Looking at reality through the eyes of love: an Interview with Ragnar Kjartansson
Ragnar Kjartansson
“Il cielo in una stanza is the only song I know that deals with the fundamental nature of visual art, which is its ability to transform space,” the artist explains. “So, in a way, it is purely conceptual. But I also love how it describes the power of the imagination, put on fire by love, to transform the world around us. It is a poem about how love and music can make a small confined space explode, letting in the sky and the trees… Love can read the writing in the remotest star, as Oscar Wilde said.”
Your work is often underpinned by the concept of repetition and duration, how would you say the last few months have influenced your perception of time and endurance? How conducive was the period to your productivity and creativity?
I never really thought about it in that way, that there is any actual resemblance to the endurance and repetition of the works to life in these times, the works are essentially fabricated ceremony. The last few months have been so fascinating, it is so crazy to be living this new reality and way of life, it has been emotionally very strange, I have been in awe and just living life to the max. It has not been a very creative time, I would say, as life in itself is so interesting.
In the past (thinking here of works such as ‘The End’* in Venice in 2009) you have imposed hardcore and claustrophobic feats upon yourself, having now had lockdown imposed upon you, do you think you are likely to make other performances in this vein and with this level of discipline?
I really like these ideas of duration and with The End where I spent six months constantly working in a studio in Venice, that itself was pretty great! The hard thing about that piece was that we had instructed ourselves to be drunk and smoking all the time, that was the really hard part, it was fun for the first two weeks, then it was like argghhhhhh, help! But actually just being in one place and living that place fully, I really like that and that is what was interesting about lockdown, just being in one place, in ones own city for an extended period of time. I cannot really speak of lockdown from an Icelandic perspective, because our lockdown was really cosy, it hasn’t been hardcore at all, there were a few weeks in March which were pretty hardcore but we could still go out for a walk, the Icelandic experience of lockdown was nothing compared to Italian experience of lockdown, for example. It was weird, it was almost like seeing the world at war, but we were not really taking part.
*Ragnar represented Iceland at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Throughout the six-months of the Biennale he produced one painting per day, working in a studio on the ground floor of an old palazzo on the Grand Canal. His subject was his friend Pall Haukur Bjornsson, an Icelandic performance artist, who was required to wear a Speedo bathing suit.
Your 2012 installation “The Visitors” nods to society as a whole as well as the individual human state through music, each performer on each screen is fragile and alone but then you stand back and concentrate on the togetherness of the music. Do you think the regulations that have been imposed on us lately have the potential for a better understanding of society and togetherness?
I want to be optimistic! But we don’t just stop being assholes! I mean I hope that there is going to be some kind of change, where we look at life as we have been doing so during lockdown, this more quiet lifestyle, like living in a Dutch still life! But I think as soon as the vaccine arrives everybody is just going to go to Ibiza and go completely crazy!
We’re living in scary times, we are scared of democracy, there is not much optimism for our culture, we have become even more dependent on these huge cooperations that take care of communication, but at the same time they have made it possible for people to connect during lockdown, which is fantastic.
If Trump isn’t re-elected I think everyone is going to become more positive and hopeful, but if he is re-elected and we see America deteriorating, it is going to become really depressing, you realise when they are gone, they actually meant it when they said, ‘we’re protecting freedom and democracy’ and actually did that and when they are not doing it anymore they are crumbling into pieces. Sorry – I will stop now otherwise it gets depressing!
In “The Visitors” the lyrics “Once again, I fall into my feminine ways” are repeated over and over and over again, could you tell me a little more about the role feminism and feminine physicality plays in your work and where that tendency stems from?
That line is from a piece by artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, who allowed me to use lines from her work in The Visitors, just to emphasise that that great line isn’t mine. Feminism plays a big big role in my art and life. I remember in art school, when there was a course in feminist art and I suddenly realised what I wanted to do – these feminist artist where so hard core, original and different from the usual cannon. Art dealing with ones gender and what you are, instead of working in the ephemeral idea of art, art is what I am, and the culture I come from and what is imposed on me. In the 20th century half of humanity slowly started having a voice and it is such a short time since, I think those artists are going to be the most interesting artists in art history of the future.
My parents were cosy 70´s feminists, not wary militants by today’s standards. As long as I remember there has been a constant discussion about feminism in our household and my surroundings. Iceland is a country where feminism is discussed quite a lot. I remember in vague childhood memory, when we had the first democratically elected female head of state and that was such a big deal in such a small place, everything changed with it. Iceland is number one for gender equality in the world. But me, oh mine, the patriarch has not been crushed here. It is so deeply ingrained in culture, I mean I say I am a feminist but I am fighting the entitled misogynist in myself constantly, its like the dark matter that I am constantly creating somewhere in my twisted soul!
Feminism is very prominent in my thinking and my work, we were talking about depressing matters earlier but I think this is a positive and basic theme in the world to strive for.
*The Visitors is a monumental, nine-channel sound and video installation of a performance staged at Rokeby Farm, a historic 43-room estate in upstate New York. Each of the individual audio and video channels features musicians playing instruments either alone or in groups, isolated yet in unison. In September 2019, The Guardian ranked The Visitors first in their Best Art of the 21st Century list
How has growing up and living in Iceland influenced your work as an artist?
I think perhaps this idea of politics being so prevalent in our society and also growing up so close to nature. I think what is so unique here is that the there is a lot of culture, we have the sagas from the middle ages, but there is no visual culture, there is no castle up on a hill or fresco in an old church, ancient stuff just doesn’t exist. It is almost like a story or a conceptual piece of art, so the idea of the art object took me a very long while to understand – that people actually think that art objects matter, I always just thought that art is just a story about the art that was made.
Having grown up in theatre and music, and being always in bands at what point and why did you fall into visual art?
My grandfather was a visual artist, but he was a socialist realist and made monuments to commemorate lost sailors – every village in Iceland has one. Through him and his friends visual art was always very present in my childhood, his best friend was Dieter Roth the famous Swiss artist. There was always this presence of the Dieter dionysian adventure of visual art, compared to the walled in world of theatre I was also growing up in, also through the theatre I got to know set designers who were visual artists, and they always seemed to have the most cool or interesting lifestyles, because of their freedom, you decide to become a visual artist and you are free, it is a decision, a way of life. Here there is no art market, you are an artist but then you may have another job whilst you create your artworks. I learnt how independent artist are, not as needy as those who need constant production around them, like actors.
In your 2007 video performance “God” you repeat the phrase “Sorrow Conquers Happiness” for half an hour, what mantra are you, or should we, be repeating at the moment?
We should definitely not be repeating ‘Sorrow Conquers Happiness’ that is just too depressing!
Perhaps we should invert it?
(Laughs) Well, then that wouldn’t be true! That’s really why I like thinking about ‘Il cielo in una stanza’, although its a little long I think that is a really good mantra! I think it is a really good way of looking at reality, through the eyes of love, for me personally that is really important.
There is also this poem by Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet that I have been trying to learn by heart. I love Tomas Transtromer’s poetry, he won the Nobel prize for literature in 2011. I am learning it in Swedish but I will find it in English to recite to you, it is called “Madrigal”, I think this poem is also a really good mantra.
Please do!
“I inherited a dark forest where I seldom walk. But a day is coming when the living and the dead change places. Then the forest starts moving. We aren’t without hope. The worst crime remains unsolved despite the efforts of many police. In the same way there is a great unsolved love in our lives. I inherited a dark forest, but today I am walking in the other forest, the light one. And the living things that sing, wiggle, wave and crawl! It’s spring and the air is very strong. I have an examination at the University of Forgetfullness and am as emptyhanded as the shirt on the clothesline”.
I really like the line “We aren’t without hope. The worst crime remains unsolved despite the efforts of many police.”
There is another thing I have been thinking about a lot also – I am taking this very seriously by the way! It is by Oscar Wilde, it is very simple: “Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are” . Now that is a good Mantra! By Oscar Wilde in prison, in solitary confinement!
What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on a show, that is going to open in Moscow in the Spring – hopefully, Covid depending. Its crazily interesting to do a show in Moscow, anything you do is political, so I am in that project at the moment. Here in the background is a set that I making for that show, it is supposed to look like the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow before the Russian Revolution…
