All of 

a sudden we see two horsemen waiting further down 

the path. It is the police who are waiting for us out 

here in nature. It is an absurd but somehow poetic 

moment: A tiny assembly of artists with small poetic 

sign-boards (in black and white of course), parading 

for no one but nature itself. But still – out there in 

nowhere –under surveillance by the ever-present 

police forces. 

Already when we were gathering in a corner by the 

Bella Centre, they were present with three vehicles 

full of armoured police force. Apparently, if you get 

permission for a demonstration they will show up in 

full combat gear, no matter how small the demo is or 

how peaceful its purpose. 

The highlight of the day came later, when 

we reached the city. On a street corner near 

Christianshavn Square we were approached by two 

real activists on their way to Christiania. Enthusiastic, 

but also bewildered by the somewhat different look 

of our little demo, they asked us up front: Are you in 

action now? 

If the Environmental Justice Walk contributed 

anything at all, it must have been just that: a tiny itch 

of uncertainty. 

www.field-work.dk/environmentaljustice.html 


Fame 

It is Friday morning and the first real demo of the 

climate week to come. We are in Kongens Nytorv on 

Strøget in the heart of Copenhagen, and a not really 

impressive bunch of activists gather and wait. Almost 

half of the crowd are press people with cameras. The 

concept of the day is to attack different companies 

representing global capitalist culture by walking into 

their lobbies and confronting them with their direct 

responsibility for climate change. I immediatly have 

the feeling that the location of the start-up is a hoax – 

that the core of activists are busy elsewhere attacking 

capitalism while the not-so-big crowd here is only 

supposed to distract the police and the press. 

The square is lined on one side with a 

photographic exhibition by former supermodel 

Helena Christensen, now a climate-activist promoting 

immediate action with exotic photos of so-called 

climate victims in Peru. On the other side of the 

square is a golden container, containing a casting 

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session for Brad Pitt Is Saving Planet Earth. 

In this sense surrounded by fame, the noise section 

of the demo starts a heavy samba-like groove. And 

now the demo starts moving. But after only a few 

hundred metres the police fence the whole demo 

in, blocking a whole street off at both ends. Here 

we stand for half and hour or more, blocked from 

continuing the demo or from escaping. After a long 

while the polices back off and let the crowd continue, 

but now the demo stops unexpectedly in the middle of 

a huge crossroads, blocking a large part of the trafiic 

through Copenhagen Central for another half hour. 

And in this manner the day continues: Activists 

and police teasing each other, feeling each other out, a 

long series of contradictory strategic moves that only 

make sense if we see this as advanced street theatre. 

Who controls the streets and who controls the images 

that the media will project from this game-like attack 

on public space? For both sides the real audience is 

not the accidental passer-by in the street, but media in 

the broadest sense, and in the media the production of 

symbolic gestures is central. 

The slogans of the day: Our Climate! Not Your 

Business! Don’t Buy the Lie! I am not sure if these 

slogans transmits to anyone passing the demo in 

the streets or working in the companies adressed. 

In the media coverage afterwards it is the sheer joy 

of street battling that emmanates most clearly from 

the different reports. But then again, this is only the 

warm-up for far more radical events to come. 

My personal moment of fun was checking out 

the Brad Pitt website afterwards. It is actually an 

humorous attempt at mainstream political theatre. 

www.bradpitt.dk 



PhD PhD 

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During the short period between the fall of the 

Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the parliamentary 

elections held in East Germany in March 1990, a 

new constitution for East Germany (the German 

Democratic Republic or GDR) was drawn up in 

a series of round-table meetings and discussions. 

Since the outcome of the elections favored parties 

recommending a swift reunification with West 

Germany, this work was soon obsolete. But what kind 

of state and which subjects would it have produced 

had it ever been effected? What future would it 

have brought about, being neither the Communist 

regime of the former East Germany, nor integration 

into its capitalist counterpart West Germany? These 

are speculations that arise in the excavation of the 

documents and recordings of these proceedings 

undertaken by the artist Elske Rosenfeld, herself a 

former subject of the defunct GDR. In her work, 

Rosenfeld urges us to look at this lost history, not in 

order to resurrect or rewrite the past, but in order to 

imagine another, alternative future. At stake is what 

imagination of the future and past is proposed: how a 

work of art produces other imaginaries of the world 

and its institutions, rather than merely reiterating 

already existing ones, even in so-called critical terms 

(i.e. affirmative critique). It is a question of horizon. 

Now, perhaps we can say that the East German 

legislators were swept up by the forces of history – 

that they were, even then, out of time. But what could 

be meant by metaphors such as ‘the forces of history’, 

PhD PhD 

Simon Sheikh 

Vectors of the Possible 

and how might we understand timing and timeliness 

in this context? In her installation In the Near Future 

(2005–2010), Sharon Hayes tries to project the recent 

past into the present, to be out of time while acting 

in real time. On thirteen occasions Hayes went to a 

different location in New York City, parading around 

with a sign from a protest movement of the past. How 

are such statements readable now, and what do they 

mean when they are no longer the expression of the 

people, signified not by the crowd of demonstrators, 

but by a lone figure holding a sign, putting her body 

on the line? It is, then, not only history and the 

history of struggles being put on display, but also our 

present actuality; the gesture asks which struggles, and 

not least which forms of signification, are adequate 

today. At stake is a questioning of the very format of 

the demonstration, historically and in the present, as 

well as the individual body taking part in it, forming it, 

and the histories and actualities of that body. 

Artists Runo Lagomarsino and Johan Tirén also 

take up the demonstration in their contribution to the 

exhibition, a single photograph documenting an event 

Waiting for the Demonstration at the Wrong Time 

(2003). The image is a portrait of the two artists, of the 

‘artist-as-protester’. Lagomarsino and Tirén are equally 

out of time, not too late, but… too early in fact. We 

see them standing alone on a country road at the site 

of a planned gathering protesting a European Union 

summit, one wintertime morning, a couple of hours 

prior to the manifestation. Again, this work reminds 

us of the timeliness of action and presence, of being 

at the right place but at the wrong time; as such it 

recalls the problem of any revolution or revolutionary 

leader: when is it the right time? How soon is now? 

When is that time imminent on the horizon? And it 

is furthermore a comment on the artists’ locality – 

Scandinavia – and its societies’ presumably consensual 

relationship to political deliberation, an image that 

has, since the troubles of Gothenburg in 2001 and 

Copenhagen in 2009, long since been shattered – 

violent events are present here through their absence. 

Also dealing with the aesthetics of protest, but 

employing a large billboard rather than a small 

photograph, artist group Freee likewise stage 

themselves in a particular situation, in a political space 

as politicised subjects circumscribed by that space. 

The artists are shown in the middle of a huge quarry 

that completely engulfs them, eliminating perspective, 

skyline, and any sense of localisable space. The 

monumental scale of the environment belies the size 

of Freee’s own five-meter-long banner depicting the 

statement Protest Drives History (2008). Situated in a 

barren landscape with no visible perspective, one can 

ask what history is possible without a horizon, and 

thus a sense of movement backwards or forwards. On 

the other hand, the horizontal line of the composition 

of the image, and thus the one presented to us, can be 

said to be that of the banner itself, pointing not only 

to its potential meaninglessness and the abandonment 

of its enunciative powers, but also its potentiality and 

futurity. By positing the horizon as an image and not 

just a metaphor, it implies a specific aesthetics – not 

only an aesthetics of politics and political movements, 

but also a politics of the aesthetic. 

An entirely different image and metaphor is the 

foundation of the video Universal Embassy (2004), 

in which artist Hito Steyerl documents the history 

of this activist project, established by artists in 

the former headquarters of the Somali diplomatic 

mission in Brussels. Hosting and assisting sanspapiers 

individuals who are fighting for legalisation or 

official recognition, the embassy not only attempted 

to explore the possibilities of the narrow juridical 

space it managed to identify, but also worked on 

making possible and nurturing the basic, everyday 

social bonds that homelessness, destitution, illegality, 

and clandestine living tend to make precarious and 

fragmentary. The embassy is a deliberate contradiction 

in terms, and of terms: a Universal Embassy. It is an 

impossible – but actual – embassy that represents 

those who are not represented, and gives space to 

those without a state. And a utopian question is 

inherent in the undertaking: can we imagine a world 

without borders, without the state and its monopoly 

on granting rights? Can we imagine universality as 

equality? 

Sound art collective Ultra-red’s installation 

Vogue’ology (2010) comes out of a current 

296 297 

investigation into sound and spatialises an analysis 

of political terms within the New York gender–queer 

House/Ballroom community. Vogue’ology anticipates 

the articulation of such an analysis by exhibiting 

a series of text pieces produced in collaboration 

between Ultra-red and members of the scene. These 

text pieces, or protocols, guide communal reflection 

and analysis of sound recordings, testimonies, and 

historical objects, forming a collective articulation 

of political terms that can be employed to organise 

the massive archive of ballroom dresses, trophies, 

photographs, video, and ephemera, and places them 

within a horizon of visibility and readability. The 

collective archiving project is an attempt at a different 

way of conceptualising political practice beyond the 

critique and production of political representations 

as we know them. For Ultra-red, sound and the 

question ‘what did you hear?’ amplify another mode 

of aesthetic operation within political struggle – the 

political organisation of listening. 

From the instances of utopia and pleasure invoked 

by the works of Steyerl and Ultra-red, we move to 

a rather dystopian take on our actuality in the form 

of a film by artist collective Chto delat'? (‘What Is 

to Be Done?’) The Tower: A Songspiel (2010). It is 

based on actual documents and speeches from current 

Russian political culture, and on an analysis of the 

conflict that has developed around the planned Okhta 

Centre development in St. Petersburg, where the 

Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom intends to house 

the headquarters of its locally-based subsidiaries in a 

403-meter-high skyscraper. This has provoked one of 

the fiercest confrontations between the authorities and 

society in recent Russian political history. Presented 

as a Brechtian play, with the people as chorus, and 

decision-makers and intellectuals as soloists, The 

Tower offers a vision of the crushing verticality 

of power in contemporary Russia. The horizon is 

presented as purely vertical, with all decisions and 

debates being imposed from the top down, by the few 

toward the many. 

If the Gazprom tower is indeed a monument 

to the power of capital, it can be compared to that 

monumental symbol of American hegemony that is 

Mount Rushmore. Consisting of a digital photograph 

and a timeline, Matthew Buckingham’s The Six 

Grandfathers, Paha Sapa, in the Year 502,002 C.E. 

(2002) reconsiders Mount Rushmore as a cultural, 

political, and social symbol by imagining its inevitable 

disintegration. Having worked with geologists, 

Buckingham estimates that it will take approximately 

500,000 years for the portraits of the four US 

presidents carved on Mount Rushmore to erode and 

become unrecognisable. With its disappearance, the 

paradox of Rushmore’s meaning as a declared ‘shrine 

to democracy’ intensifies: it is carved on land stolen 

from the Native American Sioux tribe and made by an 

artist who was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. 



The work attempts to imagine what the mountain will 

look like in the future, as its power to represent fades 

alongside the histories it tries to suppress. 

If every age is grounded by a specific horizon 

– a particular view of the world – how must such 

a horizon be placed in order to be effective as well 

as affective: as nearby or faraway, unattainable? As 

real, or as wholly imaginary? The horizon is not only 

reflected in terms of the image, of visualisation, but 

also in terms of vicinity and velocity: are we close 

by or a long way away? Is it receding or emerging? 

And is it approaching fast or coming at us like a 

slow train? The works in this exhibition establish 

certain horizons – proposals of what can be imagined 

and what cannot. They can thus be seen as vectors, 

reckoning possibility and impossibility in (un)equal 

measures, but always detecting and indicating ways 

of seeing, and thus of being, in the world. The works 

are performing ground research into horizontality, but 

in terms of image production and conceptualisation. 

Vectors of the Possible thus suggests what can be 

termed an ontology of the horizon, of its placement 

and function within political imaginaries. 

PhD PhD 

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PhD PhD 

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PhD PhD 

Apolonija Šušteršic ˇ 

In September 2008 I was invited to make a public 

art project or the central marketplace, Brunnenplatz, 

in the area of Hustadt in Bochum, Germany. The 

project became a case study for my doctoral thesis at 

the Malmö Art Academy. When I began to investigate 

the conditions of the area I identified a number of 

interesting issues, relating to the equitable distribution 

of socio-political work in public space, and formed my 

project around these. In my thesis I will describe the 

project according to my own critical analysis of spatial 

relationships, while examining other professionals’ 

strategies for intervention training. These have been 

recurring themes in my practice as an artist to date. 

The Hustadt project is a process composed of 

several parts. The starting point is my research of the 

existing situation, which includes many formal and 

informal meetings, discussions, and workshops with 

people living in Hustadt. My aim with this research 

is to create the conditions for public participation (in 

parallel to the official participatory urban planning 

process) and together with a group of inhabitants 

make a suggestion that can influence and definitely 

shift the official planning proposal for Hustadt. 

The whole process has lead to the drafting of a 

proposal for the Community Pavilion – Brunnenplatz 

1. This will be a meeting place for people living in 

Hustadt, encouraging them to act and re-act on 

their present conditions outside of official social 

institutions, to create a place by themselves and for 

themselves. Community Pavilion – Brunnenplatz 1 

Um_BAUstelle_HUstadt 

is a network of activities suggested by inhabitants 

themselves: a summer kitchen, a place to sit, a small 

performance stage, an outdoor cinema, a bicycle 

repair workshop and much more. The aim is to create 

a place that would generate and inspire everyone who 

lives in the area. 

UmBAU_stelle_HUstadt/Temporary Pavilion is one 

part of the Hustadt project, realised in the summer of 

2009. I worked on this project together with the social 

activist Matthias Köllmann, who is also a member 

of the Aktionsteam. Together we developed the idea 

of building a temporary pavilion, which would be a 

try-out for the Community Pavilion proposed within 

the urban re-design plan of ‘Inner Hustadt’. However, 

the idea was not only to build a ‘try-out’ for a future 

public platform, but to also use the building process 

to establish communication with people living at 

Brunnenplatz and its close vicinity. Besides, we 

were able to observe very closely how people – of 

different age groups – use the place itself and what 

the potential and the problems might be as the future 

situation is planned. 

The process of building the Temporary Pavilion 

in an open building site proved to be a very good 

model for communication with many different 

groups of users, from small children to elderly and 

passers-by. Everyone’s curiosity provoked some 

kind of discussion on the subject of re-building 

Brunnenplatz and Hustadt in general. We did not only 

answer questions related to our project – building 

the Temporary Pavilion – but inevitably opened 

discussions on various topical issues, such as: the 

Hustadt Recostruction Plan (what, where and when?); 

security in Hustadt; taking care of public space in 

Hustadt; what might be expected of the people living 

in Hustadt; what they might expect from the city 

authorities; what their worries and possible wishes 

are, etc. 

The Temporary Pavilion is placed on Brunnenplatz 

and uses the existing pergola as a support structure to 

avoid the formal procedures of asking for zoning and 

building permission. 

Most of the building material was recycled. The 

Asia plates used for building moulds to pour concrete 

were donated to us. The building works were done 

from 15 July to 15 August, and the Temporary 

Pavilion was open to the public from 15 August at the 

Community Festival and it performed its function until 

March 2010 when the official building site opened. 

302 303 



PhD PhD 

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Courses, Autumn Semester 2009 

BFA 

Technical Courses: 

Welding 

Credits: 6 points. 

Teachers: Senior Lecturer P O Persson and Robert 

Cassland. 

Participating Students: Tim Hansen, Tiril 

Hasselknippe, Jorun Jonasson, Max Ockborn, 

Titas Silovas, Danilo Stanković, Sarra Turan, Örn 

Alexander Ámundason 

This course gives you knowledge about different 

welding techniques, such as MIG and gas welding, as 

well as information about the safety regulations for the 

different techniques. After the course you will recieve 

a ‘driver’s license’ that allows you to work on your 

own with the Academy’s welding equipment. 

Electricity 


Teacher: Sven Yngve Oscarsson. 

Participating Students: Daniel Peder Askeland, 

Tim Hansen, Tomas Lundgren, Jessica Sanderheim, 

Camilla Skibrek, Stine Wexelsen Goksøyr. 

The course starts with theoretical lectures and 

practical experiments concerning electricity. We go 

through terms such as strong and weak currents, 

positive and negative, phase, zero, tension and 

resistance etc. How can lamps, electric engines and 

other electrical devices be used in art? What are we 

allowed to connect ourselves and how do we do that? 

When are batteries to be preferred? What materials 

should be used, and where can they be bought? We 

also look at risks, safety and what the law prescribes. 

This knowledge is then applied to the participants’ 

own practice, their needs and ideas. They will create, 

individually or in smaller groups, something that 

‘requires electricity to function’. The participants are 

responsible for the artistic content and the practical 

realisation, but of course they will get concrete advice 

during planning and construction. 

Plastic 


Teacher: Senior Lecturer P O Persson. 

Participating Students: Pauliina Pietilä, Stine 

Wexelsen Goksøyr. 

Courses Courses 

The course in handling plastic gives you knowledge 

about laminating and casting plastic, and also 

basic information about the safety guidelines in the 

workshop. After finishing the course, you will get 

a ‘driver’s license’ that permits you to work in the 

Academy’s plastic workshop on your own. 

Creative Courses: 

Artists’ Writings 


Teacher: Professor Joachim Koester. 

Participating Students: Morgan Canavan, Tiril 

Hasselknippe, Juha Laakkonen, Erin Nelson, David 

Nilson, Olof Nimar, Max Ockborn, Niklas Persson, 

Jessica Sanderheim, Danilo Stankovic´, Susanne 

Svantesson, Gunnhild Torgersen, Sarra Turan, Örn 

Alexander Ámundason. 

KUNO Express Participants: Kristina Kivirand 

(Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn), Lea Porsager 

(Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, Copenhagen), 

Aiste˙ Virsulyte˙ (Vilnius Academy of Arts). 

The Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers would often 

ask people who saw his art to share their thoughts 

with him. Broodthaers didn’t ask the question to 

find out whether people liked his work or not. What 

interested him was the synthesis of words and ‘works’ 

– thinking about art, thinking through art, and the 

power of words to describe this process. In the course 

we will focus on this elusive field through various 

artists’ writings. 

We will start by reading texts by Robert Smithson 

and discuss how a spiral, a guided tour, literature and 

the idea of entropy inspired his artistic speculations. 

We will also watch some of his audiovisual works 

together, which will enable us to discuss the difference 

between writing for a voiceover and writing for the 

page. Another seminal figure we will discuss is Dan 

Graham who for a period exchanged the exhibition 

space for the magazine, and considered his articles on 

rock music, trance, art, and cinema and architecture 

to be part of his artistic practice. We will look at 

some of Graham’s quasi-journalistic essays and try to 

identify ideas, agendas and some of the qualities that 

make them different. 

In addition to the readings and screenings, there 

will be a short writing exercise that uses the format of 

the contemporary exhibition press release as a point 

of departure. 

Escape 

Credits: 45 points (30 points in the autumn semester 

2009 and 15 points in the spring semester 2010). 

Course Leaders: Professor Olav Christopher Jenssen 

(University of Art, Braunschweig), Assistant Professor 

Viola Vahrson (University of Art, Braunschweig) and 

Professor Gertrud Sandqvist (Malmö Art Academy) 

Patricipating Students from the Malmö Art Academy: 

Karen Gimle, Nina Jensen, Ingrid Koslung, Olof 

Nimar, Julian Stalbohm, Maiken Stene, Lars Andreas 

Tovey Kristiansen, Thale Vangen. 

The course is set up as a joint project between 

University of Art, Braunschweig, Malmö Art Academy 

and International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah 

(later replaced by Maumaus, Lisbon). 

Due to the omnipresence of the media, we are 

constantly informed about human catastrophes, 

caused by different forms of violence. People lose their 

lives in these disasters, other are able to escape. Not 

only the fact of violence, but just the anticipaton of 

danger, causes people to flee. The project will examine 

the phenomenon of escape in a wide sense. Of course 

the political aspect is important – war refugees, 

migrants from Africa landing on the coasts of Italy 

and Spain, demonstrators fleeing the military. There 

are images of people escaping various catastrophes. 

There are images showing grief and despair. How are 

these moments visualised? What images do we carry 

with us, which are engraved in our minds? Existential 

fears, worries and distress are often connected to 

escape. But besides angst, these images and stories 

of escape exert a deep fascination and even desire in 

people. Why? How? 

There is also an inner withdrawal, which can be 

understood as an escape – or escapism. The inner 

exile, the attempts to protect a private zone in the 

midst of horrors or an otherwise unbearable life, 

sometimes verge on madness. What is happening 

when the creative person or the artist escapes into 

madness? And what does all the dissociating and 

daydreaming associated with the mass media, or in 

drug cultures, have to do with the wish of escaping 

reality? How have artists described the mixture of 

violence and desire, which is embedded in the theme 

of escape? 

The whole project aims to both analyse and 

produce art and artistic knowledge about the theme. 

Our hope is that the broad understanding of such a 

current phenomenon will result in an exhibition and a 

publication that will break down the borders between 

the political and the poetic, and thus open up a new 

understanding. 

This is a long-term project, expected to run from 

May 2009 to February 2011. In Malmö, the course 

is presented as a 30 points course, running over two 

semesters, at BFA level. The project will eventually 

be presented in an exhibition and a publication. 

During this period, there will be four joint workshops 

with students from the participating schools, reading 

seminars, and a film programme. 

306 307 

The dates are: May 2009 in Braunschweig: 

disasters, war, and natural disasters. Lectures and 

excursions, including a visit to Checkpoint Charlie, 

and the Berlin Wall Museum in Berlin; July 2009 in 

Ramallah: the theme presented through the lenses 

of the situation and history of Palestine; October 

2009 in Malmö: inner escape, creation of parallel 

worlds, madness, and dissociation; January 2010 in 

Båstad, Sweden: migratory movements, economical 

and political refugees, with focus on the situation at 

Lampedusa south of Sicily; January – August 2010: 

Production phase, in which the students transform 

and understand the theme through their artistic works 

and texts; April – May 2010: meeting in Germany 

and research trip to Portugal; June – November 2010: 

editorial work and production of the publication; 

January – February 2011: exhibition at Lunds 

konsthall, Sweden. 

Painting Course 


Teacher: Junior Lecturer Viktor Kopp. 

Participating Students: Daniel Askeland, Marin 

Berring, Zardasht Faraj, Tomas Lundgren, Eva Roel, 

Maiken Stene. 

The course is for students who are working with, 

or are interested in, painting. As with the Painting 

Seminars of recent years, this course will be based 

on the students’ own work. We will not, however, 

be doing the intensive close readings we have been 

doing before, although we will discuss participants’ 

work in group sessions. I will make studio visits 

with participants during the course, and in due time, 

when there is work to look at, we will do so. In those 

presentations I also want to address the issue of 

how to install the works. Participants are expected 

to present their works as if they were part of an 

exhibition situation, so that we can discuss that aspect 

of the works as well. 

I will give an introductory lecture about my own 

work as a painter, as a self-presentation for those 

who have not met me before. I will also speak of 

things that have influenced me in my work. We will 

have one or several meetings where participants 

present something that has influenced them in their 

artistic practice. This might be an artist, an artwork, 

a book, a literary genre, a film, a piece of furniture 

or a philosophical doctrine. Everything is allowed. 

The number of meetings will depend on the number 

of participants and the scope of each presentation. It 

will, for instance, be possible to show a feature-length 

film and talk about one’s relation to it. 

A number of practical tasks or workshops will be 

included in the course. They will be rather simple, and 

are intended as a kind of visual discussions. We will 



work with a given project for a couple of days and 

then we will discuss the results, if we have not already 

done that during the working process. The result of 

the workshop will totally depend on the students’ 

work and their personal interpretation of the task. 

One example of such a task may be to paint in a very 

large format, preferably as a group effort, or to work 

with mural painting. Another idea is based on Robert 

Gober’s work Slides of a Changing Painting, for 

which he painted, during one year, a series of images 

on the same piece of MDF board. By photographing 

each image he created a slide show of the different 

stages of his painting, and the viewer can see how 

each image is based on the underlying one. I think 

it would be interesting to see what will happen if we 

do this as a relay run, so that one student will have, 

say, one day to work on the common painting before 

photographing it and handing it over to the next 

person. 

The idea for these practical assignments is not 

primarily to produce work, but to work with varying 

aspects of painting in a hands-on, yet light-hearted 

fashion. Students can treat this as a break from their 

ongoing work, an opportunity to discover new ways 

of working. I believe that new working methods in 

painting lead to new ways of thinking about painting. 

Lectures by teachers affiliated with the Academy will 

be given. For the spring semester there might also be 

guest lecturers. 

‘Relatives’ of One’s Own Practice 


Teacher: Professor Haegue Yang. 

Participating Students: Zardasht Faraj, Sarah Jane 

Gorlitz, Stine Kvam, Asgeir Skotnes, Örn Alexander 

Ámundason. 

While artists are often involved in a solitary studio 

practice, it is also imperative for them to be able to 

navigate their own practice within a larger map of 

contemporaries. Navigation may sound technical, 

but it is not a simple objective process. Discovering 

the positions and phenomena related to one’s own 

practice within a map of contemporary creative 

producers can evoke emotional expression, such as 

homage, platonic love affairs, obsession, fascination 

and respect. The effort of finding and defining one’s 

‘relatives’ can also be an effort of articulating one’s 

community and identity. An exploration of these 

‘relatives’ can be useful and productive as well, as 

a basic reflective tool to examine and extend one’s 

own practice. Enriched with issues, languages and 

references that relate to other artistic positions as well 

as positions from other cultural fields, the seminar 

discussions will focus on how to navigate practice in 

general. 


The seminar requires two different forms of 

preparation. One is a presentation of the student’s 

work and the other is an introductory presentation of 

the student’s ‘relatives’ through the sharing of video, 

books and available materials with the seminar group. 

Vocabulary as well as references will also be a point of 

discussion as we investigate individual practices and 

establish common ground for collective discourse. 

This binary presentation of one’s own practice 

and subsequent ‘relatives,’ will take the format of 

three block seminars. Each seminar block will begin 

with an introductory lecture on key figures that have 

been ‘relatives’ of my own practice, e.g. Marguerite 

Duras. Students will also be required to submit a 

bibliography/map of their ‘relatives’ at the conclusion 

of the course. 

Theoretical Courses: 

Art History. Introduction to Art 

and the Moving Image 

Credits: 7.5 

Teacher: Henriette Huldisch. 

Participating Students: Søren Aagaard Jensen, 

Matilde Böcher, Morgan Canavan, Malin Franzén, 

Ove Kvavik, Juha Laakkonen, António Martins Leal, 

Stine Midtsæter, Erin Nelson, Maria Norrman, Niklas 

Persson, Titas Silovas, Sarra Turan, Stine Wexelsen 

Goksøyr. 

The emergence of moving image technologies in the 

late 19th and early 20th century set the stage for the 

fundamental transformation of all forms of image 

making and communication. 

This course will consider the diverse and 

reciprocal relationships between the moving image 

and art. Rather than limiting the scope to either 

avant-garde (or experimental) film or video art, we 

will focus on the ways in which different temporal 

media and durational modes have informed various 

artistic movements and historical moments from 

Cubism, Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism to 

Pop, Situationism, Minimalism, Postminimalism, 

Performance and Conceptual Art. Beginning with an 

overview of the European Avant-Garde Film in the 

1920s, the class will trace a roughly chronological 

trajectory from the emergence of the post-war 

American avant-garde to the radical changes in art 

making and practice in the 1960s and 1970s alongside 

the notion of an expanded cinema that participated in 

this transformation, and look towards the rise of video 

projection and cinematic installation in the 1980s and 

1990s. 

Discussions will follow in-class screenings of 

films and video. As a final assignment, students will 

prepare a short response paper to a moving image 

work of their choice, either screened in class or not, 

referencing two text sources. 

Topics to be covered include: European Avant- 

Garde (Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, Cubism), 

e.g., George Antheil and Fernand Léger, Luis 

Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, René Clair, Jean Cocteau, 

Germaine Dulac, Victor Eggeling, Oskar Fischinger, 

Hans Richter, Dziga Vertov; Postwar American 

Avant-Garde (Lyrical and Mythopoeic Film), e.g., 

Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Gregory Markopoulos, 

Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Sidney Peterson; New 

American Cinema and Structural–Material Film, 

e.g., Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Shirley Clarke, 

Bruce Conner, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, Paul 

Sharits, Michael Snow, Stan Vanderbeek, Joyce 

Wieland; Between the Still and the Moving Image 

(Postminimalist Aesthetics, Seriality, Time Arts), 

e.g., Dan Graham, Mary Lucier, Bruce Nauman, 

Anthony McCall , Robert Morris, Yoko Ono , Dennis 

Oppenheim, Robert Whitman; Advent of Video: 

Immediacy and Duration, Television, Video and 

Performance, e.g., Vito Acconci, Ant Farm, John 

Baldessari, Dara Birnbaum, Peter Campus, Paul 

McCarthy, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, Martha Rosler, 

Steina and Woody Vasulka, Wolf Vostell; Moving 

Image Installation: Rise of Projection, Installation 

Art and the Cinema, e.g., Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Doug 

Aitken, Stan Douglas, Douglas Gordon, Gary Hill, 

Isaac Julien, Steve McQueen, Pipilotti Rist, Bill Viola, 

Gillian Wearing, Jane and Louise Wilson. 

Readings: 

Hall, Doug and Fifer, Mary Jo, eds. Illuminating 

Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art. New York: 

Aperture, 1990 (selected readings). 

Leighton, Tanya, ed. Art and the Moving Image: 

A Critical Reader. London: Tate Publishing, 2008 

(selected readings). 

Rees, A L, A History of Experimental Film and Video. 

London: BFI, 2008 (selected readings) 

Sitney, P Adams, Visionary Film: The American 

Avant-Garde, 1943–2000. New York: Oxford 

University Press, USA, 2002 (selected readings). 

Economy and Law for Artists 

Credits: 7.5 points. 

Teacher: Géza Antal 

Participating Students: Daniel Peder Askeland, Martin 

Berring, Matilde Böcher, Emil Ekberg, Zardasht Faraj, 

Malin Franzén, Tim Hansen, Tiril Hasselknippe, 

Nina Jensen, Susanne Johansson, Stine Kvam, 

Henning Lundkvist, Stine Midtsæter, David Nilson, 

Maria Norrman, Per Kristian Nygård, Max Ockborn, 

Niklas Persson, Eva Roel, Jessica Sanderheim, 

Danilo Stanković, Maiken Stene, Julia Stepp, Agneta 

308 309 

Strindinger, Dea Svensson, Thale Vangen, Sara 

Wallgren, Stine Wexelsen Goksøyr. 

Lectures about basic accounting and Swedish tax law 

for the cultural sector, with special emphasis on artists 

as entrepreneurs. Workshop with practical training 

in in basic accounting and income tax declaration. 

Lectures in basic Swedish and international 

intellectual property law, with special emphasis on 

artists and their working situation. 

MFA 

Close Readings. To See and Be Seen 


Teacher: Professor Gertrud Sandqvist. 

Participating Students: Elin Behrens, Emil Ekberg, 

Celie Eklund, Karen Gimle, Sarah Jane Gorlitz, 

Jorun Jonasson, Ingrid Koslung, Ove Kvavik, Juha 

Laakkonen, António Martins Leal, Pauliina Pietilä, 

Titas Silovas, Asgeir Skotnes, Susanne Svantesson, 

Gunnhild Torgersen, Thale Vangen. 

‘I think, therefore I am’, or in Latin Cogito, ergo sum, 

is the fundamental sentence of Western philosophy, 

authored by René Descartes. Against this the French 

philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty pits his own 

fundamental sentence, I am a seeing body, which is 

also seen. My body ‘is my point of view on the world’. 

Merleau-Ponty’s way of understanding the world 

is usually called phenomenology, and it was a point 

of departure for a philosopher like Jacques Derrida. 

The phenomenologists do away with the difference 

between body and soul, between consciousness and 

world. Man, however, occupies a special position 

in relation to other things in the world, since he is 

actively inhabiting it. This taking-possession of the 

world happens through vision, perspective, which in 

turn is just as limited or as inclusive as the human 

body or subject. 

Since Man inhabits the world through vision rather 

than through thinking, images and visual art have a 

very important role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. 

When we speak of thinking through vision, then we 

speak phenomenologically. You are welcome to learn 

about this! 



Spring Semester 2010 

BFA 

Technical Courses: 

Plastic 


Teacher: Senior Lecturer P O Persson. 

Participating Students: Eric Length, Jessica 

Sanderheim. 

The course in handling plastic gives you knowledge 

about laminating and casting plastic, and also 

basic information about the safety guidelines in the 

workshop. After finishing the course, you will get 

a ‘driver’s license’ that permits you to work in the 

Academy’s plastic workshop on your own. 

Scale Modelling 


Teachers: Senior Lecturer P O Persson and Robert 

Moreau. 

Participating Students: Martin Berring, Marten 

Damgaard, Emil Ekberg, Cathrine Hellberg, Arvid 

Hägg, Juha Laakkonen, Helena Olsson, Emil Rønn 

Andersen. 

The course gives you knowledge of the model as 

a means for artistic creation and for staging threedimensional 

situations in your own artistic practice, 

as well as a sketching method for large-scale works. 

The course consists of two parts. During the 

first week, which comprises individual and group 

working sessions, we focus on materials, techniques 

and the model as a tool for creating spaces, not least 

exhibition spaces. During the two final weeks, when 

work is less scheduled, we focus on the possibilities 

the model offers as a sketch and an independent 

artwork. 

Course Components include: a presentation of 

materials and tools; exercises with different materials; 

a survey of models in art, architecture, film etc; access 

to specialist literature; the scaling of existing spaces 

for models and blueprints; introduction to the use of 

models as sketches for works of art and as works of 

art in their own right; the principles of lighting and 

photographing models. 

Serigraphy 


Teacher: Ella Tillema 

Participating Students: Majd Abdel Hamid, Matilde 


Böcher, Celie Eklund, Kari Kalstø Storø, Per Kristian 

Nygård, Pauliina Pietilä, Michael Rold, Danilo 

Stanković, Gunnhild Torgersen. 

Students will learn to translate their own work into 

serigraphy: how to make the stencils, how to prepare 

the screens and print in several colours. Thinking 

in layers is necessary. We can print on paper and 

maybe on cloth, producing images, posters, postcards, 

comics, stickers etc. 

Participating students, please bring a little bit 

of colour understanding, some visual ideas waiting 

to be printed, and of course personal tools such as 

pencils, ruler, scissors, cutter, sketch paper, cellar tape, 

permanent marker or crayon. Other materials will be 

provided. 

Sound Art and Digital Sound: 

Sound Art/Soundscape/Noise 

Electroacoustic Music/Sound and Video 


Teacher: Stefan Klaverdal. 


Matilde Böcher, Jóhan Martin Christiansen, Malin 

Franzén, Sarah Jane Gorlitz, Susanne Johansson, 

Stine Kvam, António Martins Leal, Olof Nimar, 

Titas Silovas, Julia Stepp, Stine Wexelsen Goksøyr, 

Madeleine Åstrand. 

Sound is a very interesting and direct medium. A great 

deal is possible with the use of the right sound in the 

right context, and people can be manipulated to feel 

and think things that would never be possible without 

sound. This course focuses on the use of sound in 

general, as sound art, composition and sound for 

use in video and film. We will talk about recording 

techniques and how to compose with sound, but also 

how to create a specific mood with sound and music. 

We will also experiment with exhibiting sound 

art in different spaces. How do different pieces affect 

each other? How does the sound environment affect 

a specific piece and why? We will go through the 

technical means of recording, editing and reproducing 

sound, in workshops as well as in theoretical classes. 

We will be doing things both as a large group and 

in groups of two or three students. I will also meet 

each student for individual sessions. All students will 

have access to the sound studio as well as some other 

computer stations with sound editing software. 

The course contains: an overview of the sound 

studio, of different free and commercial applications 

and how to use them (Pro tools, Peak, Max MSP and 

more) as well as of cables and contacts; an assessment 

of your own possibilities (what you can do with only 

your computer and free software); an introduction 

to basic acoustics; a basic discussion of how sound 

behaves in the digital domain; an introduction to 

basic microphone and recording techniques both in 

live situations and in the studio; an introduction to 

interview techniques in the recording situation; an 

introduction to sound editing in video and film; an 

introduction to musical scoring (which music gives 

the best result with which images). 

Creative Courses: 

Escape 

(Continued from the autumn semester 2009) 

Painting Course Continued 


Teacher: Junior Lecturer Viktor Kopp. 


Martin Berring, Zardasht Faraj, Henriette Elsine Hoff 

Levinsen, Nina Jensen, Eva Roel, Danilo Stanković, 

Jesper Weileby, Madeleine Åstrand. 

The course is designed for those who work with 

painting and who want to follow a course that 

contains an element of practice as well as discussions 

about the working process and the finished work. 

The course is constructed around a number of 

workshops. We work together in the teaching studio, 

so that we can follow each other’s work and discuss 

it. The results of the workshop will entirely depend 

on how students have individually interpreted the 

task. The idea behind these practice-based tasks is not 

primarily to produce work, but to give students the 

opportunity to work with various aspects of painting 

in a relaxed way.The course can be seen as a break in 

one’s ongoing work, an opportunity to discover new 

ways of thinking about painting. 

A number of students’ presentations of their own 

work (i.e. work produced outside of the course) 

will be organised. These will be simple get-togethers 

and discussions, e.g. in the studio. We may also get 

together to watch a film or read a text that seems 

interesting. We will have guest lecturers as much as 

possible. Anders Kreuger will give one or two lectures 

focusing on art history, reading texts together with us 

or looking at paintings, either here at the school or in 

a museum. 

Platinum Jungle – Screen Goddesses Caught 

Between Black and White 


Teacher: Vaginal Davis. 

Participating Students: Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard, Majd 

310 311 

Abdel Hamid, Marten Damgaard, Nathalie Fuica 

Sánchez, Karen Gimle, Cathrine Hellberg, Elsine 

Hoff Levinsen, Stine Midtsæter, Maria Norrman, Max 

Ockborn, Ihra Lill Scharning, Johanna Stillman. 

Jean Harlow: literally the whitest of whitehot 

sex stars in1930s Hollywood, pencil thin 

eyebrows, smouldering platinum über-blonde hair, 

skin and teeth. Josephine Baker: all legs, all ass, 

all the time, topped off by the ultimate Marcel 

wave, conquered Europe in the 1920s as the first 

international black superstar. At first glance these 

famous performers and their life trajectories couldn’t 

be more different. But appearances, as these women 

knew quite well, are often deceptive. 

The influence of both stars can be felt to this day. 

Harlow’s image, despite her early death, has inspired 

numerous later performers and artists like Kenneth 

Anger and Andy Warhol. La Baker’s signature banana 

skirt became a ubiquitous image throughout the 20th 

century, even when it overshadowed its creator. What 

are the factors governing the reception of these two 

sex symbols in and out of the art world? What might 

they offer to performers and other visual artists today? 

In this course we will look at some of the rare 

films of these two extraordinary women, as well as 

examples of their influence in order to probe their 

unconventional and innovative gender, racial and 

aesthetic politics for our purposes today. We will work 

in small groups or in individual tutoring sessions to 

prepare a series of performances. 

‘Relatives’ and ‘Formats’ for 

One’s Own Practice 


Teacher: Professor Haegue Yang. 

Participating Students: Jóhan Martin Christiansen, 

Arvid Hägg, David Nilson, Titas Silovas, Julia Stepp, 

Jesper Weileby. 

While artists are often involved in solitary studio 

practice, it is also imperative for them to be able 

to navigate their practice within a larger map of 

contemporaries. Navigation may sound technical, 

but it is not a simple objective process. Discovering 

the positions and phenomena related to one’s own 

practice within a map of contemporary creative 

producers can evoke emotional expression, such as 

homage, platonic love affairs, obsession, fascination 

and respect. 

The effort of finding and defining one’s ‘relatives’ 

can also be an effort of articulating one’s imaginary 

and wishful community and one’s own evolving 

identity. Also, an exploration of these ‘relatives’ can 

be useful and productive as a basic reflecting tool to 



examine and extend one’s own practice and to explore 

new formats for working and presenting one’s work. 

Enriched with issues, languages and references that 

relate to other artistic positions as well as positions 

from other cultural fields, the seminar discussions 

will focus on how to navigate such practices and 

phenomena in general. 

The seminar requires two different forms of 

preparation. One is a presentation of the student’s 

work. The other is an introductory presentation of 

the student’s ‘relatives’ through the sharing of video, 

books and available materials with the seminar group. 

The latter presentation should be the primary one, yet 

the perspective in relationship with own works need 

to be articulated. Vocabulary as well as references 

will also be a point of discussion as we investigate 

individual practices and establish common ground 

for collective discourse. A specific format of 

presenting ‘relatives’ is required, such as exhibition, 

book editing, etc, so that rhetoric and methodology 

also can be discussed. 

This binary presentation of one’s own practice 

and subsequent ‘relatives’ will take the format of 

three block seminars. Each seminar block will begin 

with an introductory lecture on key figures that have 

been ‘relatives’ of my own practice. Students will also 

be required to submit a bibliography/map of their 

‘relatives’ at the conclusion of the course. 

Shamanism, Hashish and Obtuse Meaning 


Teachers: Professor Joachim Koester and Erik Granly 

Jensen. 

Participating Students: Søren Aagard Jensen, Majd 

Abdel Hamid, Zardasht Faraj, Karen Gimle, Tim 

Hansen, Tiril Hasselknippe, Juha Laakkonen, António 

Martins Leal, Stine Midtsæter, Maria Norrman, Max 

Ockborn, Niklas Persson, Jessica Sanderheim, Titas 

Silovas, John Skoog, Danilo Stankovic´, Camilla 

Steinum, Julia Stepp, Gunnhild Torgersen, Örn 

Alexander Ámundason. 

KUNO Express Participants: Mark Frygell (Umeå Art 

Academy), Sebastian Wahlforss (Umeå Art Academy), 

Nathalie Wuerth (University College of Art, Crafts and 

Design, Stockholm). 

This course is meant to be inspirational. We will 

read texts and view selected films as a pretext for our 

discussion. What can be gleaned from this material 

in relation to our work as artists? Maybe art can 

also be described as a ceremony that produces – or 

acknowledges – obtuse knowledge? 

We will look at the anthropologist Michael 

Taussig’s field studies of shamanism and the ayahuasca 

ceremony in Columbia from his book Shamanism, 

Colonialism and the Wild Man. Ayahuasca – 


sometimes called Yage or Yajé – is a powerful 

psychoactive drug used by shamans in the Amazonas 

region. Taussig describes the effects of this drug and 

its ritual use, and how this altered state relates to 

colonialism. For Taussig the ayahuasca ceremony 

becomes a healing space where colonial issues can 

be staged and maybe even resolved in a completely 

different way, due to the disorderly nature of the 

intoxication and ceremony. Also, Taussig associates 

the ayahuasca ceremony with the production of 

‘obtuse meaning’, a sort of knowledge that is neither 

clearly defined nor precisely formulated as opposed 

to the philosophical vocabulary and concept of 

traditional Western thought systems. 

Besides Taussig we will read Ronald Barthes’s The 

Third Meaning to try to define the term obtuse. We 

will also read from Taussig’s great inspiration Walter 

Benjamin, focusing on his essays on hashish and 

surrealism. 

Theoretical Courses: 

Close Readings. Taking It Apart and Putting It 

Back Together – What Were the Postmodernists 

Really Doing? 


Teacher: Professor Gertrud Sandqvist. 

Participating Students: Søren Aagaard Jensen, 

Majd Abdel Hamid, Daniel Peder Askeland, Martin 

Berring, Malin Franzén, Tiril Hasselknippe, Susanne 

Johansson, Stine Kvam, Tomas Lundgren, António 

Martins Leal, David Nilson, Maria Norrman, Niklas 

Persson, Titas Silovas, John Skoog, Julian Stalbohm, 

Danilo Stanković, Camilla Steinum, Maiken Stene, 

Julia Stepp, Stine Wexelsen Goksøyr. 

Is postmodernism a condition, as the philosoper 

Jean-François Lyotard claimed, or is it another way 

of reading, as Jacques Derrida thought? Is it a way 

of reading the history of power, as Michel Foucault 

did, or as an undermining of hegemonic modernism, 

which is how artists like Martin Kippenberger, Sherrie 

Levine and others used the new deconstructivist 

ideas? Will the ego disappear – or will it be the only 

thing left? 

Thirty years after the term postmodernism was 

coined it might be time to explore it once again. 

Whether we like it or not, postmodernism is the 

cultural unconscious of our time. We will read and 

discuss central texts by Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault and 

others, and we will look at and analyse some artists of 

particular importance. First and foremost, I hope we 

will discuss and deconstruct postmodern concepts. 

Economy and Law for Artists 


Teacher: Géza Antal 

Participating Students: Celie Eklund, Karen Gimle, 

Jorun Jonasson, Ingrid Koslung, Ove Kvavik, Eric 

Length, Isis Mühleisen, Andreas Nilsson, Olof Nimar, 

Johanna Stillman, Susanne Svantesson, Ella Tillema, 

Örn Alexander Ámundason. 

Lectures about basic accounting and Swedish tax law 

for the cultural sector, with special emphasis on artists 

as entrepreneurs. Workshop with practical training 

in in basic accounting and income tax declaration. 

Lectures in basic Swedish and international 

intellectual property law, with special emphasis on 

artists and their working situation. 

312 313 

MFA 

Analysing Your Own Work 


Teacher: Professor Gertrud Sandqvist 

Participating Students: Elin Behrens, Eric Length, 

Olof Nimar, Per Kristian Nygård, Julian Stalbohm, 

Susanne Svantesson, Dea Svensson. 

The course offers a model for analysing your own 

work and training in analyzing images. Students 

analyse works by other students, and listen when their 

own work is analyzed by the others. The course serves 

as an introduction to the analytical component of the 

MFA exam. 

The course offers close analysis of the students’ 

own work in the form of group seminars. The method 

is simple. It aims at giving students tools for thorough 

analysis of individual works and an understanding of 

how viewers understand their work. If it is relevant 

and if the participants wish, we will also read image 

theory that might be applicable to the students’ work. 

Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in 

Postcolonial?* 


Teacher: Jürgen Bock. 

Participating Students: Karen Gimle, Jorun Jonasson, 

António Martins Leal, Titas Silovas, Asgeir Skotnes, 

Thale Vangen. 

KUNO Express Participants: Sébastien Berthier 

(University College of Art, Crafts and Design, 

Stockholm), Flo Kasearu (Estonian Academy of Arts, 

Tallinn), Ida Koitila (Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, 

Helsinki), Behzad Noori (University College of Art, 

Crafts and Design, Stockholm). 

During the seminar we will create knowledge on the 

complex intertwined and inseparable relationships 

between Europe and Africa, working on the idea of 

different kinds of modernism and colonialism, taking 

into account historical and current phenomena. 

The perspective(s) of seminar participants on 

Modernity (Habermas) and Postmodernism (Lyotard) 

will be addressed at the beginning of the seminar 

in order to create a platform for analysis of the 

perspectives of African thinkers on these topics 

(Diawara, Ekpo, Hassan), and on how significance is 

created in Africa and Europe from different angles. 

We will discuss how significance was created during 

Modernism from the mid-19th century onwards, 

addressing its historical background and analzsing 

the consequences of its specific imposition on the 

colonised ‘Other’ in Africa. 

In the light of the current Zeitgeint, we will reflect 

on changes in ‘our’ perception around the early 1980s, 

analzsing the possible relationships of Postmodernism 

with the Post- and Neo-Colonial. One of the vehcules 

for a more profound understanding of African- 

European relationships will be thehHistory and the 

current status quo of African cinema, also takino 

into account filme made by Europeann about Africa 

(Rouch). 

This course is intended to operate as a rhizome, 

through associative work. The classes will range 

betweencCriticalsStudies of texts,pPresentation ofaArs 

practices – directly and indirectly related to these 

topics – andsScreenings of films. Group discussions 

will be decisive for the sequence of course contents. 

* Borrowed from an essay with the same title by 

Kwame Anthony Appiah, in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, 

No. 2 (Winter 1991), pp.336–357.

Malmö Art Academy Yearbook 2009–2010

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