Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.07.2010, Page 47

Viking hotel
Viking restaurants
Viking live entertainment
Viking Souveniers
For booking and further information:
Tel.: (+354) 565-1213
vikings@vikingvillage.is - www.vikingvillage.is
Strandgata 55 Hafnarfjordur

Woolens factory store,
located in Vik
Víkurprjón ehf
Phone: 487-1250
www.vikwool.is
Genuine woolen goods,
made in Iceland_______
Also wide selection
of souvenirs
30
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09 — 2010
Art | Performance
We are sitting in a pile of hay in Vo-
gar, near Keflavík, drinking wine
and watching hipsters lying about
in the evening sun. Kolbeinn Hugi
Höskuldsson and Mundi Vondi, a
pair of local cool-kids-slash-artists
who describe each other as a try-
out musician and a fashion victim,
are freshly showered after giving a
performance inside a turf covered
shed. The people in attendance
boarded a bus in downtown Reykja-
vík a few hours prior—well stocked
up on alcoholised beverages—with
no clue where they were about to
go or what exactly they were about
to see. Little did they know they
were about to witness two naked
men covered in clay, dangling from
the ceiling, attacking a piñata of full
of beer.
“We started talking about how girls
check out their genitals when they’re
teenagers,” Kolbeinn Hugi muses over
the last performance they did together.
“They have to stand on top of mirrors. I
read this book that my niece had and it
said you had to place the mirror on the
floor and stand on it and check out your
vagina. So we were talking about plac-
ing mirrors all over and then when you
have mirrors, you think about lasers.”
The performance of which he is
speaking happened just two weeks
prior, on a similar adventure, and con-
sisted of a bare-assed battle of laser-
pointers inserted into the most daring
of orifices and crawling around a dirty
cellar. “It started as a joke, but we re-
alised quite fast that the joke had to
become reality,” says Mundi. Luckily,
both they and the crowd were socially
lubricated with copious amounts of
free alcohol in order to lower the level
of perplexity.
Meaningless, but not vapid
Perplexing the audience is not neces-
sarily the goal though. There seems to
be no intended purpose or message
from their artwork. In fact, Kolbeinn
Hugi is of the opinion that it is mis-
guided to search for meaning. “In my
opinion people have this misconcep-
tion about visual art,” he says, “you go
to a visual art show and it’s supposed
to mean something. You listen to music
and you just accept it for what it is and
you enjoy, or you don’t. You don’t ques-
tion it. You go to a concert and you’re
not like, “Why does he play the riff this
way? Why does he not chug more on
the guitar?” It’s weird.” The object of
the performance rather is simply com-
pleting the task at hand. “What I like
doing is just getting into a situation,”
Mundi continues. “You have a goal,
you’re not acting in any way, and you’re
just completing your role. You haven’t
pre-determined what you want to do or
how you’re going to do it, you just know
what you’re going to accomplish.”
Kolbeinn Hugi recounts that people
often construe his events to be theatri-
cal, but reacts strongly against this. “I
met this guy and I handed him a flyer
and he was like ‘Is it theatre’” he re-
calls. “I said, ‘Theatre!? No! What the
fuck? It’s anything BUT theatre!’” While
he admits that he feels more comfort-
able with having a preferred outcome
to their works, their performances dif-
ferentiate from theatre in that they are
not scripted or necessarily have their
outcome pre-determined. In the case
of the piece they have just completed,
he says they were not entirely sure
what they were setting out to accom-
plish. “We just had some elements and
we tried them out in front of a crowd,”
he shrugs. “I don’t know what makes it
not suck. It’s probably your intuition or
something.”
Naked ambition
They certainly aren’t shy about the
things that fuel the inspiration for their
work together either. “I like to think
about violence, and I’m a pornographic
maniac,” Mundi says, perfectly dead-
pan. This is rather unsurprising, con-
sidering the piñata they unleashed their
fury upon had their faces alternately
projected upon it, and with each blow
of their sticks would release a horrible
cry of distress. Oh, and again: they
were completely naked.
“It’s a great excuse to get naked,”
Kolbeinn Hugi enthuses. “I got a phone
call from someone asking “Why are you
always doing this gay shit with Mundi?”
and I said “Hey man, he’s the only per-
son who wants to get naked and do
these things with me.” There’s always
a need for naked people! They are in
shortage. How many naked people do
you see a day? I see one, maximum.
Possibly more if I go to the swimming
pool.”
“I just love to experience stuff that
I haven’t seen before and I like to hear
stuff I haven’t heard before,” he goes
on, “and the beauty of visual arts in
general is that it’s accepted that you
can do pretty much whatever the fuck
you want. The downside is that it’s al-
ways questioned. I like that you can
surprise people. That’s really inspiring
and that’s why I love performance.”
Don’t bother to pack your bags or
your map
The trip we are currently on is the sec-
ond time in a fortnight that the two have
dragged an unsuspecting group out of
the city for a night to a secret location.
The first trip brought a bus of fifty peo-
ple to a gallery in Keflavík where, in ad-
dition to the laser-cross performance,
Kolbeinn Hugi exhibited a light display,
a replica of the bar Bakkus was erected
and hip electro-crew Quadruplos per-
formed a set. The bus ride down to the
location also featured live on-the-road
tunes courtesy of the hilariously named
Señor Sweaty. On this trip, however, the
bus was not equipped to play live mu-
sic, but after Kolbeinn Hugi and Mundi
did their thing we were treated to the
final show by Reykjavík noise-punk
duo DLX ATX (they are currently ‘re-
organising’ the band). The bus then re-
turned to the city by 10pm, just in time
to go out and party.
When it comes to paying for these
events, the two have managed to find
crafty ways to spend virtually no money.
They keep their personal costs down by
working with extremely cheap materi-
als, and they have become very good at
making the most of their resources and
being frugal. The galleries and spaces
that host their shows very graciously
fund their travel costs. “A lot of the time
galleries will pay for a really small ad-
vertisement in a magazine,” explains
Kolbeinn Hugi. “It will bring maybe two
people and it will cost 40.000 ISK. Why
not get a bus full of people, advertise
for free and get way more people, you
know?”
Chill tactics
As for the reason they bring people out
of town for these events, they attribute
it to the fact that things happen in the
city all the time, but the countryside
has its advantages. “I’ve done shows all
over,” says Kolbeinn Hugi, “and some
towns are interested, but some towns
are not. People just want to stay home,
so why not just bring people over?”
They also believe that bringing a
group of people together in a capacity
like this effectively displaces them from
a normal art show setting. “When you
isolate the crowd like this, it forms a
certain bond with the people,” Mundi
explains. “You get them out of the city,
out of the where is the next thing hap-
pening, they are completely stuck here
so they relax more. I think us driving
people to an unknown location is also
part of our hope for giving people some
adventures in their lives. Some people
never leave Reykjavík, or not for a good
reason. They might go camping and
have a good time with the grill, but we
want to give people more.”
Quite accurately, all the people
who have come along seem to be in
a particularly laid back state. People
are hanging around in the field by the
edge of the sea, sharing their drinks
and making new acquaintances with
people they otherwise may not have
engaged with. “This would never hap-
pen in town,” says Mundi. “It wouldn’t
happen in Reykjavík. Never.”
Although it is currently unconfirmed, Kolbeinn
Hugi and Mundi are likely to organise more of
these trips throughout the summer. They hap-
pen at a moment’s notice, but the Grapevine
gets the inside scoop, so we’ll let you know!
Mystery Art In Nowhereland
Embarking on unknown journeys of performance art and insanity
Words
Rebecca Louder
Photography
Julia Staples
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