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

The sculptural-based part of 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes'

In this part of the work 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes', I showed elements from the performative act in a gallery space, Great Western Studios, London, 2012

The buckets:

In the performance, I used some special customised buckets, specially made for the purpose of being used in a performance. Modelling clay on my body, taking the exact imprint of the shape of the gap that occurs between my thighs while working with the clay during the performance. The form of these buckets serves both an aesthetic and functional purpose to strengthen the link between the artist's movements of the body and the performance and the act as a ritual.

The outfit:

I showed the outfit I was wearing in the performance, the outfit almost took on a skin like appearance in the areas where the traces and layers of clay laid thick and accumulated.

The book:

The book showed images from the performance and small text fragments, some my own statements of the intention in the performance, some quotes from others who frames the intention of my project. The book is made without any constituted end or beginning. But in and endless spiral circle so it in it format mimic one of the most important contents of the performance; return and revisit in an endless cycle. Another inspiration for the shape of the book was the notion about the third meaning; known from cinema, where we automatically make connections between images. If we see a man looking out the doorway in one frame and the moon in the next frame, we instantly assume he is looking at the moon, though we have actually never been told. So the pages was divided horizontally, so the bottom and top pages can be flipped independently of each other so endless combinations of images and text can be shown next to each other, making up different meanings.      

Both the buckets and the book are examples of how things can change appearance constituted on their context. The traces coming from the performative process are meant to live on after the event; maybe as objects, however significantly more important as seeds planted in our awareness of how we approach the practises of our life.

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

'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes'

The performance:

Believing nothing is never lost: by letting the clay change its form and shape continually it is mimicking how life is always moving, - even on top of ruins something will grow. It is also about the journey by building on top of something already there, I believe nothing is ever lost. It will always return at some point if we allow it.

Part I:

In the performance 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes' shown in Camden Arts Centre, London on the third weekend of November 2012. The first session started out on a clean white space, with a reference to the dream the performance was acted on an enormous duvet. An inkblot pattern referencing 'something beyond consciousness' marked out where the sculpture was to be built.

 A confrontation between the clay and the outside of the artist’s body was taking place, with the intention to make visible objects of the red clay and in the end returning it all back to the colour white, the colour of the starting point, covering the entire sculpture in liquid porcelain. 

Part II:

The second session started revisiting the act that happened the day before, by rearranging the elements of the sculpture. Cutting them open, they blossomed in complete transformation, revealing the inside where the signs of both the sculpture’s and the performance’s origin was to be traced.

Drawings:
As I told in another post, Sophie was drawing her interpretation of the perfomance. The drawings is going to have their own post as soon as possible.



kingBIRD: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes, Camden Arts Centre

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. 

Performance by Helle Bjerregaard

(drop-in event, no booking required)

Part I: Saturday 17th November 2012, 2.00 - 3.30pm

Part II: Sunday 18th November 2012, 2.00 - 3.00pm
Camden Arts Centre,  Arkwright Road,  London NW3 6DG

Helle Bjerregaard will be performing in the residency studio using raw clay and the body to explore narratives of the material, making process and residual objects.
_________________________

I am preparing for a performance in Camden Arts Centre.The image above is not the Residency Studio, but one of the galleries. The residency studio looks the same, just a bit smaller. The performance is in connection to Phoebe Cummings residency there. She is an artist often working with site-specific installations/sculptures in unfired clay. I have been admiring her works for quite a while, so when she asked me if I wanted to perform, I was naturally thrilled (I still am). So you are hereby invited to come and have a look, I'll be happy to see all of you :-)

While I was preparing, I met the amazing Sophie Westerlind (see her works here) at the Royal College of Art, (during a workshop about Zoo's, which is a story I'll get back to later). Her drawings made a big impact on me. She showed some drawings she had previously done of some performances. Keeping something from the performances is important to me, but I often find it difficult. Drawing could be an interesting approach. Photos are great, but however 'objective' they seem, they are still an interpretation of reality, but in a drawing this interpretation is even further extended.

In my performance, I am treating a topic with artistic decisions, leaving out some things to draw the focus upon others. From my interpretation, her drawings naturally makes yet an interpretation of my interpretation, adding another layer to my performance by reducing it down to its core choosing; what her eye finds essential. Ohh it is going to be exciting to see what will come from that. I’ll write what the performance is about in another post :-)

A snap shot from behind the scene of the preparation taken by Yiru Wang.

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.

dOCUMENTA (13) II

Second Part

 

 

 

 

dOCUMENTA (13) I

 

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.

kingBIRD: Butterfly Valley: Permanent Installation VII

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.

kingBIRD: Butterfly Valley: Permanent Installation VI

Finally!

kingBIRD: Body

Body

I am currently obsessed by trying to persuade the material to tell stories and reveal what is hidden inside it. One of my focus points is to merge the liveliness of performance and the 'weight' and sculptural qualities of the material- to make it come alive. Bringing out the best of these two processes and leaving behind, empty gestures and static and enclosed formats and shapes. 

I am going to tell you much more about these things.

• The first picture is the remains of a performance I did. The objects are all sculpted on my body, since I'm very interested in traces I am probably going to pay a lot of attention to these left-overs.
• The picture in the middle is a still from the Danish director Lars Von Trier's Antichrist. Although, I have mixed feelings about my Nordic legacy - I am interested to find out more about with which traces it has affected me. They say it is good to read the book, so you know what you are burning - and as I will find out which ones to let go of and which ones to save from the fire I will let you know.
• The last picture is also from one of my performances, this one was inspired by Faust. My aim is to make the sculptural process beautiful in itself and limit the distance between the artist and the sculpture.

kingBIRD: Butterfly Valley: Permanent Installation V

Images from the process

 

I've been working in two different studios for this installation. My former studio which is located in the heart of the city center. The other one in the picture below is Lone Kirketerps studio in the urban harbour areas. In the images above are the butterflies glazed and ready to go into the kiln for the firing.