Interview: Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly

Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly, Installation, 2008, Wood, fabric, thread, bicycle, inflatables.		Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly, Installation, 2008, Wood, fabric, thread, bicycle, inflatables.

How do you know each other? And what fascinates you about each other’s work?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: Fiona curated us, a year ago, so we met up in New York during the summer, and I really understood why Fiona had paired us. Our work discuss the same topics, yet it is has different angles and expression. I am extremely fascinated with Mary’s way of seeing the world, the ecotopics, and her new project Waterpod. I am going to New York this spring to participate, and Mary says that she will include an artist space for me at “the pod”, yeah!

Mary Mattingly: I met Mie through Fiona and became awestruck by her paintings, a distortion of her architectural background, but much more than that. Like me, she is fascinated by remnants of cultures and abodes, combining these symbolic objects with her architectural manipulations to create post-world environs. I have never met anyone who was as thrilled by refuse as I, and for this reason and many others, I am very excited to collaborate with Mie. Also, as we worked together, we both accepted each other’s ideas, and were at once pragmatic. This is very important when collaborating.

How did the exhibition at Standpoint Gallery become a reality and how have your collaboration with the curator Fiona MacDonald been?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: Standpoint is a non-profit organization. So it is something you do because you really believe in the project. I liked Fiona’s idea, and love Mary’s work. Mary and I e-mailed a lot before the show, because we wanted to do collaboration with our sculpture work.

Mary Mattingly: Yes, we emailed a lot prior to the show, to decide on the best ways that our works would compliment, merge, and play off of each other’s work. It was a necessary exploration but really came to life when we were face-to-face in the space. I think that Fiona was very curious to see how our collaboration would turn out, especially since she paired us initially. Fiona and I had collaborated the year before on a performance at Braziers, and through that I knew that she was a Powerhouse!

Mie Olise: Big Wooden Playing Box, 2008. 180 x 160 cm Acrylic on canvas		Mie Olise: House With Open Roof, 2008. 200 x 180 cm Acrylic on canvas

Can you point out 3 of the most important aspects in the exhibition?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: The collaboration, that is a merging of Kart, a bike construction, with boxes, a structure that Mary made and photographed earlier this year in Mexico – and the structure I made cutting through the elevator. We wanted the boxes to meet and merge with the larger and heavier structure, up in the air, near the ceiling. My structure cuts through the space from the entrance, through the elevator shaft, and out again to meet Mary’s.

And another thing for me is the fact that so many disciplines, video (sound), sculpture, photography and painting are put together in a smaller space, yet still connects very well. Constantly you see things of resemblage, through the medias, even through the artists. I think that is exciting. Because discovering the exhibition itself, is like you would if you came to one of the specific places we are describing.

Mary Mattingly: I agree, the collaboration is one of the most important aspects. I like how it evolved, and how the elevator successfully suggests a mineshaft, and the struggle between an immobile, old structure with a mobile, kind of fantastical one. It was interesting to find close links within the show, like some of my “Anatomy of Melancholy” photographs evoking the same mood of despair as some of Mie’s video stills of Pyramid City. Lastly, the beginnings of new works that will evolve from this point in time, forward. For instance, Mie’s paintings and objects as new instruments, or perhaps my mobile sculptures merging with the immobile. Also, the beginning of further collaborations with Mie Olise Kjærgaard.

One of the main themes of the exhibition is dealing with remote places and disintegration of utopian ideas. Why are you interested in these themes?

Mary Mattingly: For me, perhaps a little bit disillusionment. From reading futurist novels as a child to growing up in an idyllic countryside where only imagination keeps you from absolute boredom, I have always desired a better place. As a child, I would organize events in the town like a circus, or dig underground forts. As a teenager, I became fascinated with underground dance scenes and would create and hold rave parties in abandoned warehouses. It occurred to me at some point in time that it is necessary for me to create and to live in an environment and reality that I create, and maybe I am trying to create a space like this with the Waterpod, but with decades and centuries of historic failures to observe, learn from, and be aware of.

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: For my part it is a fascination with the uncanny idea of approaching something abandoned. Curiosity paired with alertness and fright, and the questions it raises. I see these structures as empty pores of a bigger society. That is open for mutation or inhabitation, a utopian idea that fell to the ground and can become the base of a new idea. It is a fractal structure that I see in all scales of the world, man-made and in nature. In the end I have to admit to a very romantic and melancholic interest in the failed ideas and dreams - the dead! The mourning of the lost. If you think about conceptual ironic, sarcastic and humoristic art, this is the opposite; the pathetic well-meant mourning. FX the sound of the video really is almost too much, so it starts to become a little like you don’t know what if you should laugh or cry – I like that feeling. Last year in Istanbul I showed a video with a Swedish distorted folk tune that Goodiepal made, this had the same effect.

Mary Mattingly: Possibilities of Multilateral Communication, 2005. 76 x 76 cm Digital C-Print		Mary Mattingly: Around 150 Riding Towards Water (In the navel of the Moon), 2008. 76 x 76 cm Digital C-Print

The exhibition is also a reflection on failed human stories and the discovery of possible futures. Why are you both engaged in this matter and which message is the most important for you to bring forward to the viewer?

Mary Mattingly: I am very apprehensive about the future of human life on our earth if we keep travelling the same destructive pathways. We see misuse of water creating mass desertification, consumer waste at its historic height, and it is very sad to see the current situation in the United States that consists of towns full of houses that were almost never lived in, built during a boom that has come to an end. I think that this is very sad, but somewhere there is a twist in my thinking and I imagine that these towns could be our future playgrounds, and that excites me. I believe that unless we are aware and decide to make changes, perhaps personal or revolutionary changes, we will be forced into a world that we did not take care of and have no choice but to live in and with our refuse.

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: I think I try to communicate something that I find extremely fascinating myself, something that goes to my stomach and moves me. First of all, I would like to evoke these feelings in others. I also think it has a lot to say about the world and society – systems of physical-, as well as psychological patterns building up and becoming something else – different from the initially planned. This stomach feeling is for people to go and experience. It is difficult to explain, that is why I have to build, paint, photograph and film it. Touching the specific political ideas of utopias is indeed also important, but I really like to just show it. Like the Lenin statue in the performance. And make it be up to people to react – see the long grass, the effort in the architecture of the housing, the ice melting in the background etc. If I start explain, I take on a part, that I want the viewer to take on, I want this communication to be between the work and the viewer.

Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly at Standpoint Gallery, installation view.		Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly at Standpoint Gallery, installation view.

The exhibition is structured around the elevator of the gallery, where Mie Olise Kjærgaard have created an architectural space functioning as a room divider and as a movie room. It seems that the space has grown out of the gallery’s construction, Mary Mattingly’s “Kart” and Mie Olise Kjærgaards experience from the North Pole. It must have been a challenge to unfold and develop such a site-specific space. What is the most important meaning behind the creation, and why did you choose this construction?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: we discussed different ideas. When you approach a new space it always has it specific problems and features. The elevator in the middle of the room makes the room impossible as a white cube gallery room, but it immediately became something for us to want to work with. The problem became the challenge. Both Mary and I had different ideas about structures to work into each other, and we kept it open until we stood next to each other in the Gallery Space. And then it came naturally. Transformation through space; entering, breaking, heaviness, lightness, the static and dynamic all coming together as a journey through the space.

Mary Mattingly: Mie and I both like challenges and the shape of Standpoint felt more like our work, so it was quite exciting to have the ability to inhabit and alter it.

Mie Olise Kjærgaard, this is your second and last series of working with the abandoned city the Pyramid close to the North Pole. How has your second time trip there been different from the first in relation to your journey there, research and the final outcome of the project? And what significance has your collaboration with Simon Ladefoged had on your work?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: Well, actually I just got the opportunity to go back next autumn with the ISCP residency, on a big wooden ship(!)…. So I am going back, but this time in a group of international artists and I will probably work with mapping the area differently.

First time I went, I really did not know what it would be like. I had a gun-woman in my back, forcing me to go forward all the time, and my videos became kind of shaky! I was not allowed into the buildings, and I went back with the feeling, that this was too good of an idea, to leave with the quality of material I had gained. So I only made one installation from this first trip. This time I knew what to apply for: THE KEYS to the city, to ask somebody who is good at filming to come along: Simon Lagefoged and I had a gun-man with patience. So this time I had 3 videos, one of them, a performance made at the town square in front of the Lenin statue, playing the Goodiepal tune, from the first installation work aloud from laoudpeakers running from a car battery. It was played for absolutely nobody. The city is now 4 hours boat-trip north of all civilization.

Mie Olise: Into the Pyramid Pt 1 - Inhabiting Abandoned Places, 2008. Video		Mie Olise: Into the Pyramid Pt 1 - Inhabiting Abandoned Places, 2008. Video

You have produced a short film, Into the Pyramid part 1 – Inhabiting Abandoned Places, which is displayed in the architectural construction around the elevator. The film takes us through interior still life in an abandoned building around the Pyramid, and has references to the atmosphere of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøj. What is the core of the film?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: As the title suggests the film is about inhabitating the spaces. The spaces are filmed in still shots, nothing really happens, it´s silence. The spaces has that emptiness, you can almost see the dust hanging in the air. The core of the film becomes the pairing with the sound. I brought sound equipment, and recorded sounds on site. Played the music instruments, played with the basketballs, threw dices and played solitaire. These sounds I worked with to create a sound image to go along with the visual image – or contrast it. At standpoint it results in the construction cutting through the space, making loud weird scary sounds, an elevator shaft sounding almost like inside a sunken cargo-ship.

I am tempted to ask what you personally gained from working with the Pyramid?

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: The whole situation about the Pyramid talks to me personally, the visual image of the Nordic settlement, is very much like the things I saw as a child sailing on a big ship in Norweigian and Swedish desolate Cliffscapes. As a child I also lived on a Sawmill and at a Police Station with empty prisoner cells, so in many ways I know these places. On top of that the Pyramid has so many aspects, politically, romantically and ….. Well, I just feel for it, and I have several places in Eastern Europe and South America, that I need to go to after this.

Mie Olise: Stranded Straight on Shiny Bank, 2008. 130 x110 cm Acrylic & oil on canvas		Mie Olise: Tic Tac Box, 2008. 200 x 180cm Acrylic & oil on canvas

Mary Mattingly, what has inspired you to make art narrating the beauty of nature and humans in a hostile climate?

Mary Mattingly: I do like the dichotomy between something that is equally beautiful and hostile. Nature has more vastness and power than people ever can, and we try to change it, but it just destroys us as we change it. I like to surround myself with things that I am in awe of. I like to see how I can deal with challenges I put in front of myself, and create a blueprint for hostile conditions, and I hope that other people can learn from my research, experiences, and creations, as these conditions become more and more omnipresent.

Your intriguing photographs for this exhibition visualize failed utopian structures and visions of the future, but what reality do they address in 2008?

Mary Mattingly: Well, besides the current “failures” that we see all around us, I suppose right now it is directly relational to our political and environmental struggles, not to mention the current economic crisis, as it is being termed in the US. It implies that the chaos of over-inflated economies (like the US) are now forced to deal with the outcome of excessive leveraging, improper use of derivatives, poor structuring of mortgage-backed securities, over-speculation and non-transparent, misguided regulation in forms of trade including credit default swaps that have gotten many economies into their current states of chaos, and that are basically now being realized as fictional, unreliable systems the more segmented that they get. This is a very interesting failed utopian system that we will constantly try to revive and sustain, because it is in balance with many systems of control, that at times do and will continue to fail (think of prison revolts and health care in the US, or Bechtel in Bolivia in the 90’s). Honestly, I hope that they remind people to learn from history.

Mary Mattingly: 16 images from the series titled Anatomy of Melancholy, 2007-2008. 51 x 51 cm Digital C-Print		Mary Mattingly: What Hath God Wrought? (May 24, 1844), 2004. 76 x 76 cm Digital C-Print

Have your “wearable homes” and “Kart” been applied by others than you?

Mary Mattingly: In a way they are both replicating and extruding what is around all of us. The mobile sculpture “Kart” is inspired by the somewhat regular action on a street in Brooklyn that I lived for many years, where these wild, accumulative, prophetic, and tragic structures are created. To me, they describe the food chain, the cycles of capitalism and waste, our need for sustenance, and the value of the forgotten things that our societies produce: some peoples’ refuse heaped into carts inside of bags, tied with bungee cords, stacked with furniture, locked with bike locks. The Kart sculptures that I have been creating are made of items found in the streets, and the structures that I am using to travel with have items that are very important to my survival, so they are more exact and less, you could say, whimsical.

I like to think of the Wearable Homes as the ultimate in commodity “downsizing”, and in a way they are the ultimate personal luxury and the ultimate necessity. Prescriptions like this are a reality that more and more people may take part in. It is predicted by the United Nations University scholars that about 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 due to rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes. Others may have their own sort of wearable homes as they begin to travel more for positions at jobs that are more global, and so forth.

Both, what is your next project and where is your next exhibition?

Mary Mattingly: For the immediate future, I am going to Palais de Tokyo to take part in the Prix Pictet exhibition that opens this Thursday. In April I will have a second solo at Robert Mann Gallery in New York, and in May the Waterpod will open. I will live and work on this structure for the entire summer, and in October, have a show at the non-profit space called Occurrence in Montreal. Intermittently, I will have work at the Tucson Museum of Art and plan to collaborate with Mie! Next fall I will build a permanent Waterpod that will be my new home.

Mie Olise Kjærgaard: I have all these residencies to go to, first Iceland, then Berlin, Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York. I have been making 5 bigger exhibitions in one year. So I am trying to take some time to experiment, read and reflect… I have group shows in Dublin and Italy. And I am talking to institutions and galleries in Europe and the States, it is all very exciting, but I have agreed with myself to work less extrovert for some time. So for now, I want time to study and reflect. At Iceland I am going to build big constructions to make sound-scapes, and will invite musicians Nikolaj Hess, Goodiepal, and others to come up and play along. I would like to collaborate and exhibit more with Mary. We have different ideas cooking; I will go to New York during the Waterpod project.

Thank you.

Mie Olise: Into the Pyramid Pt 1 - Inhabiting Abandoned Places, 2008. Video		Mie Olise: Into the Pyramid Pt 1 - Inhabiting Abandoned Places, 2008. Video

Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly, Installation, 2008, Wood, fabric, thread, bicycle, inflatables.		Mie Olise Kjærgaard & Mary Mattingly, Insatllation, 2008, Wood, fabric, tread, bicycle, inflatables.