Open Call
Speech performed at the meeting ‘Art, Risk and Courage’ organized by the foundations Talent Norge, Art Hub Copenhagen and The Danish Art Foundation in Copenhagen in june 2023.
05:28 min
2023
English translation
Open Call
I am trying to discover my inner oral presentation voice.
It's been 14 years since I started to study art. For a good fourteen years, I have been working with creating and understanding pictures, imagery and ideas. My education has been a process of working towards a praxis, a diffuse albeit incessantly persistent word, a continuity, a heartbeat, a rhythm, a calling.
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Open call
What is a calling, anyway? A calling has direction. The person in question, who is calling, knows what she or he wants. Therein lies difference between the scream and the call. The call is user-friendly, an instrument.
The shepherd is calling the cattle.
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I am moving into this with pictures. Now, these pictures have got to be arranged according to a logical principle, so they can be conveyed further and subsequently contextualized by academics.
It is like fences and gates, like an electric fence, a chain-link fence, like a fence for keeping out wild game, outside in the open air, and yet, it is its very own space.
The work that’s going on inside the fence is not the same as what’s going on outside.
Art is characterized by being something that possesses a meaning in itself. Only in itself. Even important questions are secondary in relation to art itself. Whether or not art can make people happy or alleviate mental illness is secondary. Art doesn’t need any justification in order to be created. It’s not being created because of an effect, because of some use-value, or for the purpose of gaining resonance.
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The Ministry of Culture is running an educational institution with freethinking as its ideal. An education where experimentation and innovation are paramount.
The Ministry of Culture also runs an arts foundation that supports some of the educated artists’ efforts with work grants.
There are lists, in bullet point form, like scenes from a doomsday movie, where the stars come into alignment, all of a sudden. 1 2 3 4 5 spots brighten up in the text.
The newly graduated meets point 5
• Resonance
That the artistic practice manages to give rise to empathy, reciprocal connections and a sense of solidarity – among people, in society and in the world.
Is the artist a livestock which we can milk when we’ve got a need to do so? Is that the reason we are supporting art today?
No, art is like wild nature, like insects and birds, plants whose names we barely know, newly discovered species at the bottom of the ocean floor. Nobody knows what the day is going to look like tomorrow.
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A forest of words
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I am walking through the little birch forest, uphill, gasping for breath, making it past the tree line in a matter of twenty minutes. It’s autumn and the mountains are glowing, tinted rusty red against the backdrop of a deep blue and almost black rocky mass. The birch trees have a sour yellow hue. I cross small waterfalls. For a while, I’m walking along the side of the mountain.
There’s no signal on my cell phone, no SMS messages can be written, and no outgoing calls can be made. I’ve got to keep my concentration, I’ve got to be aware of where I’m placing my foot, all the while.
Should something happen, there’s only you to save yourself.
translated by Dan A. Marmorstein