Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

This is going to be long, so forgive me. It is part of my diary for remembering some of my thoughts and impressions, but it would be a shame just to waste them on me alone.

Just to clarify, I am easily impressed when it comes to dOCUMENTA. I have sentimental feelings about Kassel and I am often convinced and feel a strong relationship with German art in general. Seen all his works endless times before, I still went to The Gerhard Richter show at Tate modern a few times. His confrontation series, led me and a friend to revisit the case of Rote Armee Fraktion and the reason to finally watch the Baader Meinhof Complex. Reading Gunter Grass and Walter Benjamin in conjunction to history, is not only regarding the past, but always open and changing, spread on to long discussions about revolutions, the tragedy, how history unfolds and run traces through generations, and the paradox of time being so swiftly but how nothing is never over and how we through bloodlines inside us all carry history.

dOCUMENTA is also called the 100 day exhibition; its format being that it runs for 100 days, but only every 5th year. It started 1955 with the aim of showing the German people the modern (at that time contemporary) art, which had been inaccessible to them due to the censorship of the previous years fascist regime. When I say one does not simply walk into dOCUMENTA it is with the thought of Boromir from the Lord of the Rings saying with ‘fear and disbelieve’ in his voice; one does not simply walk into Mordor, the land of the evil enemy. dOCUMENTA is not an enemy, but it is an overwhelming beast of incomprehensible size and (this year) depth. Just scratching the surface takes time and a long tiring persistent effort. dOCUMENTA is afraid of no one, not afraid of taboo and the things that hurt, not afraid to be boring, not afraid of content and making statements, aren’t sucking up to funfair entertainment. The reason for going through all this is of course the gain for endeavour is highly rewarded. Our daily existence is transcendented, time starts to stand still, the world opens, history replays itself and places you in this world linking everything that have ever been and everything that will come. If you allow it, you enter as one and leave as another.

It’s not easy to get to Kassel, you just don’t pop by, it is in the middle of flipping nowhere with ca. 200 km to the nearest airport. So just the journey comes close to a spiritual experience of making a ‘pilgrims fare’. There is a physical ritual of going to Kassel with the rhythm of 5 years, it looks the same, the light is the same, the atmosphere is the same, everything is repeated in a rigorous pattern. But five years has passed, things have changed, Kassel has changed, five years have passed, I have changed five years have passed. New experiences are built on top on them that are already there, the new ones to add or to alter the old ones.

Just living is not enough, said the butterfly...

...One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower. -Hans Christian Andersen

Home means something different to everyone. I always work with things in pairs or with contradictions and polarity, where one thing becomes it's other. Or paradoxes. I believe you can never have one, without also having the other, in one way or another. We might not always be aware - but it is always there. It is the other that draws the outline of the one. Most people know the feeling of “when you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home”. So to have a place you feel at home, it helps to have been away, and here I have chosen the last part of having been away the returning. The returning is widely an ignored or neglected word, everyone these days are so focused on going somewhere.

Of course, expecting home as only being possible existing in or as a location, whether it is more or less well known, is horribly narrow-minded and limited. As it is said “home is not where you live, but where they understand you”. Sometimes, when we think back it might not always be the most luxurious places we have lived that stand out, because "a house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”

Sometimes it is said that a “home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to". If that’s the case, I personally have to wait and see. I have left home and allthough, I'm not 18 anymore I don’t think I'm old enough to be called old. But I don’t think it is that important. I don’t think we shall wait for or expect to find the right place or solution to find our happiness; I rather think we should find inspiration from the butterfly: It goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes." After all “we are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home”. So to choose to put the butterflies on the wall was a symbol of contradictions of the word home and returning. One of the most beautiful descriptions of a paradox I know, and still makes perfect sense is about:

"The butterfly that counts not months but moments, and has time enough"

I push my hand up to the sky, Shade my eyes from the sun, as the dust settles around me, suddenly night time has begun. You knew you were lost, but you carried on anyway, you knew you had no time, but you let the days drift away.

The words above is from the band Editors song the racing rats. I was reminded about these words while making this work. The clue about making this work is returning. The thing is that I was born here, in one of the flats surrounding the garden. Below is a picture from that time.