„The biggest trip of my life was just going to start“
(Jack Kerouac)
Leaving a stage behind and starting another one. Facing something different. Living a process of initiation, of transformation. Sometimes it is about changes of great importance. In other occasions it is only about small living adjustments. All these changes and evolutions shape our life. Every change, or more precisely, every need for a change means a way of discontentment. Like in every creative task, we rethink the world and our relation to it because there is something, which irritates us, bothers us and consequently, we want to modify. Sometimes, the change is a journey, which becomes a metaphor of a research, an escape or a rediscovery of the self. This is a leitmotiv, which repeats in cinema, in art, in music and in literature. Not by coincidence, this is the point of departure of most of the road movies, in which the voyage becomes a metaphor of the transition to a stage of maturity, of the research for the unexpected, or perhaps of escaping from something. Thus, for Jack Kerouac and the beat generation, the travel meant the search for answers to the act of living, and at the same time, a way to run away from responsibilities…
„There is no place I’d rather be than this journey of discovery“
(Jamiroquai)
The voyage, in a physical and metaphorical sense, is an essential trait of the creative practice. One of the landmarks of modern art has been the search for its values in other places, which may be spatial, geographical, mythical or temporal. Every departure implies an experience in terms of life and knowledge. This is an essential part of “artists’ baggage”. In the 19th century, the educational trip to Italy was a must for European artists. In the same period, the fascination to Orient meant the attraction for the exotic. Very often, to travel to other lands becomes a journey to the inner self. The voyage can be a lonely trip as a form of self-knowledge (Richard Long, Ulay/Abramovic); it can be an encouragement, a provocation, a regeneration or the wish to be integrated in a different place (Andreas Gursky, Beat Streuli); it can be the “detonating” to follow up ideas or projects, which seem impossible (Joost Conijn, Simon Starling) or it can contribute to define a new social class of nomads, artists as passengers in transit, who live and approach his or her projects in this moving “in between” different places, different societies, different situations and different commitments.
I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
(“Changes”, David Bowie)
The voyage can also refer to the end of a stage and the beginning of another one. For artists, the time in the Art Academy means a period of education, discussion and sharing with the other pupil privileged moments out of the efficiency that society claims to its members („Et in Arcadia Ego“, called Evelyn Waugh this time with big nostalgia in his novel Brideshead Revisited). The ending of the time in the Art Academy is also a moment of interrogation –not so much about oneself (we are not talking about teenager students) but about the artist’s role and their position in relation to society. This time in the Academy could be defined with the words of the Dutch anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in his book The Rites of Passage (1908), in which he examined what he called “life crises” and the ceremonies (or better, phases) that accompanied them: separation, transition and incorporation. In the transitional phase when the individual is neither in nor out of society, he or she exists in what van Gennep called a “liminal” state, in the threshold. And we can add, in a moment of change, of in-definition, of questioning and taking position both in personal and professional level.
Jesper Carlsen, Anders V. Hansen, Tine O. Jensen, Line S. Mengers, Karen Petersen, Kristian V. Svensson and Rikke Winther, the seven artists participating in the exhibition Afgang’06, are in this “threshold” of interrogation and taking position. The common denominator that unites these artists is that (apart from having done their education in the same art academy, Det fynskekunstakademi) from May onwards they will share the experience of leaving (the Academy) and in a broader sense, the idea of departure. „The biggest trip of my life was just going to start”, a quotation taken from the book of Jack Kerouac, On the road, summarizes the spirit of the exhibition, which is about accomplishing a period of education, of training and starting a new period, which implies a decisive moment of looking for a place –a space of one’s own from which to take part in a given reality- and also a place in the art world and in society. It is also a moment of interrogation: how is the art world? What are the function of art and the role of the artists? Which is the social status of artists? Can art fulfil a social function?
During the process of preparation of Afgang’06, artists not only have developed their individual works, but also they have discussed all these issues in a forum in Internet, where they have expressed their ideas in relation to art, their role as artists, their individual artistic projects as well as their worries in relation to some situations happening around them (like the controversy in relation to the 12 Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten). The following are just some of the points of view that have been included in the forum. Thus, the situation of impasse by leaving the Academy was summarized by one of the artist with the following metaphor: „Maybe I’m more for going into something new than going away… but well, if you go out of a room you automatically enter a new one“. The seven artists participating in Afgang’06 understand their role through the engagement with society (“the role of the artist is a way to help people think in the real world. My objective is pretty simple I am trying to raise the level of consciousness in relation to aesthetic consummation. I think good art can have the ability not only to raise questions about it self, but raise questions about the way we see the world. I see an artist’s practice as research, not only researching the subject matter, but also the surrounding phenomenon including ones own subject”). As a consequence, for most of them artistic practice is a way of communication. This is the way it was expressed by another artist: “it is a field where you can talk about things in a way that is impossible with just words. The relation between society and art is very important. To be aware of what is going on around you. Then it might be possible to somehow add something that is «missing» in the world. I guess that is what art is about”.
“Art is a way of thinking about the world, art questions society,
art challenges passivity and stimulates action” (Manifest Blue Dogma)
Since a long time, artists don’t live out of the world and isolated in their studios. They are concerned, affected and worried about everything that happens around. In 1980, the UNESCO emphasized the importance of the role of artists in society. Nowadays, many artistic practices deal with reality, they are involved in other contexts and use other strategies, mechanisms, production and communication means different from the ones traditionally artistic. Their works deal with issues and situations, which have a direct impact in society, they comment and question, establish models and prototypes, parallel situations or social and economic tests in small scale. They give visibility to certain dynamics, evidence some mechanisms, show contradictions and, as a consequence, question –or invite us to question- our present and our relation to it.
Although their interests and works are very diverse, the seven artists who exhibit in Afgang’06 share a committed attitude.
Jesper Carlsen presents a nature, which responds to a meticulous construction. In his projects, animations or mechanisms constructed by Carlsen, nature and artifice come together in order to show the contradictions and the complexity of meanings. In Afgang’06, Carlsen projects an animation, which with acid humour shows a fly deeply attracted by a Dan Flavin light.
Anders V. Hansen takes the political Danish context, and more specifically, the minister of culture Brian Mikkelsen, as a departure for his work. Hansen creates a sound sampling with some of Mikkelsen’ statements about a canon for Danish culture. The ideas of Mikkelsen are sampled and projected randomly by a computer programme. By doing so, Hansen wants to dissolve the mechanisms of this canon and at the same time makes evident how Mikkelsen’s discourse depends on “common places”, and its apparent “innocence” hides an implacable intention of segregation.
One of the main concerns of Tine O. Jensen’s work is the feminine identity. The video she presents on this occasion works with two images full of meaning and symbolism: a horse and a woman. The moments before a race begins, with two female riders, as a concurrent, are shown in detailed close up and making evident a constructed set up in order to reflect all its symbolism and connotations.
Line S. Mengers’ work deals with social structures. She uses a wide range of media (sound, video or questionnaires, among others) in order to relate to specific contexts. In light of the graduation exhibition, Line Mengers has exchanged her drawings for elements required to settle her studio after leaving the Academy, such as a desk, a computer chair, etc. With this non-commercial way of trading, Mengers’ project reflects on the relativity of the economic value of art in society.
Installations and, more specifically, sound are the main working material for Karen Petersen, to let us rethink our approach to things. The work Petersen presents in this exhibition deals with communication. Therefore, Petersen installs a telephone on a plinth. The artists herself is phoning everyday and talks to the person on the audience who picks up the telephone. Thus a direct communication is established between artist and public, a direct communication based not only in the exchange of general information, but which goes in an intimate level, through the direct communication of personal experiences.
Kristian V. Svensson also uses different mean (like video, installation or performance) to develop projects which use public sphere as a place of intervention. For Afgang’06, Svensson has created an “Art Dating Room”, anounced in Internet and newspapers. This art dating room consists on a space with a telephone, which offers the viewer the possibility to stablish personal contacts.
Rikke Winther’s paintings and drawings deal with an inner world full of imagination and psychological connotations. The drawings and texts that compose Winther’s project for Afgang’06 shape a kind of emotional landscape related to feelings, personal emotions and romance.
This is a brief approach to the works and artists that take part in Afgang’06. For these seven artists, this exhibition is a real departure towards a new situation in which an educational stage comes to an end and another one, which demands a clear position as artists, starts. The transition is for them not only personal but also a matter of commitment. They work with specific contexts and with many different media in order to rethink our present, with all its paradoxes and contradictions. Probably the awareness of being in a transitional moment is part of their role as artists. Because only by looking at things with new eyes, they can renew perception and stimulate new ways of thinking. In this sense we referred to “the biggest trip” of Kerouac. Thus, to quote Björk seems relevant to finish this text just where a new beginning starts for Anders, Jesper, Karen, Kristian, Line, Rikke and Tine:
«Unthinkable surprises about to happen»
(Björk)
Montse Badia
