Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.05.2009, Side 11

Little did we know...
So you’re an artist, eh?
Well, yeah. I like to think of myself as such. And
it’s my job, so yeah. I’m an artist.
How’d that happen?
I’ve always been involved with the arts in some
form. You could say I started out on the stage; as a
child, I acted in some 200 showings of Lands míns
föður [a popular local play – as noted in the above bio,
Ragnar is the son of respected actor/director Kjartan
Ragnarsson]. When I was a teenager, I participated
a lot in the theatre, and started an “art collective” of
sorts – Mambo Publishing House – with my friends
from Hagaskóli [a West Reykjavík junior high]. The
collective, we hung out in my garage and played
“artist” to an extreme. We made paintings while
Úlfur Eldjárn [of Apparat Organ Quartet] played the
saxophone. We wrote plays for our school festivals,
formed bands, fucked around. The artform didn’t
matter: we were a teenage cross-disciplinary arts
collective. And that mode of thinking’s sort of stuck
with me – that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as
long as you’re doing something, creating something.
I ultimately decided to pursue the visual arts. I’ve
always thought it was the coolest form of art. You’re
your own boss, you get to do what you like. It’s also
the most “anything goes” artform; in music, you’ve
got to make a certain amount of sense, also in the
theatre. You release an album and you sort of have
to succeed to an extent. Whereas in visual arts you
can get away with making stuff that really sucks and
just tagging it with some sort of concept. It’s like a
shield – you’re protected within the field. When I was
doing music, I was a lot more insecure. Because it’s
so much more... direct. You either feel it or you don’t.
There are a lot of grey areas in the visual arts. But it’s
all jazz, man
So how come you’re representing Iceland at this
there Biennale thing??
Some experts decided. Haha. I’ve slept with so
many people that they just had to let me. Hah. No,
not really, just... some committee decided to invite
me, and I serenely accepted.
And what exactly is the Biennale?
It’s a major contemporary art exhibit that’s held
bi-annually. The world’s nations send their repre-
sentatives to display. It started in 1895 and was ini-
tially just for the European superpowers, but us old
colonies have been slowly getting on the bill little by
little. Iceland first joined in 1960, when Ásmundur
Sveinsson and Kjarval went, we’ve sent people there
regularly since 1982. In 2007, some 150 countries
had representatives. It’s quite an event.
So it’s sorta like the Eurovision Song Contest of
contemporary art?
Well you know, this is a bit more respectable.
And it’s not a contest. It forms a common ground
for what’s notable in modern art at each time, so to
speak. Even though it can be hard to tell what that
is, exactly. You can’t really liken it to anything. It’s a
special event. And of course it’s an honour to get to
go there. A great one.
What have you got planned?
I’ll be showing a video piece that I made in the
Canadian Rockies with Davíð Þór Jónsson [versatile,
masterful musician, plays with Flís, Mugison, pretty
much everyone]. It’s a country music opus consisting
of five videos that all play at the same time and sync.
That’ll be in one room. This place, the Rockies, it’s
the end of the world, the western part of it at least, an
incredible place. It was spectacular to be there, and to
record in the stinging frost.
And then there’s a piece I collaborate on with Páll
Haukur Björnsson, a six month long performance
that consists of me painting paintings of him stand-
ing around in a custom-made bathing suit, drinking
a beer and smoking a cigarette. It’s a plateaux that
the guests will walk in on, I’ll keep making paint-
ings – one each day for six months. I’ll be doing this
throughout the year, every day. It’s a terrific situa-
tion; a grudging Groundhog Day for half a year. Him
smoking and drinking, me painting, five hours a
day. The piece will grow each day and build up emo-
tional charge as the paintings, beer bottles and ciga-
rettes pile up. It’ll grow more and more unsavoury, I
imagine it’ll be quite an installation by the end.
And what’s it about?
It’s about a lot of things. About the painting,
about the music, friendship. It’s about the moment,
it’s about time, man, it’s just like Tíminn og vatnið
[“Time and water,” legendary Icelandic modernist
poem by Steinn Steinarr]. In fact, it’s about the water
too. It’s called The End. It marks the end of some-
thing.
A lot of what you’ve done seems to be about as
suming a character, whether it be with the rock
bands or in your visual and performance art
endeavours. And a lot of what you’ve stood for
occupies the realm of the ironic. Are you ever
honest or sincere? Are you... are you making fun
of life itself?
We all live in some direction. When people make
the decision to become artists, then they’re being ac-
tive agents in their own existence, making their life
into some sort of art – amplifying their existence. It’s
so incredible, imagine, it’s the most egocentric, so-
lipsistic decision you can make, saying you’re an art-
ist. “What I have to say matters.” Amplifying oneself,
exaggerating.
And sincerity and irony are such connected con-
cepts. People might harbour some sort of notion that
irony isn’t sincere – that’s a big misunderstanding.
All the romantics were really ironic. If you take this...
this abyss that surrounds us, if you take it too seri-
ously, then you won’t survive. All human interaction
is about joking playfulness and ... it’s so based on
irony. If I am indeed making ironic statements, then
I am making them in full sincerity.
I think it was the French 18th century philoso-
pher Montesquieu that said that seriousness was the
shield of stupidity. That’s kind of good. When they
say joy is stupid, well, that’s just not true. Making
light of things is the smartest thing you can do in
this horrible world. To put it dramatically.
Speaking of Drama, lot of critical discussion
arose in the wake of our ever-looming economic
collapse, and the local artworld was not exempt.
Accusations were flung at the artistic
community; that it had been complacent to the
banksters, jumping on to their bandwagon and
leaving necessary commentary aside, neglecting
hard questions...
I’ve thought a lot about it, and I think it’s a really
amusing and funny claim that artists are supposed
to be some sort of moral harbingers or apostles. The
artist can never represent a pure cause, no true art-
ist can represent neo-liberalism or communism, for
instance. It’s great if artists can feel like they’re rep-
resenting something other than themselves, so they
can fight the system or something. But I have always
perceived my own role as an audience to life, an ob-
servant to it. I think the best works are always almost
inadvertently political, they become more interesting
that way. It’s politics of the subconscious.
That way, I’ve made a bunch of work that is some-
how revealing, and have later turned out to be politi-
cal commentary. These are pieces that age well, be-
cause everything went to hell, so to speak. But never
with an intent. My place is within the whirlpool, re-
acting to it, reflecting upon it. Not judging it from
above.
So you think the criticism was unwarranted?
You know, I think it’s all good and well that art-
ists get criticized, but I also think it’s really important
that artists not turn into social realistic preachers.
This is especially in wake of all the post-collapse ar-
guing, it was like a kind of “Danish resistance” that
suddenly came to being.
I don’t know if it’s a myth - it might just be clas-
sic Icelandic Dane-prejudice – but the story goes that
during the German occupation in World War II, the
Danish resistance wasn’t very active – until the Ger-
mans started losing the war. Then they got real busy.
After the occupation ended, that’s when the resis-
tance gained momentum. Anyway, in the aftermath
of crisis, a lot of people that had been basically inac-
tive started being awfully pleased with themselves. “I
didn’t do anything.” People that had remained silent
and immobile were all of the sudden righteously rag-
ing at folks like Kling & Bang - that have been doing
incredibly unselfish volunteer work for a long time
– procuring grants for a lot of artists, so they could
pursue their work. Maintaining an arts scene in this
country is a lot of work; running a gallery, running
around trying to score funding or grants. There’s
nothing wrong with that. There can’t be.
A certain discourse became prevalent. Suddenly
you were some sort of culprit for not having focused
on society and its problems directly. I never thought
about that. I like thinking about poetry and the hu-
man condition, but the social realistic condition...? I
did a lot of navel-gazing, to try and figure if I had
done anything wrong or somehow gone off track.
And I reached the conclusion that I did not. And
furthermore that as soon as someone starts talking
about “the role of the artist” and “the artists’ duties
and responsibilities,” they’re talking like Adolf fuck-
ing Hitler.
A really fun thing happened, I was protesting at
full force in the kitchenware revolution. I was leaving
for home after the protest one night, and got hailed
into [restaurant] Við Tjörnina, where the baroness [a
famed patron of Icelandic artists, including Ragnar]
was hosting an midnight champagne party. “Come
on in darling,” she said, and I thought it’d be bril-
liant, drinking champagne in the midst of a revo-
lution. Epic. Then I was on the balcony, having my
drink, when the teargas bombs went off. That was
real decadent [sinister laugh]. The, a day over, there
was a “revealing article” in Fréttablaðið [free newspa-
per] about the artists that had dared to partake in the
champagne, I thought that was really funny. People
getting all self-righteous and angry about a bunch of
poor artists accepting a drink from a middle-aged
woman. This exemplifies the beautiful absurdity of
it all.
Now, you’re representing Iceland at the
contemporary art Eurovision. Is there an
Icelandic angle to visual arts? As a musician
that’s performed abroad, you’ve surely
experienced the Björk and Sigur Rós, elves and
waterfalls comparisons. Are there similar
paradigms in your current field?
As for an Icelandic angle, my view of that is ad-
opted from my mentor, Birgir Andrésson. He always
spoke of Iceland as an island of stories. If something’s
Icelandic, the story conveyed is maybe more impor-
tant than the object itself. Because we have nothing.
Just a couple of hills, maybe, but it’s the story of those
hill that makes all the difference. Telling a story, over
nature. If there’s an Icelandic angle, I think that’s it.
As for a Björk-like paradigm, we’re blessedly free
of such expectations, although Ólafur Elíasson is
maybe starting to verge on that, as he gets bigger. I
did a show in New York last year along with some fel-
low Icelanders, and one of the critics wrote that Ice-
landers didn’t really have anything to talk about, that
Icelandic art was best when it focused on nature, like
he perceived Ólafur to do, because Icelanders “only
ever have nature to talk about.” Nothing else. And
then the blessed collapse came. Now we have plenty
to discuss.
YOU WHAT NOW? RAGNAR KJARTANSSON? THAT SINGER FROM TRABANT? HIM
WHO SANG NASTY BOY? YOU MEAN THE ONE WHO’S ALWAYS HALF NAKED,
FLAPPING HIS MAN-TITS ALL OVER THE PLACE, GNAWING ON A BURNING ROMAN
CANDLE? THE SELF-DEPRECATING, OVERTLY SEXUAL, UN-SEXY (UNLESS YOU’RE
REAL DRUNK) POP STAR? WE HAD NO IDEA HE WAS LINKED TO ARTISTS RANGING
FROM CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH TO GILBERG AND GEORGE. OR THAT HE HAD AN
EXISTENTIAL AND ABSURDIST SENSIBILITY.
SO, WE GOT THIS PRESS RELEASE THE OTHER DAY.
REAL OFFICIAL LOOKING.
ARE YOU SURE THAT’S HIM?
“Reykjavík, Iceland, March 13, 2009: The official Icelandic representation at the 53rd
International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will feature RAGNAR KJARTANSSON, a self-
described incurable romantic, whose multifaceted artistic practice is rooted in a tradition
of acting and performance with an existential and absurdist sensibility that can be linked to
artists ranging from Caspar David Friedrich to Gilbert and George. Kjartansson’s exhibition
for Venice, entitled The End, will feature a tableau vivant of the artist and his model that
will last for the entire six-months of the Biennale, along with a monumental video and music
installation. It will be presented in the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusà, a 14th-century palazzo on
the Grand Canal near the Rialto, which has served as the Icelandic Pavilion since 2007.”
“Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, Reykjavík, Iceland) conjures up emotions in his
work that he can pass on to his viewers, with a keen eye for the tragicomic
spectacle of human experience where sorrow collides with happiness, horror
with beauty, and drama with humor. In his versatile artistic career, he has
focused on video, painting, and drawing, with performance at the heart of his
practice. Both of Kjartansson’s parents are actors, and acting, repetition, and
identity are ever-recurring themes in his work. He has taken on countless roles
in his performances, combining his own personality with personas from cultural
history. His work incorporates a mélange of show business icons and nostalgic
imagery from bygone eras of theater, television, music, and art, allowing him to
blur the border between life and art, reality and fiction, and to create bold
statements that strike chords with his audiences. In addition to his work in
the visual arts, Kjartansson has had a career in music, releasing several albums with his bands and
performing throughout the world.”
Yeah. It sure sounds like the guy. Performing
throughout the world, releasing several albums
with his bands, striking a chord with his audiences.
That’s our man right there: Ragnar Kjartansson,
sometimes known as Rassi Prump [“Assy Fartson”].
Great guy. We’ve been following his performances
about town a lot, but they must have been too fun
for us to figure out they were supposed to blur the
line between life and art.... And what’s that whole
“mélange of show business icons” bit about? What’s
a mélange anyway?
So we googled mélange (“a mixture, a medley”).
And we called up Ragnar to ask what all this mé-
lange, existentialist, Caspar David Friedrich, La Bi-
ennale di Venezia bit is all about.