Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.03.2010, Blaðsíða 30

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 03 — 2010
30
Rafskinna is an Icelandic DVD magazine that includes documentaries, short films, music per-
formances and other visual art material. Rafskinna focuses on the vibrant Icelandic art scene
and may be found in book and record shops around Reykjavík. The videos mentioned in this
month's Rafskinna column may be viewed at www.rafskinna.com
The philosopher Theodor Adorno famously stated
in 1949 that writing a poem after Auschwitz was
barbaric. He proceeded: “And this corrodes even
the knowledge of why it has become impossible to
write poetry today”.
With some simplification poetry may be understood as an
art of beauty, and indeed that is how poetry has been per-
ceived in most times and most places. Anyone not in poetry’s
“in-crowd” is sure to start thinking of f lowers, waterfalls, na-
tionalism, high-end emotion and heartbreak when presented
with the word “poetry”. Poetry, in this sense, is a bit like
water-colouring, somehow—standing between being purely
decoratory and an expression of something private, almost
lavatorial in the sense that even though your poetry springs
from a natural (in some sense beautiful) need, maybe you
should refrain from doing it in public.
Properly executed ‘tis the finest of arts, all oohs and ahs
with exclamation marks making you shiver with its allusive
and powerful imagery, its nearly divine rhetoric and its au-
thoritarian voice. In short, it’s everything a Nazi would want
to read at night to secure himself a good night’s sleep, a haven
from the horrors of his day-to-day activities. Reading it makes
you feel cultured in the same way that systematically kill-
ing people makes you feel not so cultured at all. And maybe
they’re not so much opposites as they are partners-in-crime.
When WWII came to an end the Allies found more than
concentration camps in the Reich—they found homes, tun-
nels, secluded castles, salt mines, caves, trains and other hide-
outs stuffed with the finest European artworks, paintings,
sculptures and artefacts. Top Nazi Hermann Göring filled
his country home with some of the most beautiful and fa-
mous works of art in the history of man. Hitler was planning
on building the greatest art collection ever, the Führermu-
seum, designed by Albert Speer. It was to be erected in Linz,
Austria and filled with stolen and bought art from all over the
world—the best money can buy and muscle procure. Includ-
ed in the plan, of course, was a library with 250.000 books.
Nazi Germany thought of itself as the height of civiliza-
tion—a refined world order—creating a structured, civilized
beauty out of mayhem, chaos and degeneration, through the
violent application of a stern ideology. Although their meth-
ods were not always applied in a systematic and organised
fashion—not everyone died in the machine-like gas-cham-
bers; children were also beat against rocks to save bullets—
their ideal was to be “efficient,” “civilized” and not least
“beautiful.”
I’m not sure what Adorno meant by his famous words, and
apparently that goes for most people. To add insult to injury,
Adorno (reportedly after reading the works of Paul Celan)
took most of it back, saying maybe it’s so and maybe not—
God knows! (I’m paraphrasing). Perhaps he took offence to
beauty in the face of horror. Perhaps trying to get to the heart
of humanity was worthless if humanity was so tainted. And
perhaps he felt that if fine arts could also be enjoyed by Nazis,
fine arts had themselves become reactionary.
Poem by Adolf Hitler (1915)
I often go on bitter nights
To Wotan’s oak in the quiet glade
With dark powers to weave a union—
The runic letters the moon makes with its magic spell
And all who are full of impudence during the day
Are made small by the magic formula!
They draw shining steel—but instead of going into combat
They solidify into stalagmites.
So the false ones part from the real ones—
I reach into a nest of words
And then give to the good and just
With my formula blessings and prosperity.
Poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
The Barbaric Arts
Opinion | Catharine Fulton
What do Iceland and Namibia
have in common? Despite
one’s first guess—likely of
‘nothing’—the nations share
something other than Atlantic coastlines.
With a population barely surpass-
ing 230,000, Windhoek is a rather small
national capital. The wealthy few are an
equal mixture of whites and blacks, as is
the middle class, with the lowest rungs of
society being clung to solely by the black
populace, much of which lives in the
crowded township of Katutura—Otjiher-
ero for “the place where we do not want
to live.”
You see, prior to Namibia being
declared a protectorate of South Africa,
the black demographic lived comfortable
lives in neighbourhoods surrounding
the city, or anywhere else they pre-
ferred. Even today, these are quaint and
colourful communities. Homey. But with
South African protection came South
African apartheid and a mass segrega-
tion of black Namibians into cramped,
pre-fab brick bungalows ten kilometres
outside the city, with toilets and showers
in a separate structure outside the main
home to provide authorities more op-
portunity to harass blacks caught outside
past curfew.
It’s a tragic history, but I digress.
To drive down the barbed-wire lined
streets of modern-day Katutura is to be
transported into a World Vision commer-
cial pleading with the viewer to sponsor
a child for less than a dollar per day, or
some equally trivial sum that would likely
have no bearing on the daily budget of
a comparatively well-to-do Westerner.
Crumbling brick, tangled barbed-wire,
scrap metal piled high on the microscop-
ic lawns.
Things only get worse when the
paved streets end and the dirt roads that
snake through the newer settlements
begin. Instead of scrap metal on the
lawn, the homes in these settlements—
named Havana and Baghdad—are scrap
metal, balanced and placed like oversized
houses of cards. Tarps are hung where
doors or roofs should be. Electrical wires
pass overhead, but none of them stop
to power these communities. Dozens of
residents crowd around the single com-
munal water pump (broken on the day
of my visit) and wait their turns for the
shared WC’s, each made of more scraps
of corrugated metal walling in a hole in
the ground.
How is this anything like Iceland?
you are likely asking yourself right about
now. It’s not the physical shape of things
that draw comparisons, it is the mental-
ity. You see, these tens of thousands of
people living in various levels of what
most would consider extreme poverty
don’t necessarily have to live that way.
There is money to build them each a
modest home, with indoor plumbing and
electricity. But the current governmental
and financial powers pocket that money
and treat themselves and their buddies to
new homes, cars, companies, etc.
The voting populace of Katutura and
the outlaying slums have the strength in
numbers to oust the corrupted, wealthy-
friendly party from government and, in
doing so, better their own situations. But
they don’t. Instead, they ignore political
agendas and vote for their friends, or
former family friends or somebody who
historically hails from their same tribe,
misguidedly thinking that ‘they’re my
friends and this time they’re promising
change.’
But party-lines rarely change and
people never change.
And Katuturans continue to live in
corrugated metal shacks.
Reykjavík municipal elections are fast
approaching. Do I have to spell it out for
you?
This month Rafskinna offers on its
webpage a quite unique collaboration
between artist Birgir Andrésson and
the punk band Rass, performing a
classic Eurovision song with a brass
band.
The collaboration was an initiative
of Kitchen Motors, a think-tank/art
collective that has had a special talent
for creating a fruitful collaboration
between artists of different spectrums
and fieldssomething that has resulted
in such wondrous things as Apparat
Organ Quartet and the Helvítis guitar
symphony.
“Congratulations and celebrations.
When I tell everyone that you're in
love with me.”
Birgir had the idea of mixing the punk
band with a children’s brass band
and for them to perform the song
Congratulations (originally performed
by Sir Cliff Richard in the 1968
Eurovision song contest).
The video piece is a recording
of the only practice
the parties involved
underwent before their
performance at the
Living Art Museum in
late 2005. The practice
takes place in the bit
tight and claustrophobic
practice space inside the
Hljómskála building in the
garden of the same name
by the Reykjavík pond.
Along with Rass, the performance
comprises Skólahljómsveit Vesturbæjar
conducted by Lárus Grímsson and
Birgir Andrésson and artist Daníel
Björnsson, whose sole role seems to
be to carry the drinks for Birgir.
At the end of the rehearsal, Birgir
is so happy with the outcome that he
shouts out: “You are all champions.
Just name a place where you want
to play next and I will arrange it!”
One of the kids in the brass bands
answers “Laugardalshöllin”. A few
weeks later, Rass had the opportunity
to play Laugardalshöllin, the national
sport arena that hosts many of the
bigger pop gigs in Reykjavík. It felt
appropriate to carry out the wish of the
member of the brass band for another
rendition of Congratulations.
Judging by the music and the
attitude of Rass, one is tempted to
think that they date from the heydays
of punk. The band, though, has been
sporadically active since the early ‘90s
and is based around the same core of
musicians that made up bands such as
Funkstrasse and the legendary HAM.
Rass’ only output to date is the
album Andstaða (“Resistance”) from
2004, an album so rudimentary punk
that the third chord is barely audible,
and apart from the epic Lífsflótti and
the ultra power-balladic Bræður, no
song thereon breaks the 2 minute
punk barrier. In complete coherence
to its title, Andstaða is also politically
defiant and the issue-orientated lyrics
challenge subjects like the Icelandic
fishing system, the incompetence of
Alþingi’s Ombudsman and the biggest
injustice of them all... injustice itself.
“Congratulations and jubilations, I
want the world to know I'm happy
as can be.”
Birgir Andrésson was born in the
Westman Islands, an archipelago off
the south coast of Iceland, in 1955. A
shaping factor in Birgir’s upbringing
and his perspective on life and art
was the fact that he was raised by
blind parents. Therefore Birgir grew
up as a sighted person with parents
who were not, and his works often
reflects on this “blind reality”. Birgir’s
art mostly dealt with Icelandic cultural
heritage and identity in
general, although his
focus was usually on the
microhistorical and the
marginal.
While Birgir’s life and art
faced toward the periphery,
his legacy as an artist in
Iceland after his death in
2007 has become quite
central. This is especially
evident in the influential
position he seems to hold among
the younger generation of Icelandic
artists, many of whom befriended and/
or studied under him. The Icelandic
representative at the Venice biennale
in 2009 (Birgir represented Iceland in
1995), Ragnar Kjartansson, dedicated
his catalogue to the memory of
Birgir and another artist of the same
generation, Birta Guðjónsdóttir,
remembered Birgir with those fervent
words in an article in Sjónauki Art
Magazine:
“Those who knew the late Icelandic
artist Birgir Andrésson and his works
are rich in spirit. Birgir was an unusual
person, a novelistic character, a troll,
a charmer. His art has the power to
blow you up in pieces and the subtle
poesy to glue you back together again,
along with some parts of your cultural
heritage that you might not have felt
connected to before”
A full feature documentary on
the life and art of Birgir is now in
the making by filmmaker Kristján
Loðmfjörð. Titled Þjóðarþel, the film is
a portrait of the artist and the stories
behind his works and how the two
reflect on each other.
Film | Rafskinna #2
Rass & Birgir andrésson congratulate
each other with a brass band
What Namibia and Iceland have in common