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.