Interviews — Nextart Gallery & Editions

Interview with Marcus Hansson

How did you get the idea to create “Fashion Birds” and when did it start?

I worked with black birds. I did not know what species they belonged to, but for some reason I looked for them online and printed them out … in big quantities.

I created installations with birds that did not lead to anything concrete. Later I found all these clothes that the birds are now wearing (my partner and a friend made clothes for paper dolls in the 70′s and they were about to be thrown away). The work has been an on-going project for several years. The birds have almost ceased to be birds with clothes on and become a new material, a mass, a mix between color and form.

What is it about fashion that interests you?

May I say everything? I don’t know if it is fashion in itself that interests me (yes, sometimes, maybe). Sometimes it’s beautiful, and sometimes I think that I would like to be a part of the fashion world. I cling and tap on. The birds are my ticket to this world. Fashion is so concrete: off/on and now/then. And then I arrive with my silly little paper-doll dressed birds and want to be a part of it, sort of.

You often appropriate other people’s images. What attracts you to do this? And why do you think there is still such an opposition, an outrage, against this act?

Yes it is true, often actually. I have made my own photo albums with text on Polaroids and everything was from the TV. In Joyspreader I collected all the images that had anything to do with nature and they came from different directions, it was maybe 20,000 images. Before “Fashion Birds” I shot scenes from the news on the Internet (” Souvenir “) and made them into paintings. I think I add something to the images or destroy them. I really see them as my own. Agitation has varied.”Fashion Birds” (the fashion magazines) is probably the work that people have asked most about, and if you can do something like that.

When and why did you choose to not work with more traditional photographic methods, and instead incorporate collage, textile, etc.?

This a continuation of the last the question. I got into photography as a street photographer, and even as such, I think you are stealing pictures (I took pictures of people on the street and often they didn’t notice that I was photographing them). I saw it as my own work, just like today. Then I measured mostly my days in how many pictures I had taken. I think I was good at “taking pictures”, but then after a long journey and a lot of photography, when I was about to develop the images, I put maybe 40 pieces of film rolls in fixative first, instead of putting them in the developing liquid. And then I decided that I probably should change my way to work. Maybe it’s time to change my work now again, when I measure my days in how many birds I have cut.

How does “Fashion Birds” differ from your previous works?

The rich amount and the many repetitions can be found in almost all of my previous work, but perhaps “Fashion Birds” is more about color and form. Something I have had a difficulty facing before. I have thought of ease. And so for the exhibition at Nextart I thought that the art on the walls would be a kind of decoration and promotion to the fashion magazines.

Date:
2013/04/26

Category:
Exhibitions,
Interviews

Interview with Ryan L. Moule

In your new photo-series, which is presented in the exhibition “Latency Principles” at Nextart Gallery, you have left the photographs chemically unfixed. Why? And what kind of impact does this working-method have on the images?

Both bodies of work exhibited at Nextart form a question in relation to complex processes of forgetting. The unfixed surface of these photographic prints act silently initially, we don’t see the eroding process in the same way as the video documentation of ‘January 1988’. The hidden quality of this slower process is something that can be overlooked. I like that the first reading of the images can be changed once the viewer is informed of the process (or when revisiting the exhibition they see a physical change in the prints surface).

I think this second hidden reading of an image is the thing that i’m most drawn to when thinking about the re-presentation of any given event. Within the act of forgetting there is an oscillation between this first and second reading. For instance, the first layer of forgetting is knowing we’ve forgotten something, like someone’s name or a place. We know we know it but we can’t quite access it. The second layer of forgetting on the other hand is what we don’t know we’ve forgotten. Its this realisation of an unknown, unknown that all my works look towards.

The rooms photographed both physically balance between appearance and disappearance (insofar as they are on the edges of the land, about to fall into the sea) but also for me they act as a psychological spaces, like chambers of the mind that perhaps cannot be accessed but only glimpsed.

I find this reappearance and disappearance of ‘trace’ both uncomfortable and deeply melancholic. Perhaps its best understood as the image of an outline when you close your eyes. It presents itself unfixable.

In “January 1988″ the photo of you and your mother is slowly blurred in water. It’s like a reverse developing-process, where you dissolve the photo instead of preserving it. Do you remember when and how you got this idea? And was it a painful procedure?

It was a very organic process, born from a personal response to the contemporary condition of the image. In a time in which medium is ubiquitous, the referent seemed to me to be hollowed of any inherent meaning. Throwaway, superficial almost. Flicking through images from my family archive an image of my mother (younger than I am now) and me as a baby, arrested my attention. The first reading of the image personal, but its second reading became far more troubling. The fear that this image, an image that represents not just surface, but something far more complex, could, after my time be something throwaway, something superficial, something entirely hollowed of inherent meaning was something too intense to ignore.

I began to think of the chemical make up of the image and how its apparent stillness could be pushed to its limits. Its a simple action that once initiated is undoable.

The role of the one-off sculptural work in which the original image is erased in front of a live audience acts in some way to reference the way memory is constructed. Witnessing the actual erasure within a live situation has a different reading to the presentation of the video documentation of this work.

Our relationship to technology and the ability to recall lost information is something that has changed the way we need to remember. This prosthetic memory that technology enables us to have at our disposal, being able to recall almost anything through a search engine or database, I think questions the ability to forget anything. This question of total recall is almost as frightening as total loss.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m still developing the photographic works which are on show at Nextart. Its very fresh work (made in early 2013) so still have lots of negatives to look at. I’ve also been making a crystal chemical which is made of salts. It looks like ice but unlike ice, this substance remains solid at room temperature. This work is being made as a commission for a new site specific work for ‘Waddesdon Manor’ in Buckinghamshire, England. The work is set to be complete by the end of the summer months so lots of experimentation will begin shortly. I also have my final show at the Royal College of Art which i’m slowly working toward. I’m going to be in the dark room for the next two months making very large and very black photographic prints. Fun times!

Date:
2013/03/25

Category:
Exhibitions,
Interviews

Interview with Karin Dolk

Your works often incorporate sound and language. When did this interest start? And how has this affected your daily life?

My work deals with certain aspects of language as a means of examining identity and social representation.

I work mainly with video and sound because I’m interested in its relationship to time and performativity, and often find sound more suggestive than image, more difficult to pin down. Music has always been very important to me, but I pay more and more attention to all kinds of everyday sounds: cultural sound, language sound, non-verbal sound, subtle sound, noise…

In your video pieces “A sad song” and “Words wound” repetition is a common theme. Which are your philosophical thoughts on this subject matter?

Repetition implies the impossibility of repetition. What seems the same always contains a difference, a variation. However, patterns and roles in society tend to be repeated ad infinitum. I’m concerned with examining the structural and social components of repetition.

The parrot in “Words wound” repeats some words learned by rote, but most of his speech are phrases, words and sounds that create a – not always flattering – portrait of his surroundings, and in some way empower him.

The repetition in “A sad song” is related to the musical structure of Karelian laments, as well as to ideas of resilience and contemplation.

Tell us a bit about “[əˈnʌðə]” that is presented at Nextart Gallery at the moment.

“[əˈnʌðə]” is a silent sound film, a script made solely for Foley – the sound effects produced live by a Foley artist in the post-production of movies. The project originated from a previous project I made about film dubbing. As many of my other works, it’s related to ideas of translation, de-contextualization and meta fiction.

The sound in the film suggests several possible film stories that could exist somewhere.

However, when looking at the actual action in the film, another story appears.

The title, as well as the accompanying phonetic sound script on the walls, is connected both to the idea of sound in language and the insufficiency of language – and in a way again to a meta layer, due of the impossibility of translating a real sound to onomatopoeia and then to writing. The title also refers to being one more/different in relation to the possible “original” films and the one/fragmented body of the person that dub all the sounds and characters.

Does [əˈnʌðə] differ from your earlier work? And if yes – how?

“[əˈnʌðə]” connects in many ways with my earlier work. However, it’s the first time I’ve written and worked with a script, particularly a real “sound script”. I also feel it has a very clear connection to Scandinavian cinema: the materials, objects, the mise en scène…

Date:
2013/02/26

Category:
Exhibitions,
Interviews

Interview with Hendrik Zeitler

Your works are often mirroring alternative lifestyles, sometimes the photographs may even work as eye-openers. I’m thinking of “A Place of One’s Own”, but I’m particularly thinking of “The Chosen One’s, where cows have been photographed shortly before slaughter. Is this something you’ve thought about – that you, with your art, have an ambition to change the society and its injustices – or are these works rather a natural result of your own lifestyle and your own decisions?

So shortly before slaughter aren’t those cows in “The Chosen One’s – they are mostly dairy cows that may live a few years. But they don’t get their twenty years that they could have, although they get a longer life time than those bred for slaughter (and dairy cows’ male calves), who only live one year.

I never thought about publishing or showing the images in the “A Place of One’s Own”-series at first, besides to those who were living in the houses. The same applies for many other series, which I initially think is interesting. I test the works and “refine” them all the time, without any thought of a potential audience. Sure, the images reflect my political stance and my interests, but art is still such a narrow field that I don’t have high hopes that my pictures could be so cataclysmic.

Is it important with empathy in photography? And above all – can compassion be hard to reach through the many times so objectifying and distancing camera?

Empathy is probably an important ingredient in photography, but in the way that photography becomes more honest if there is a genuine interest; when the pictures aren’t just a result of mercantile interests, sensationalism or are produced under time pressure. I think that if you have good faith and are focusing on a subject in dept, over a longer time, photography becomes a great tool to show empathy.

Can you tell us some more about the works you are presenting at Nextart Gallery at the moment?

The works on Nextart mostly consists of images that are assembled according to a specific technology, which is a rather unusual approach. Both the overexposed flash portraits and the pinhole camera pictures derive from my fascination with the analog photo, its optical rules and the process of working with the photo negative. Several of the pinhole camera images have also become a very suitable part of my previous images of Hammarkullen, which in many ways deals with the mixture between city and nature. The flash images have not yet been mixed with any other series – and still it’s very few of my other images that show people.

Did anything peculiar or unexpected happen in the “Camera Obscura”-pictures? Did they surprise you?

The picture with the light spot that moved over the wall for three hours was the first image where I found a faint structure from the trees at the wall. And then everything went so well (while the exposure time became terribly long). The clear and colorful images that appeared on the wall surprised me quite a bit. Every time I prepare a room, new aspects appear to surprise me. When the eyes have got used to it, it is fascinating to see people walk over the roof, while new sounds, both from indoors and outdoors, gets mixed up. It’s really like being inside a camera.

Date:
2013/01/26

Category:
Exhibitions,
Interviews

Interview with Klara Källström

During our meetings, we have talked some about the genre classifications in photography. It still seems relatively easy to revolt against conventions in the world of photography. Why is that?

The photograph has for a long time had a position as undisputed truth bearer, which in some way is still valid. Since the postmodernism, and in some cases even earlier, has this position been questioned. Photography is a young form of expression. The color photograph advanced into the history, on a broad front, only fifty years ago. Above all photography is a media consisting of many different genres, and the discursive analysis has challenged the question about what may be called what, and therefore many truths have been turned upside down. In a way, we are still there, in the being of formulation. But I don’t longer believe there is a meaning to reject everything that has something to do with the history of the medium and refers to that which is essential photographic. Instead, we now find ourselves in a place where we can recognize and make use of the medium’s various meanings and add new elements to expand and understand it, instead of neglect or disprove its validity. Due to photography’s young age, it has been important to revolt against its conventions in the second half of the 1900’s, exactly the same way that painting has evolved, the difference is maybe that the latter medium has had more time progress.

Do you think these differences and contradictions in photography will consist?

I believe that there always will be rebellion in every media. Photography’s rapid technological development contributes to the many and frequent revolts. However, I do not think our perception of the photograph has changed as fast as the physical aspects. The human psyche and our understanding of how photography works and what limitations it might have, is different from how the technology works. On an intellectual level, we constantly have to catch up with the media. I think we on a mental plane have a special understanding of photography and we attribute the medium qualities based on this understanding. However, this approach is of course also changing. If you in a few years from now asks a person, who has grown up in a more seamless environment and has grown accustomed to 3d animated images and their transparency , about an image that is not necessarily taken from the physical reality, I think you would get a different answer.

You run B-B-B-Books with designers 1:2:3 and photographer Thobias Fäldt. Thobias and you often collaborate and together you created the project and publication Wikiland, which was awarded at Scanpix Big Photo Award. In this you play with news journalistic strategies, but you choose to omit the sensations and the portraits of Julian Assange are absent. Why did you decide to design the project this way? Is it that important to question the image of photography’s truth-bearing relevance?

It is not important to question its truth-bearing relevance, but it’s essential to consider how photography of this kind works and what it produces. When we partake in things of relatively sensational dimensions, something happens with the viewer. It’s the interest in this expectation that is central to the project. Not whether the pictures are true or not, it is a discourse that I think we can leave from now on. What the images are producing and how we thereby filter things that are presented to us, this I think is interesting. Nor do I believe the physical experience is only an outcome of the interaction between the viewer and the story, but also a result of the shape you view the images through. In this case, for example, it was important to use a newspaper format which has its own agency and thereby creates conscious or unconscious understanding of the story. Everything acts on different planes and the human intellect alone is not always essential for the understanding.

Tell us a bit about “Russian Bang” that is currently exhibited at Nextart Gallery.

Russian Bang is a project where the trees in the devastated area around Eriksdal are ascribed the role as eyewitnesses. I assume that the trees witnessed the event in 1944, when Russian planes bombed Södermalm in Stockholm. I use the usual method; conversation with survivors of the time, which in my case consists of 11 trees. On them and the black backgrounds, I’m projecting the story, which in my case consists of a text in verse form and one archive picture of the site were the bombs once fell down.

In what way does this project differ from your other works?

It does not differ much from Wikiland, I might say. Russian Bang is about “washing the vision”, to put the viewers in a position where they start looking for what a title, an archive, a poem and a descriptive text refers to. The pictures are affected by the context: we interpret things in the photographs that really just depict seemingly ordinary trees. I have tried to portray the trees in a human-like manner, to assist the viewer in a direction from which I want them to look at my pictures. In Wikiland, our direction was the opposite: the viewer was supposed to have a preunderstanding of the subject, and that this would create the stories. But the connection between these projects is their allusion on preunderstanding or incomprehension. That’s basically the same starting point I think.

Date:
2012/12/22

Category:
Exhibitions,
Interviews

Interview with Lotte Fløe Christensen

SA: Nature is a recurrent theme in your work. What sort of relationship do you have with nature – is it unproblematic or is it a fearful and ambiguous one?

LFC: I do not see nature as a theme in my practise, but more as a tool I can use to investigate questions of meaning and fragility. Having grown up in the countryside my relationship to nature is fundamentally connected to a feeling of home. For me nature is evident; is not something that is in opposition to something urban or civilized, it is simply there. The world. When that is said nature, to me, also represents feelings of loss, longing and uncertainty and is thereby something I have an ambivalent relationship to. This might be the reason for nature having such a presence in my work.

SA: Would you describe your art as romantic?

LFC: In the sense that Romanticism in some aspects deals with an individual search for meaning in a world where meaning is not given, my work can certainly be seen as Romantic. I am very interested in the search for understanding and meaning that seems to be a deeply rooted human drive.

SA: Nature seems to be a popular subject in art right now. Have you had any thoughts about this, and if yes – what do they look like?

LFC: Artists have always dealt – and worked with nature, but it might be true that there has been an increase in nature-related work over recent years. I have previously not really considered this fact. Maybe because I find it quite natural that nature is present in contemporary art. I think that because the technologies, we surround ourselves with, have developed much faster than our brains, we are often stressed and feel detached and alienated towards the lives we live. I have read quite a lot of research dealing with nature’s healing and calming affect on people. I think that nature is somehow connected to something meaningful and is therefore a great tool to talk about meaning. This might be one of the reasons why artists increasingly deal with nature.

SA: In your work photographs get mixed up with objects. You pull branches and leaves out of the photographs and place them in new, three-dimensional formations. What happens in these encounters and why haven’t you decided to work with either photography or sculpture/installations?

LFC: I am not sure I can explain what happens in the space between the photographs and the objects/installations. But something happens. I see my work as examinations of different issues of creation of meaning. To approach these quite abstract issues I have in recent years felt the need to step outside the two-dimensionality of the photographs; to use more examination-methods to get closer to the subject. I think somehow the objects and the photographs are doing the same thing in different ways.

SA: What inspires you?

LFC: Literature inspires me. And books as objects. Conversations with people. Random research I come across. Exhibitions. Thoughts of material. The gap between two images. Maybe nature.

SA: You’re interested in the manifestations and acts that come out of the search for meaning. Are you never tempted to reach a target; to find a final answer? Is it possible? And what would happen in this case?

LFC: I do not think there is a definitive answer. So luckily the search can continue.

SA: What are you exhibiting at Nextart Gallery?

LFC: The exhibition consists of photographs and small resin sculptures on podiums. The photographs deal with the idea of support and fragility, signs and action and corresponds with the cubes of resin holding semi-cast twigs and paper.

Date:
2012/11/01

Category:
Exhibitions,
Interviews