Phaeton

Star map

Sketches for Phaeton:

Phaetons route across the sky, where the reins slips out of his hands and the horses runs wild.

T

The morning when Phaeton sat out for his ride.

20.03.2014, 43 Marefield Garden, London

Step 2. Preparation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

The photos has a relationship to quite a disparate combination of image-based activities, from formal statue to Vogue to some kind of feminist liberation imagery from the 60s. The way it speaks about time as a series of atomised embalmed moments, the way it quivers on the edge of vibrating movement and complete stillness.

 

 

Title: 'Pythia'
Year: 2014
Category: Web visualisation based on the performance 'Pythia' (and extract from moving image)
Duration: Variable
Materials: 3D image, trophy objects, mask and performance.

Location: Hampstead, London
Photo: Jim Woodall

Animation: Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

Trophies

Step 3. The question

You put your question, receive your answer and depart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

This myth being interpreted here is Pythia, the name of the priestess’ of the oracle at Delphi. The film is as a journey to Delphi, the construction of the narration is driven by the lack of distinction between being the one asking questions and giving answers. The act of submission passing into the role of the oracle and a re-enacting the plea to gain insight into the forthcoming course of life becomes the same motion.   

The film might rather be a non-film, than a film. A montage, not only as moments in time, but as points in space so saturated that, they become living moments with the essence and aura of celluloid film but travelling and reverberating in many more directions than simply back and forward, transcending time and place.

 

 

Title: You know my name (Pythia)
Year: 2014
Category: Web visualisation based on the performance 'Pythia' (and extract from moving image)
Duration: Variable
Materials: 3D image, trophy objects, mask and performance.

Location: Hampstead, London
Photo: Jim Woodall

Animation: Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

 

 

The winner takes it all

Residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop, 2014.

Installation view

 

 

 

 

 

Title: The winner takes it all (trophy I)
Year: 2014
Category: Sculpture, object to use in performance 'Pythia'
Materials: Veg tan leather
Dimensions: 60 x 30 x 8 cm

Exhibited: 2015 Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2014. 'Sunday Salon', Slate Projects, London, UK.
Photo credits: Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

 

 



 

 

 

Title: The loser standing small (trophy II)

Year: 2014
Category: Sculpture, object to use in performance 'Pythia'
Materials: Veg tan leather
Dimensions: 70 x 40 x 12 cm

Exhibited: 2015 Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2014. 'Sunday Salon', Slate Projects, London, UK.

Photo credits: Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

 

 

 



Title: It simple and is plain (medal box I)

Year: 2014
Category: Sculpture
Materials: Cloth
Dimensions: 60 x 40 x 20 cm

Photo credits: Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

 



Title: Why should I complain (trophy III)

Year: 2014
Category: Sculpture, object to use in performance 'Pythia'
Materials: Veg tan leather
Dimensions: 100 x 30 x 7 cm

Exhibited: 2015 Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2014. 'Sunday Salon', Slate Projects, London, UK.

Photo credits: Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

 

Raw meat/Long after the days

Long after the days and the seasons

As a part of the piece 'Let me sleep! Let me boil, On the altars of Solomon; Let me soak the rusty soil' London, 2013, duration: 12 days. I re-enacted Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Barbaric.

I chose this poem, because (as I find in many of Rimbaud’s poems), the words does not only change into images in my head, but into acts/actions I know how to perform on and with the clay. The whole composition of the poem is shaped as choreography of movement and motion of material, not only as a gesture, but driven by spirit.

When I study the words: - being beyond mere language, they have that rare quality of carrying saturated materiality. Not only is the poem loaded with materiel, it furthermore achieves to describe materiality in lyrics. In words depicting the actuality of the world - both as incomprehensible phenomenon and as the heavy solid soil - within manageable images we can bring with us.

 

 

 
 

 

 

-- Oh! the banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers;



(they do not exist).-- Bliss! Live embers raining in gusts of frost.--

 

 

 

Bliss!-- fires in the rain of the wind of diamonds


flung out by the earth's heart eternally carbonized for us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- O world! (Far from the old retreats and the old flames, still heard, still felt.)

 

 

 

 

 

Fire and foam. Magic, veering of chasms and clash of icicles against the stars.

 

 

O bliss, O world, O music! And forms, sweat, eyes

and long hair floating there.

And white tears boiling,--

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by: Kirsten Abildgaard & Alida Sayer



Kingbird: Rivers

"The River", Butlers Wharf Pier, London, 2013. Duration: 3 days, photos by Alida Sayer, poem: 'Blackcurrant River', A. Rimbaud.

 

 

 

 

Everything flows with [the] horrible mysteries of ancient

landscapes

It is along these banks that you can hear

 

 

the dead passions of errant knights:

but how the wind is wholesome.

Let the traveller look through these clerestories:

 

 

 

he will journey on more bravely.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I descended into impassable rivers 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackcurrant river rolls unknown in strange valleys, blackcurrant river rolled unknown into strange valleys:

 

 

 

- when several winds swept down.

Kingbird: Let me sleep, let me boil...

 

 

Here are some of the images from the piece 'Let me sleep! Let me boil, On the altars of Solomon; Let me soak the rusty soil' London, 2013, duration: 12 days.

I have previously posted the intentions I had with the piece. (Which you can read here). Since the actual construction of the piece was taking place during the show, I didn't have any images of it until after the show. Looking at and organising these images is always an interesting process, where new aspects of the piece are coming alive, well, in a way, it is point where I actually realises what I have made.

 

I am going to show you images from the performance chosen and arranged in relation to the different topics and poems, of which, they were inspired and conceived. It will be an on-going process and things might change a bit from time to time.      

 

The chapters or topics are:

• In the morning (link)
• In the evening
• Skin
• Raw meat - Long after the seasons (link) 
• Hunger
• Hands

 

 

 

 

Beneath the bush a wolf will howl
Spitting bright feathers
From his feast of fowl:

Like him, I devour myself.
Waiting to be gathered

 

Let me sleep! Let me boil
                                              On the altars of Solomon;
                                                                                            Let me soak the rusty soil,

 

 

Fruits and grasses spend their hours; The spider spinning in the hedge
Eats only flowers. 

In the morning

Let me sleep, let me boil..

In the morning a new day starts, it is about poetry.

 

You were the first one of the day
You were the last one of the night

 

 



SHOW 13, Royal College of Art

SHOW 13, The piece I am showing:



The title 'Let me sleep! Let me boil, On the altars of Solomon; Let me soak the rusty soil' 2013 is from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, the piece is a composition of performance, sculpture, clay, hides, wood, tools, light and human. Dimensions 4 x 5 m, Duration: 12 days.

 

The piece I am making for the SHOW 13, is an affair with both 'weightiness' and sculptural qualities in a ritual handling of the material, and the vitality of performance. Bringing out the better of these two processes, I am persuading them to tell stories and reveal what is buried in their matter, as well as in mine.

The installation consist of a compositions with two floor based platforms, one referencing a table/alter, the other one a bed/grave. The bed is for resting and table is for consuming

The table top it is made of leather. Clay elements will be sculpted on the skin of my body and then laid to rest on a bed or table of skin. Lamp shades will be hanging from the ceiling, transporting the activity into the homely sphere of a private space.

On the bed and table platforms an enduring process creating sculptures of clay will take place throughout the show. Using my whole body as a sight for producing sculptures, a confrontation between the clay and the artist’s body is taking place, blurring the boundary amongst the artists’ endpoint and the beginning of the sculpture.

The clay will change shape, colour, character, returning all back to the starting point, for then starting all over again: revisiting the act that happened the day before, rearranging the elements of the sculpture. Cutting them open, so they blossom in complete transformation, revealing an inside, traces of its origin is to be found.

Dough up from the ground, using clay in this work, has the sense of a folk melody or story, opposite of shining in novelty, it seem to have existed there all along. The energy of the soil, that with softness record and absorb every act it is put through, every little stroke and every brute force.

Artist statement

When I wake up in the morning

 

 

 

 

I am in the most poetic way sure that my work is about love and softness, during the day this changes, entering the night I am certain it is about sex and death.

 

Also being a philosopher with a background in the harsh Nordic melancholic and strict minimalistic, yet spiritual and mythical culture, in my works I always seems to be drawn to the core of life’s existence in itself.  

Imagining nothing is ever lost, nonetheless everything is always moving, most likely to return at some point if we allow it. All the stories of the world is surprisingly alike, also on top of ruins something flourishes and there will be fostered.

Moving through the effort of creating, for then leaving it and letting it go by giving, not claiming ownership or requesting anything in return, history and myth can be opened up, letting past experiences replay themselves, placing us in this present layer of time, linking everything that have ever been and everything that will ever come.

No one should dream of turning into dust, but after all we are all visitors to this time, to this place. We are just passing through. We can observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we will return.  

 

kingBIRD: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes

 With the background in the story of Faust

The origin of the work 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes' I'm going to show in Camden Arts Centre, London, 2012, derives from an enactment of a scene in Goethe's Faust. Though the work has moved on from where it started with an interpretation of emotions into clay.

The emotions by which the girl Gretchen - despite Faust being responsible for her death - forgives him so he can go to heaven and thereby saves his soul from the devil.

For those of you who aren't totally familiar with Goethe's Faust, the short story is: Faust is a learned scholar that feels that none of his many achievements has provided him with the satisfaction of fulfillment. In his yearning to gain knowledge of the meaning of existence Faust makes a pact with Mephistopheles the devil. He agrees to serve Mephistopheles in hell if he can give him one moment of experience which is so rewarding that he calls upon that moment to stay as it is forever. Faust attempts to find happiness through emotional involvement. He seduces the innocent and young Gretchen and destroys her destiny in their tragic love affair that ends with Faust being responsible for her death. Later he tries to satisfy his craving through temporal accomplishments and exposure to all that the world can offer, but none of these things gives him lasting peace of mind.

  

After a long and complicated course of events Faust do experience a moment of sheer bliss and Mephistopheles believes Faust has lost his wager and tries to claim his soul. Angels appear and catches Faust's soul before Mephistopheles will bring it to hell. Gretchen appears in the form of the Eternal Feminine, despite Faust caused her death she offers to lead Faust into heaven and saves him with her pleading for God's grace. This grace is truly gratuitous and does not condone Faust's former sins. This grace is only occurring because of Gretchen's forgiveness and his unending striving after goodness and resolution to believe in the existence of something higher than himself.

See all the images here

My works are often based on layers and layers of meaning, thoughts and references.

That being the rule, it is important not to over complicate things. These layers are a platform and then I try to forget it all again to get the instinctive and present energy that makes it come to live.

Some of my thoughts from this session was (in list and bullet form): 'Inside out' : Reversed portrait, or imprints of the outside space of the body : Symbolic marking of the heart : Building the thing, from my body, lay it in a symmetrical pattern inspired from bilateral symmetry of our body : Symbolic making of the heart and to give it to the clay creature : Go through the hazard of making and then turn your back on it and leaving it/let it go : giving, but not claiming ownership or wanting anything in return.

Faust: The setting in this session is chosen to give a 'blank canvas' to work on. The objects making up the final formation/sculpture/installation are all sculpted on my body.

• White walls and duvet: contradiction: Soft and caring atmosphere. The cold institution walls are counterbalanced by the soft floor. In the centre of the room is something that could be a bed or a stage.

• The white dress: the eternal feminine, the sacrifices (or willing-ness to give) is visible by the symbolic sacrifices/ruin of the clean and crisp surface. It is easy to trace that something has been going on. Classical antique reference.   

• The red clay: symbolises emotions, flesh, things can rip our chest open, but also for instance emotions like forgiveness is powerful. There is also a reference to some level of general spirituality: reference to the origin of man, woman. Nature people, Indians, Vikings, before civilisation.

Desire: "is a machine, and the object of desire is another machine connected to it.” “Making love is not just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand…we always make love with worlds”. (Deleuze) & Eros: as a power of creation, will, life-energy, love, desire. (Marcuse, Herbert: Eros and Civilization).

Forgiveness: If the world just would forgive more… what do we gain by seeing other people as enemies.. beside enemies? It is said that; holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

All photos by Yiru Wang.