BREAK PAGE 193 - DARRI LORENZEN

Description: BREAK PAGEPage: 193Printed on: Furioso gr. 80Used font: Neutral + Letter GothicFollowing contents: Darri LorenzenPage Range: 193-240

UOVO18_04_09_08:UOVO 17 10.09.2008 12:55 Uhr Pagina 193

Title:

CU

RTA

IN C

ALL

Artist:

DA

RRI L

ORE

NZE

N

Interviewer:

STEP

HEN

LIC

HTY

Location:

UOVO OPEN OFFICE–

BASEL

Date:

05.06.2008

–

Page:

195–


Stephen Lichty: The title of the piece you are making here is a word thatdescribes itself. What are the differentelements of Composite?Darri Lorenzen: The project consists ofthree parts — an action, a photo series and a sound installation. After dinner I asked to take people out of this garagespace one at a time. I had marked spots on the building floor-plan before hand, so I took each person to a different part of the building to get photographed, afigure standing in place with their back to the camera. After the photograph and after we (two photographers and a videographer) left, the person was toscream as loud as they could ... then to wait a moment and scream again, thento come back to the garage. By that time I had prepared the next person, so it was kind of a tac-tac-tac situation — there were fourteen people.

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SL: In different spots?DL: In different spots. The others in the garage heard the screams comingfrom all over the building. I recorded all the screams from one far corner of the basement. If you think of a cube,you have this corner point as a center and all these points — sound travels thru the building, thru different spaces,corridors and floors to this place, thecorner. So, I took these recordings and mixed a hands-on session ofoccasional screams.

SL: And now that sound is installed...DL: In that corner of the basement, an emptyroom with one speaker. It is a portrait of thebuilding. I was interested in using the artists and the writers and magazinestaff who are staying here. They have someconnection to the building, but don’t know all the different parts, so I would bring peopleto various spots. SomeI took to where others slept or to other places.

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SL: Composite the action wasvery specific — the productionsituation, the individuals doingthe screaming, this building, but what comes out is a series of anonymous screams andimages...DL: Well, the recordings couldhave been done with any soundsource but I decided to use thepeople there and a scream is the simplest way of makingloud noise. I’m playing withwhat’s already in the space.

SL: And what is the relationshipbetween Composite and the other pieces you made at theOpen Office?DL: Both projects are aboutmapping the space. in Folds, I shot photographs from fivedifferent viewpoints in the building and folded each intoa pyramid shape. Then I crumpledthem into small sculptures andplaced them on white platforms.Each of these was placed backin the spot where its photographwas taken, so each sculpturemorphs into the actual back-ground. It is a kind of play withmaterials and place. I placed oneon a table, one on a europallet,one is on a broken chair, andanother on a counter — there are five throughout the building.So there is the shooting of thephotograph which has a certaintime and charge, then that imageis processed and re-introducedto its place and I photographedthis scene again in a differenttime. I find these time gapsinteresting.

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SL: A sort of analog warp. In one of the Folds I see you have manifest a Porsche? DL: I think it was the building owner’s. Hemoved it into the front showroom. Yes, theimage is a freeze-frame of a time-gap.

SL: Does your process always unfold in stages?DL: In most of my works there are a few steps.First there is research, I usually look into thehistory off the space or the building althoughthat information doesn’t always find its wayinto the final work. It also depends on theproject. Then usually there is some sort ofaction that takes place, sometimes in the formof a performance that is captured... thatbecomes the material — sound, images, videoor structural elements. These components areplaced back into the space which is the nextstep — the work, the space and the viewers’engagement.

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SL: So do the material elements have a life beyondtheir original site? DL: Some pieces only function in one place and aren’tmeant to be placed somewhere else, but others take a lot with them and remain strong. Others are meant to travel. The viewpoint pieces for example are site-specific but also work out of their original context.

SL: These are photos in which, from a certain point of view, the reflection in the thick glass mounted in front ofthem lines up with the image itself.DL: Yes, I am creating invisible lines in space. In Round Here there were four of these photographs and a lightbulb, Russian style, circling from a long cord just above the floor. It wasimportant that the light source in thespace was exactly the same as when the photographs were taken, otherwisethe reflections wouldn’t match the images.It is near impossible to document these projects!

SL: And the photos made it out of this context?DL: Their afterlife was the fourth step, so yes, they were placed elsewhere. It’s like considering one branch of a tree. If you have a nice tree, then maybea branch is really nice... you would like to keep it, it is something that remindsyou of the tree. (laughing)

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SL: Tell me about your experience at the Yellow Houseand its relationship to the situation here at UOVO?DL: Some friends and I squatted a Reykjavik house in ‘99 and it was running quite tightly for a year withshows and performances. We all sort of faded out ofthe scene and let others take over. Now the YellowHouse doesn’t exist and there is a big building in itsplace. They tore it down... so that is good, in a way. The building here is charged with between ten andthirty people creating at the same time and the YelllowHouse was similar. I am working off that charge in theComposite screams, making the sound find its waythru the building, thru doorways and corridors.

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SL: I am noticing moreand more exhibitionsfor which people rapidlycome together to “dosomething” in a shortperiod of time. Forexample, Hans-UlrichObrist’s Marathons. Is thisa difficult way of working?DL: Well, it works out pretty well for me becausethat is how I usually work.I arrived at the Basel Open Office straight from the Reykjavik Experiment Marathon and the projects sharean approach. This isan old garage and the other is the Reykjavik Art Museum but bothwant to create the samesort of energy. At the Marathon, everything was sort of unclear — the curators were tryingto to keep the eventalive by not fixing so many things.

SL: And does this work froma curatorial standpoint?DL: When it is well done,definitely, but there is a lot of tension put on the artists.

SL: I think that’s called,“holding the witch to the fire.”(laughing)DL: They just recently stoppeddoing this in Iceland. Well, abit more recently than in therest of Europe. (laughing)

SL: In terms of your training, you went from a DIY squat to... DL: The Department of Imageand Sound, a joint faculty of the Royal Academy of Artand the Royal ConservatoireDen Haag. People there weremaking scientifically-correctsound compositions, stickingto to very calculated processes.But I wasn’t so interested inthis. My process is not so strict.

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SL: I think your work gets framedby those dialogues because youreconomy of materials renderslucid works. I recently re-listenedto a recording of I am Sitting in a Room by Alvin Lucier, aprocess piece that is still very wild.DL: Alvin Lucier was a pioneer. I think this piece is at the centerof a lot of things going on today.

SL: Are there any other artists in this field who have beenimportant to you?DL: Of course, but my my maininspirations are places. For a longtime I focused on perception ofplace thru the ears. In general,people are very trained in seeingbut unaware of aural perceptionbecause it is a more automaticprocess. You can always closeyour eyes but you have no earlids— with the ears you get a moreclear overall perception of where you are. It is a matter of enhancing this awareness.

SL: What have you done tosound in this regard? DL: ROOM, from 2000 was a core piece. I sound isolated a very small dark room and over a two minutes a real-timeecho was gradually introduced.The space seemed to expanduntil it was like being in acathedral. Then it just cut backdown to the dead space, and this continued in a loop. Like most other pieces, nothinghappened without the viewer.

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SL: In the Neue NationalgalerieBerlin a few months ago, youturned to me and said, “...canyou feel the building?” Once you tuned me in I felt a slightvibration in my stomach. Did you train this sensitivity?DL: It is not necessarily a positivething, I just lack the skill ofexcluding things around me. If you’re not thinking about these things you can live inyour environment automatically,but I am usually trying to put itstraight in your face, abstractingyour sense of place to put it back into your head.

SL: Do you have a point to make?DL: I’ve made works that consistof a single point but there isnever a single point to be made.

SL: What are the origins of MIÐ?DL: That piece needed to bemade and I finally realized it in2007. I don’t know how manysketches I have of a space andjust a dot. MIÐ clarifies thatrecurring sketch — the pieceinvolves one white LED pulsingslowly and randomly in thecenter of a large dark space andthe effect was much strongerthan I had expected — almosteveryone either asked me howthe light was moving or howmany lights there were. Somepeople also lost track of theirvertical orientation. I also playedback the sound of the space intoitself to erase the walls, so youno longer had a square feelingof the space, but only a point of reference within a void. Theseprocesses of clarification anderasure are very important. I think there were someexperiments in the ‘60’s withone-dot reference in space.

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SL: Lost in space... so peopleseek orientation?DL: Yes, people take out mobilephones and things like that —I don’t mind so much, I like thisengagement, it is still part of the work. In another dark work,Converge, it is most interestingif strangers end up in the piecetogether — five minutes in alocked room while the lights fade to black. Five minutes isquite long when nothing much is happening. As the space goes dark your memory fills in the gaps, keeping the others in mind. So, this dialoguebetween the people insidebecomes very intense.

SL: “Without an element of crueltyat the root of every spectacle, thetheatre is not possible” AntoninArtaud. I recently attended anexperimental theatre performancein Italy and the cruelty arrived withthe curtain call, when the actorsadmitted it was all a play.DL: I have been very interestedin theatre and this question of composition lately. I oncecomposed 10 people on a darkproscenium stage, sort ofcasually directing them in real-time, and the only light-source in the whole place was fromflash photos I had them taking. It was quite long, and after it was over my mother said to me, “...first I was waiting for the performance to start, andthen I was waiting for it to end.”(laughing). I hadn’t realized it, but that was exactly the thing I was trying to achieve, a timeand space for which you aremore aware of the completesituation than the scene being exposed.

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SL: How discrete is your work?DL: The viewer creates about 80percent of the work, especiallywhen I am playing with darkness.The perceptual effects registerdifferently for each person. A friend rang me last week afterseeing Converge at the ReykjavikArt Museum, and he says, “I gotthis weird experience in yourpiece today... I can’t explain it,but when the space got totallyblack, I had this strong feelingthat I had glasses on.”

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SL: When you making a piece, do you think in terms of effects?DL: Basically, it is about some moment when you begin to engagewith a certain moment in time and place. If you go thru my works,you will see this line — it is very obvious. But I do go off courseoccasionally. Sometimes I work closely with a writer to foregroundthe romantic aspects of the work, because some people havetrouble seeing this, even with glasses on. The text for Genuflectby Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir is a clear example this. We developed it together and it became an important part of the work.

I. Genuflect at that which was. It must be done though I don’tremember why.

II. From within the broken psyche, dead moments are reflected to the back of the eye.

III. Receding at a snail’s pace — the boundary of that which is and that which might be.

IV. A moist eye traces the limit down to a flowing field of vision.

V. Desires to see into its own world of shadows, how the shreds of one field of vision shimmer in the light of another, how a newimage has become.

(text: Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir / english translation: Jón Proppé)

Page: 209


Title: FOLDS 01Year: 2008Description: photograph

Location: UOVO OPEN OFFICE–BASELPage: 212


Title: COMPOSITEYear: 2008Description: making ofLocation: UOVO OPEN OFFICE–

BASEL

Pages: 216-217


Title: COMPOSITEYear: 2008Description: sound installationLocation: UOVO OPEN OFFICE–BASELPAGES: 218-218


Title: COMPOSITEYear: 2008Description: sound installationLocation: UOVO OPEN OFFICE–BASELPAGES: 220-220


Short Biographies: DARRI LORENZENis an artist born in 1978 in Reykjavik. He lives and works in Berlin. His projects Composite and Folds are part of Uovo Open Office in-site commissions.

STEPHEN LICHTY is co-director of Project Gentili, a gallery based in Prato (IT).


Title: DARRI LORENZENDescription: Selected Works Years: 2008-2000

Title: ConvergeYear: 2008


Title: ConvergeYear: 2008


Title: Round HereYear: 2007


Title: GenuflectYear: 2007


Title: Contours of SiteYear: 2007


Title: HleriYear: 2006


Title: Altostratus SuiteYear: 2006Description: in collaboration with Orn Helgason, Egill Kalevi Karlsson, Thor Sigurthorsson


Title: UppiYear: 2005


Title: Site SceneYear: 2005


Title: RisYear: 2000


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