The wonder and crime of curiosity

I have been four people in this project. The explorer, the introvert, the organizer and the corpus maker.

The explorer is the one traveling the ocean, looking at the world with curiosity and deciding to own it. Ruthless science and colonialism: to do because we can, or to do to find out if it can be done.

“Tell Evolution”

One of the most common questions I got during the exam exhibition was what material the branch is made of. When I answered “raw hide… skin”, the asker’s look changed and they just had to ask “human skin?”. I wonder how we can be explorers without being colonizers.

“The travelable distance”

The introvert is the one remembering that we might sleep half a meter away from another person, but a wall of concrete make us exist in different worlds. We are only aware of the neighbours upstairs when they are disturbing us, we co-exist at a distance and agree to pretend that someone else will save the world.

“The apartment next to theirs” (left) and “If they weren’t made to be empty” (right)

The organiser is the one documenting and collecting. Sorting the world and combining the fragments into our preferred version of reality. Ideally I would like my work to meet an audience slowly and quietly, like the way you find lost things in the attic and you wonder who they used to belong to.

“Our preferred version of reality”

The corpus maker is the one placing the borders around pieces of emptiness, the definer of inside and outside. Possibly even the creator of inside and outside, since neither of them can exist without the meeting place that is the border.

“The only other piece of land”

Exam presentation set up.

Exam exhibition with cast concrete floor and 4 of 7 pieces.

Done. Next project.

 

 

The Border/The Container

When you make a container you place borders around pieces of emptiness. The emptiness is given shape and becomes a space inside the border.

This space is often used to protect or separate matter of different value from each other or to sort the world to make it easier for us to use. For instance keeping the sugar from being mixed with all the other things on the table until we decide the time has come to mix them, or separating the bones of a saint from all mundane materials inside a reliquary, or building walls to make sure people stay in there assigned places.

In short: to protect what is contained against unwanted influences or to contain and isolate what is unwanted.

The border (the material divider) can itself be used to tell you something of what it encloses and how important it is, and also if it is closing something in or closing something out. But can it also contain the movement between the inside and the outside?

Back to the Island

In theory the island has a clearly defined border. But where is it? The shoreline? In that case: low or high tide? Stormy weather or calm waves? Do the rivers belong to the island or to the ocean? And what about islands that are connected during low tide but separated during high tide?

Line: shellac and steel

Tunnel: shellac and fabric

Ocean: shellac and concrete

Tunnel with hand: shellac, fabric and hand

Melting: shellac and fabric

The amazing beauty of shellac in sunlight

The Organizer

As the organizer I wanted to sort the world, draw the lines and put everything in it’s right box. It makes the world understandable. But the categories kept failing and unless you make a box for every single thing you won’t understand the world that way anyway.

Control system

Everything changed a little bit to the left.

I wake up at the subway with no idea of where I’m going. Who was I when getting on this train? I look out the window. We create this hard world. Then we create shoes to walk on it without damaging out feet. Lights passing outside in the dark while I’m trying my shoes against the floor.

Everything will move back again to the way it was and they will tell me what station to get off at.

Silicone cubes

Shellac and fabric box

Collapsing cube of bandage and shellac

Bloated cube of raw hide and concrete

 

Reading and wrapping

“The stories don’t fit back together, and it’s the end of stories, those devices we carry like shells and shields and blinkers and occasionally maps and compasses.”

From “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit

There used to something living

And the preservation of it keeps it dead forever.

Broken bones saved for later