selected works
I am unpacking my Library, Yes I am!
With these words Walter Benjamin begins his essay
Unpacking my Library. He will continue describing a magical night in which his thoughts
about collectors and collections are colored by memory and association while one by one, his book
leave the crates in which they had been packed for years. Untouched by the mild boredom of order.
In Unpacking the Library all 8177 books of the School of Arts were reordered by year of
publication: from 1902 onward. The familiar categories of the former system were broken down,
their books scattered over different shelves.
This new arrangement had nested itself overnight like a cuckoo's young. Its apparent disarray
exposed the old system as inadvertently authoritarian in its grouping by categories and discipline.
Suddenly the responsibility for organizing information had shifted from the institution to the
student. A time-line unfolded and unlocked hidden layers of information about fashion, trends
and shifting emphasis in education.
installation
(cardboard, nails and tube lights)book
(single edition)Stage directions taken from Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
For this video installation people were asked to read the Song of Songs, a book of the Old Testament and a love poem renowned for its erotic connotations.
As they read a camera records subtle responses to the text and minute signs of concentration and fatigue. As their eyes move over the text they seem to address the viewer, drawing him or her into the private sphere of the reader.
Week is a series of drawings on tracing paper. Each drawing consists of a tracing of all the pictures in that days newspaper.
In a five day performance - working nine to five - I traced all movement on the glass walls of the video-pavillion designed by Bernard Tschumi. Resembling the archetypical interior layout of the museum, this glass architecture questions both the act of looking as the act of gazing. As the drawing grows, transparency diminishes. www.tschumipaviljoen.org
An abandoned and derelict house adjacent to the cemetery served as a one-day exhibition space for a collection of works on site.
selected projects
A site-specific and process-oriented project that gradually evolved on two locations: an out of use herring factory in Djúpavík in the very North of Iceland and in SIGN, a project space in Groningen, the Netherlands. Both locations were closely connected for a period of one month, during which a group of six artists explored the ecological, architectural, social and cultural environment of the factory. Their research involved an investigation into a possible work in situ; a work inextricably bound up with the specific situation in an outpost in the very North of Iceland.
In SIGN a documentation centre was set up. Throughout the research period the artists regularly supplied this documentation centre with their findings (packages, letters, mails, voicemails, audio and videotapes, drawings etc.) making use of all possible means of communication (air mail, telephone, fax machine, e-mail etc.).
A multitude of documents slowly accumulated in the project space, where artist and curator Daniëlle van Zuijlen organized the information in an exhibition that was constantly open to change and revision depending on the nature of the incoming material.
artists involved: Aafke Weller (Nl.), Sidsel Genee (Nl.), Emily Norton (US), Arna Óttarsdóttir (Is.), Silfá Thorgrimsdóttir (Is.), Adrien Tirtiaux (Be).
a selection of documents and suggestions:
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- the Dutch newspaper Trouw and the Icelandic Morgenblaðið bought upon departure and arrival on the 30th of April 2009.
- several DIY measuring instruments installed to support a daily weather report. Every morning I would leave this report on an answering machine as a daily ritual and a way to structurally communicate a state of mind.
- back and forth between te project space and Djúpavík two-sided postcards were sent. The postcards were made out of a picture of the sky of that day. On them I would write comforting and re-affirming messages.
- together with Emily Tamzen Norton I recorded 16 hours of Icelandic light. The hours corresponded with the hours during which the project space in Groningen was closed. The video was to be projected on one of the white walls of the space and to be switched on at 17:00 hours (closing time)
- video stills
- a meticulous draft of the contour of the mountains surrounding the residency was faxed back and forth between the project space and Djúpavík. Over time the line would loose detail. Another meticulous description of the same horizon was sent as a diary in text. Slowly a complicated system of reference evolves as common words like 'step', 'pasture' or 'stairs' start to represent units of length.
- people were asked to bring the book they would have packed knowing they'd stay in Djúpavík for a considerate amount of time. The collection of this library would reveal patterns of expectations, obscure interests and imagination.
- every item sent was filed in an archive, through which visitors could browse by means of a diagram.
(admission cards)
De Nacht van Electra is a biennial open air festival for minimal and modern music in Houwerzijl. The text is taken fromTraning the Ear for the Improvising Musician by Armen Donelian, a training companion for musicians. The cards were handprinted on the letterpress of the local printshop: Triona Pers.
writing
I depart from a given space that is clearly confined: a book, a room, a building.
In my urge to understand that what is presented to me I deconstruct the space intuitively
and from within. Against better judgement I set myself the laborious task of rearranging
elements methodically. It is in this movement of monotonous labor that allows no creative
impulse, that the space lines up in a different order until I arrive at a new conceptually
layered piece that provides a new and intimate understanding.