A sonic model of a vertical mind 12.26 min (2018)
Technique/Material: Video and sound, projector Optima GT1080E Short throw, earphones AKG. OSB-board, wood, mirror steel sheet 2 X 2 m.
Measure: Installation 2 x 2 m floorspace, each wall 2 x 3 m.
A sonic model for a vertical mind was part of the project Transparence/Resistance – Hidden in Plain Sight. It was a collaboration between Kummelholmen, Stockholm Sweden, BOA, Oslo Norway and Udstillingsstedet Spanien 19C, Aarhus Denmark. Participating Swedish artists; Hanna Ljung, Anna Nyberg, Torbjörn Johansson, Timo Menke and Ola Nilsson → link
The Poetry of Vertical Movement
Building from the ground up is a precondition for the expansion of the modern city as well as a prerequisite for the invention and existence of the elevator. The opening scene from the film A sonic model for a vertical mind is the pale mirrored view from the glazed elevators serving both visitors and civil servants in Aarhus City Hall. The City Hall was inaugurated in 1941 and designed by the architect Arne Jacobsen, better known as a furniture designer. The backbone of the narrative consists of moving elevators, those at the City Hall as well as others, i a the Pater Noster elevators at the housing company HSBs headquarter in Stockholm. By using the elevator as metaphor and material in this dreamlike film, a modern symbol of effectivization is connected to the slow rendering of the act of taking an elevator. The actual vertical movement which the elevators make – but also, in a more expanded definition, represent – touches on the movement of dreaming, the potentiality of place and the wonderment one can feel in the face of an openly acknowledged incomprehensible state of affairs.
Sample from the film (4.19 min) → link
Building Castles in the Air
Vertical thinking can be talked about in different ways. The film discusse it as a model of resistance. The definition centers on the upward gaze, outwards towards the universe and the stars in the heavens, but also downwards and thus inwards towards our earth. This way of seeing is linked to our image of our yearning towards, as well as our sense of wonder about that which stretches beyond the familiar.
It connects me with places I have never visited or the melancholy one can feel in returning somewhere, and with my other selves that don’t fit in with that which is given, propelling me towards thinking past the visible horizon and the will to reach beyond the obvious. The gaze relates to the pale light of dawn and dusk; the half-light. In its extension, it deals with the classic issue of the meaning of everything and our desire for life to contain more than practicalities and activities pieced together along a linear, horizontal time axis. Paradoxically, time expands through the space time of the daydream so that I can be everywhere simultaneously. The daydream is the counterforce which requires no response. Which has its own movement and logic and questions the definition of meaning in its own right.