Interview: The Weather Forecast

The Weather Forecast, 2010. Installationsview.

Can you describe the work you are presenting at The Weather Forecast?

I am presenting a model of a piece that I have been thinking about for quite some time. It is a very simple idea; I want to make imprints of bodies on to walls. The idea derives from a 4 channel sound installation that I made in 2008, where you sit in an empty room and listen to a couple having a conversation. They are preparing breakfast and they start to argue about a mundane thing. The argument becomes more and more aggressive and everything ends in violence. But you only hear it. There is nothing there but you having this fictional thing surrounding you. I started to think that a lot of my work is actually about the absence of the body, and I have been working a lot with the recorded voice, which is lacking a body and in a sense also lacking a self. With this work I wanted to make this notion even more significant and only with visuals. In my model there are these imprints of bodies in a space, bodies that have left marks or traces and tell us that something has happened.

Do you think that the concept and framing of the exhibition has had an influence on your working process?

In a way, yes. I very often work with models because I discovered that I am thinking when I am building stuff. And I always have to build spaces even though I am not going to fill those spaces. It is a way of concentrating on this object that I have in front of me. So that’s why I chose to make a model for this exhibition, because that is how I often work. But then of course this model is going to be exhibited. Actually, yesterday I freaked out a little bit, because I was so worried that people were going to view the model as an art piece or as a sculpture, and it’s really not. It is just a presentation of an idea; it is not a finished piece.

It is interesting that both you and a number of the other artists have worked with a notion of traces and absences. Is that something, which is characteristic of your practice?

Not intentionally, no – but looking back at my works, I have understood that it is a theme in my practice and something I often work with.

Mathias Kristersson: Body Prints, 2010. 80 x 65 x 45 cm. Scale model; plaster, wood.

Can you describe the work you have been working on for this exhibition?

Aeron: We work with a lot of projects over a long period of time and this is one theme. They take different forms depending on if we have an exhibition or whatever context. This theme is money; we have been reading books and the internet and collecting bills and just dealing with money, what it means philosophically, and how to make aesthetic objects from it.

Alejandra: We wanted the objects to look like archival material and the documents to become archival objects. The objects build on the general argument but each object has it’s own narrative.

So each object is a different narration about the value of money? I remember your statement said something in terms of thinking about money as some kind of abstraction or talisman?

Aeron: Yes, in the history of money there is a moment when money becomes an abstract concept because of course in the beginning it was direct barter of goods. It became about handing over slips of paper that indicated a certain amount of valuable material, normally gold. So as money became more complicated and as the system became bigger and harder to deal with, it became a lot more abstract, a lot more like a philosophical thinking process or a shared faith. This shared faith is almost religious and also I think it has a lot to do with the shared faith of art. But if we describe these processes in too much detail, the project could become a bit boring. We could go through each work and tell what the exact story is, but it’s sort of nicer to not know it all upfront.

So you don’t want the stories to be too present in the installations but rather be visual narratives?

Alejandra: I think you can get a lot of details just by looking at them, like for example that seizure document with the Liberty Dollars, and you can see that there are bills with printing errors together with the Goldman Sachs e-mails, so I think there are things where you can see the connections very clearly, but other things are more difficult.

Aeron: It should be both; I guess that’s the point. It should be attractive and look kind of strong and suggest things, and then when you approach the work and read it and begin to discover it in a way, the enigma starts to unfold and some of these details come out. A good piece of work has both this quality of mystery and that there actually is content. I guess that’s the core interest that we have in making art: there should be both a strong surface and there should be content, if you approach it.

Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas: Gold, Transferred, 2010. Letterpress prints, error printed $1 and $5 bills, Liberty Dollars, painting on canvas with objects, 50,000 shredded Euros compressed into a brick by Deutche Bank and topped by golden poop.

Can you describe the work you have been working on for The Weather Forecast?

I have brought different pieces together in the gallery to show how an idea is formed in my practice. I thought it would be interesting to have a gathering of different things, different mediums, different aspects, interests and research and to see what can come out of it later on. An idea might be a utopian notion. Maybe an idea comes from something you don’t know; maybe it emerges from something you subconsciously have been affected by. I have tried not to censor these things out even though this in itself might be impossible.

The work you are presenting consists of two audio recordings with texts, a couple of film clips, two reference books, a book object and some old films...

Yes, it sounds like a lot of works, but it looks very simple. There are two audio recordings from Istanbul, one recording is made in a room of a flat facing the street, and the other is from the back room facing the alley. They are both dealing with audio aesthetics or trying to find a language for audio representation, which is linked to the way we perceive or describe visual aesthetics. Then there are two films, which are presented on a video monitor. One is a YouTube clip with the composer and pianist Glenn Gould who is talking about a composition he has made where the instruments are replaced by peoples’ voices. The other video is a video shot inside a studio setting, it shows a short wave radio getting tuned by the atmospheric conditions outside the studio by way of a string attached to a branch on a tree outside.

On the table there is 5 rolls of super 8 films, which have been recorded by the same person over a period of time. All are showing the same garden, the same apple tree, tulips etc. over and over again. My interest is on the topic of the exotic or foreign within the familiar. There are also two reference books, one by Edward Said in which he relates music to literature and political ideas, and another book called Support Structures, which was recently published in relation to the Platform Garanti in Istanbul where I am currently a resident artist. The last piece is a book object. It is a book on Michael Asher’s work, which was published recently. He is an old professor of mine who has been very important to my practice and my way of thinking. I have wanted to make a work in relation to one of his works for a long time but without knowing how to do it. I am now writing inside the book as a kind of conversation with him commenting on his work in relation to thoughts I have while reading it and in relation to work I am currently doing or would like to do. I will have to see where it goes, but in the end I want to make one other copy of it all and send it to him. It is currently looking like a sort of a diary for myself, a sketch book, but I am very much hoping that I can share it in some way, with him and people that visit the show.

Ursula Nistrup: Untitled, 2010. Super 8 films, video, books, text and audio.

Will you describe the work you have been working on for The Weather Forecast?

My project takes its starting point in Hebron, Palestine, where I have been twice within the last 6 months. What you see in my installation – in the film sequence – is a horizontal chain link fence that separates the Palestinians from the settlers. The settlers have moved in above the Palestinians and the Palestinians have put up this fence as a way of protecting themselves. The objects you see on the fence are objects that the settlers have thrown down on it.

What I found interesting about this fence is that you when looking at the video are somewhat disoriented not knowing if you are looking up or down. I see the fence as a musical score or a very sad poem, it was like reading a text while walking back and forth like an animal. This image is also the connection to the panther in the text, which is projected on the adjoining wall. I was thinking about Rilke’s panther. It was very turbulent, emotional and painful for me to go to Palestine. Hebron is besieged and seemed like an open wound. When I came home I felt confused and stressed and angry. This small piece of land is like ripped paper; it is disintegrated. There are 524 checkpoints in the area. So a trip equal to the trip from Lund to Copenhagen could take a day, because you get stopped the whole time.

After returning from Hebron I started a dialogue with two professional writers, Fredrik Ehlin and Oscar Mangione, who are former editors of Geist – a magazine on theory, art, literature and philosophy. We started a discussion, which for me was also a way of distancing myself from the experiences and becoming more objective. But it was difficult, because this time I opened up in my process and that is new to me. I have never really collaborated before. I do everything myself, the editing, the sound, the music, so for me it was an opportunity to understand both my process and what I have experienced.

Did the concept of the exhibition affect your choice of work; did the notion of the idea or sketch influence your process?

It has, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier I have never included other people in my process before. And I actually started the process before I was invited to be part of the exhibition, so this project felt perfect for me because I was just in the beginning of something. I am very happy to do something more experimental; everything doesn’t have to be perfect. For me it feels more open this way.

Lina Selander: Untitled, 2010. Video and text installation/mixed media, video: 3:20 min, mute, b/w, loop. Text on overhead. Text collaboration with Oscar Mangione and Fredrik Ehlin.

Can you describe the piece you have been working on for The Weather Forecast?

It is a 2 channel video work called The Sun Is Up I Want You Here. It is basically a draft book or notebook that I have collected during a one-month period. I documented and collected all kinds of things that interest me right now like pages from books, sentences from songs etc., which for some reason stick with me. The video is a free form, a video essay on my process and how a work starts to develop. It is really the very first stage when everything is chaotic and doesn’t seem to have a direction that I can follow.

Has this particular framing of the exhibition made you work in a different way?

Yes, it is different. I don’t usually keep a video diary, but I do have all these elements in my notebooks and I might also film it with my video camera. For this exhibition I have compiled them into a watchable 2 channel video, usually it is scattered all around. But now I collected it and it has been really interesting to see that this is one version of what goes on in my head and during the process.

But at the same time there is a great deal of editing to make it presentable and finishing it in a sense. It is kind of a paradox?

Yes, it is a paradox in a way. I have edited it and it has been somewhat difficult to decide what to include in the video and what to keep out; not to make it too complete. I also refer to that in one of the videotexts, it says something like ‘I have to control myself not to make it a finished work or turn it into an art work’. So what I am presenting is staged, I am not trying to say that this is how I usually work, it is a staged version of my creative process, but I am aware of that. So thinking about the second exhibition, just about anything can happen, any tiny bit of the video can end up turning into a full work or I could do something totally different. This work is just for this context, I would never show it in any other context. It needs to be developed into something else that speaks of more than these small ideas and observations; I have to take it further.

Mikko Kuorinki: The Sun Is Up I Want You Here, 2010. 2 channel video work. 17:19 min (image video), 16:46 min (text video).