Anne Szefer Karlsen
Temporary relationships and other comparisons

Tempo Skien 2008 wants to relate to you. This is not intended to be a collection of static sculptures, standing still staring into space. No, they aim to seduce. And by actually relating to the pieces, we also experience them. It takes time to build a relationship, but we have plenty of it, since Tempo Skien 2008 lasts four months.

The curatorial experiment has been to describe the geographical, emotional, political and social landscape through a series of short story-like sculptural pieces, where every piece both starts and finishes in Skien. It all started when the artists were invited for a weekend to Skien, where the meeting was paramount. We came to ask questions together. The artists had the chance to ask their questions, I had the chance to ask what preoccupied the artists, and together we all asked what was possible to make happen. When artists work in public space, that is, space even more open to the public than a gallery or museum, they would, unsurprisingly, be overwhelmed by the thought of all the people they should potentially be speaking to. Who are you all? I ask myself that same question, and would like to take this opportunity to let you have the chance to ask this same question in turn about these works now occupying Skien.

The thought process behind these works started at the meeting in this town, and therefore the artists all have Skien as a starting point. Yet it’s not exclusively the place that defines this exhibition. Each artist’s own field of interests plays a part. Time matters to many of them. Stretches of time, both short and long, personal and historical, are touched upon.

Even though the model for composition has been the short story, there is no drama connected to this exhibition, it will be standing there quite undramatically for the whole summer and a bit longer. Nevertheless, it is full of stories, histories and statements by the thirteen artists. Both the poetic, as well as the political, is forced upon us as we confront the solid works of Tempo Skien 2008. The exhibition consists of seventeen works in total, all located in diverse spaces: inside the catalogue, elevated above the high street, in a shop window, on advertising billboards, inside Biohallen and on the roof-top of Cellulosen in the old industrial area of Klosterøya, twice during the exhibition in the form of all-evening events in the bar Oaa Hela Natten, as well as in the park of course.

As you pick up the mp3-player from Hotel Høyers, you are forced to spend time in order to experience Breast height by Ingebjørg Torgersen in collaboration with John Birger Wormdahl. Science and art is mixed, as you are taken around the whole park by the sounds playing in your ears. From the embroidered chestnut tree, towards the salmon stairs, where you find 24 holes in the ground, a John Deere tractor and a hanging miniature forest around a tree. The sound finally guides you along the long side of the park and right back to the hotel. In the middle of this walk, and in the middle of the park, is Untitled (Sandbox), a seven-by-seven metre minimalist sculpture made by Bjørn Bjarre. It resembles a sandbox, and is also used as one by the people in Skien. Both this and his other work for Tempo Skien, the book Nazism Changed My Life, are references to our recent art history disguised in familiar shapes. He takes as his starting point for the sandbox the end of Robert Smithson’s essay A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic from 1967, where city development is discussed amongst other issues: “Picture in your mind's eye [a] sandbox divided in half with black sand on one side and white sand on the other. We take a child and have him run hundreds of times clockwise in the box until the sand gets mixed and begins to turn grey; after that we have him run anti-clockwise, but the result will not be a restoration of the original division but a greater degree of greyness and an increase of entropy.” As well as being an image of putting what seems to be chaos into the system, Untitled (Sandbox) also paves the way for thinking about memories. The sandbox is scaled to fit a grown-up, so that the grown-up can relive the proportions and physical relations experienced as a child. To revive old memories is nevertheless not the same as experiencing something for the first time, but to apply the previous experience to a new time. In many ways our memory is a way of putting our own history into a loose system. Having personal ties to historical events we haven’t experienced can also be said to be some kind of memory, a collective memory we are more or less influenced by. On the first page of the book titled Nazism Changed My Life we can read a quote by an old Native American chief, and on the following pages a Super-8-film is captured on the pages in which the artist himself plays with a pink plastic rabbit. The aesthetics of the Super-8-film leads us towards memories. Additionally the rabbit, in spite of it being ordinary and small in size, points to the monument as a safe keeper of memories, as it will always refer to the American artist Jeff Koon’s piece Rabbit from 1986. The book is displayed in a shop window in the high street, and is thus pulled out of the park.

Detached from the park is also Ellen Jakobsson Strømsø’s work relating to the larger lines of history through extensive use of symbols, without forgetting the individual in it all. It is a seductive metal banner, of different shapes and colours, hanging above the high street, but with the title A Leopard Never Loses Its Spots, it is not the most optimistic piece in the exhibition. If you pass the text stretched out above the end of the high street the piece will appear playful and light.

Even though the works don’t necessarily look like traditional sculptures, monuments, memorials or other traditional public exhibits, these are not chaotic installations that have escaped from galleries. The artists have to the greatest extent related to the possibilities and restrictions of public space. As with Sveinung Rudjord Unneland’s two works, the case of paraphrases of known expressions.Jaws is a concrete monolith scaled to the size of a human and placed by the salmon stairs in a spot that intuitively is perceived as wrong. It has many similarities to monuments we’ve seen before, and it is positioned in public space, but still it is as if something doesn’t add up. Something is not quite right with a snow heap by the curb in the summer either, which is exactly what Januarynineteenthtwothousandandeight is. Both works discuss time as something inconstant, i.e. the constant doesn’t apply here. Rudjord Unneland’s works are full of now. To create something for a specific place in a specific time can’t be connected to the permanent. Maybe that is why a temporary outdoor exhibition can afford to come with several strong statements. All the works of Tempo Skien 2008 are defined by themselves. Kasper Sonne’s statement stands out on top of the roof of Cellulosen at Klosterøya. It can seem vague, but is definitely monumental. It is a not very abstract work, but with an abstract implication. Because: who can tell us when Forever until the end really is?

Tempo Skien 2008 has not been given a title, since each of the individual works is so distinctive that a collective name for them could be reductionist or damaging. The curatorial idea has been to concentrate on the structure, thinking of the exhibition as a loosely connected collection of short stories, in which each artist creates their own coherence with the characteristics of the short story. The short story is characterized by the abrupt beginning of a story that covers a short period of time, with limited numbers of characters. It also has a distinct dynamic of suspense with a sudden turning point, the ending is often left unresolved, and there are more intimations than explicit meanings. The underlying theme of this collection of short stories is a mix of the lively, the serious, the concealed and the humorous.

Pål Gusdal Jomås is also represented with two works in the exhibition. One of these was included because of its very special ties to Skien. The work Bruket, kontrollrom nord (The mill, control room north) is a complex work consisting of video and the presence and participation of the audience. The video in itself is a series of interviews, speaking portraits, of six of the ex-workers at Union, the factory that used to be spread out on Klosterøya but now is shut down. These six individuals present their thoughts on their working day, what they appreciate about it and how they perceive their working environment. We hear answers to questions that are mute, because the artist has hidden them for us. What we see as a result of this strategy is that in between their answers we observe them trying to bridge the gap to the person asking the questions, facial expressions telling us exactly what these questions are and in a way that tells us that this is serious. There is also a seriousness to the photographs Gusdal Jomås has taken of the workers occupying Klosterøya today. Full-length portraits of men turning ever so slightly to one side, as if to signal that they are in a hurry, that there still is work to be done.

And this is where we get to the exotic part, even by Norwegian standards, about this place: Skien. In spite of large economic and social changes the last years, there is literally no unemployment. In addition, there is a distinct generation gap. As there is almost no possibility to attend college or university in this region, young people have to move away. The result of these two statistical facts is merged into one in Stefan Christiansen’s Våtromsnormenn. This is a hybrid title that consists of three Norwegian words: Våtrom, a general term for bathroom; Normen, “the norm”; and Nordmenn, Norwegians. It points to the general redecoration fad that is ever-present in a rich country where most lives revolve around the home. We are presented with a 900 kg granite brain that rests on a slanting platform covered in tiles with a drain leading out into the river. By chiselling out the brain and its dripping residue, we can not doubt his critique: this is to be taken seriously, even if both the work itself and the title are concealed beneath slapstic humour.

On the opposite side of the roundabout by the park, Matt O’dell’s toweringNumbers Station Beacon/Community Broadcast Tower 2008, loyally plays its sound to us every fortieth minute. At the end of the track there is a little musical surprise, but mostly we hear a long series of numbers. No-one knows where these numbers come from, or who they are meant to address. At the same time the sound is authentic; it can be listened to on the radio, and it is the closest we get to a found object in Tempo Skien this year. Another work taking as its starting point something factual is Kristina Müntzing’s work TO:/FROM: made in collaboration with Kalle Brolin. It is a three dimensional document of a recent historical event in Argentina. The crates are positioned in the park as reminders of the home being something fragile. To us they can function as outdoor furniture, but they also represent a place and a time so very different to the one we live in. TO:/FROM: is made for our time. Not necessarily because we should remember something, but because we should be reminded of something. This is not a memorial.

Tempo Skien 2008 calculates time in relation to season, not in relation to history. At the same time that more than one work points to historical facts, they are the contemporary interpretations of these facts. Bob & Roberta Smith relates to time as a fictive universe where one can travel back and forth to create common social experiences. The work on paper, which is to be found inside the catalogue, makes use of our ability to imagine an image of the park filled with people who experience music together. At the same time it is a quite gloomy image, since none of the proposed concerts could ever have happened.

Even if Åsil Bøthun toys with fiction too, her proposition is a lot more realistic. Her two works Wallet and Bundle of keys are imagined incidents, in the shape of staged objects on and under two different park benches. They are there, very still, waiting to be discovered, and are like reifications of these incidents. These works also emphasize what is apparent in all works of this exhibition but one: there are no human figures included. We are here to fill that role by relating to the works ourselves. Relating actively to and shaping our surroundings is something Morten Kildevæld Larsen is busy working with. You lovely spot shields off a small part of the park, so the line of sight only focuses on the view of the water. His interest lies in how we relate to public space.

The closest to a practical example of how we relate to space, at least social space, is created by Sound of Mu twice during the exhibition period. On the first and last nights of Tempo Skien 2008 they arrange One cannot deny it might just happen. These are social events in the bar Oaa Hela Natten, with concerts, video screenings and food. Sound of Mu offers two nights where we are given the opportunity to create the dynamic of suspense only social gatherings can offer, and thus this also falls into line with the structure of the short story. Many stories are created and re-told on nights like these.