Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.12.2011, Qupperneq 28

28
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2011
Music | Punk Art | Photography
There's a palpable air of "we don't
care what anyone else is doing or
if they like what and how we do"
around the Paradísarborgarplötur
(“Paradise City Records”) label/
collective. It's the quintessential
hardcore/punk and beyond type of
operation, ambitious yet somewhat
mysterious, i.e. they seemingly do
not dedicate much time trying to
become the talk of the town; they'd
rather just plod along, create on
their own accord, and seemingly
only for one another. be it the rag-
ing and political metallised punk of
dys or the lonely, raw and tender
crooning of Þórir Georg, Pardísar-
borgarplötur has something for al-
most everyone.
MORE SELF CENTREd THAN dIS-
CHORd
Fannar Örn Karlsson, a member of
bunch of PBP bands and one of the
collective's head honchos had a quick
interworld chat with us and had this to
say about the label's unique position
in Iceland: "The main objective is of
course to be a D.I.Y. label and to cre-
ate some sort of a platform for releasing
music in a way that we're comfortable
with. It's all a little vague still because
we're kind of testing the waters, trying
to figure out how we can avoid com-
promises and still get music out there.
Iceland can be difficult. With such a low
number of inhabitants, changes within
the music scene can be so drastic. Fif-
teen people are no longer interested or
don't have the time to be involved any
more and suddenly there are no bands,
no zines, no venues so you have to start
over again.”
“My current goal personally, with
PBP is to create a stable environment
for our music and our art and figure out
how we can continue to do things the
way we want without relying too much
on certain people being there or the
stability of a certain scene."
"Dischord Records is an amazing la-
bel and they've done really cool things
in really cool ways and they're a big
influence on us." In our conversation, I
just had to make the comparison to the
D.C. icon, something Fannar welcomed
but put another spin on. "Dischord al-
ways had that archivist kind of feel to
them, documenting what they felt im-
portant about the D.C. scene. At the
moment we're much more self-centred.
Hopefully some day we'll be in the posi-
tion to be able distribute our records to
a big enough audience so we can af-
ford to be the archivists we would like
to be. Oh yeah and we really like band
shirts."
A GIFT TO FRIENdS ANd LOVEd
ONES
With Þórir Georg, aka My Summer As
My Salvation Soldier, acting as PBP
figurehead and best known musical
entity, it was key to get him involved
in the conversation what with his new
record ‘Afsakið’ (“Apologies”) just hav-
ing seen the light of day. The album
sees him switching from English lyrics
to Icelandic. "I'm aware of the fact that
some people that enjoyed My Summer
As My Salvation Soldier might not have
the same connection with this album,"
he says but adds that it's not something
that worries him. For him, the change
isn't strategic but a natural one. "Lyr-
ics in Icelandic were popping up in my
head with greater frequency so I ran
with it and decided to make an Icelan-
dic album."
When asked if PBP was the appro-
priate home for him right now there
was no doubt in the man's mind. "PBP
is just one of several projects we've got
going and I wanted ‘Afsakið’ to be a
part of that. I'm responsible for push-
ing my own album. When I released
‘Afsakið’ I didn't really anticipate pro-
moting it abroad, let alone in Iceland.
Originally this material was intended
as gift to friends and loved ones, and
I didn't play the material live, but then
it outgrew that notion and has led me
to this point where I'm sharing it with
everyone that's interested."
NOT HyPERbOLIC, HONEST
Þórir and PBP opted to make all of their
releases available for free downloads,
thus going even more "punk" than the
usual "trying to make at least the cost
back." How is this working out?
"We never sold loads of copies of
anything we released before. There's
not much change really. Except now
people can hear it," Fannar says. Elabo-
rating on the issue he adds that "even
those who buy records often download
them first to check them out and there's
a lot records that come out and it's not
very likely that somebody else will put
our records online to distribute them
amongst their message board friends.
So to me, it can be a promotional thing.
We're losing money anyway so it's re-
ally not a big issue for us. I could go on
an ego trip and play the idealist card,
but even though we do have ideals
and consider ourselves to be an anti-
corporate label, we're so tiny and have
got nothing to lose so it would be kind
of hyperbolic and not entirely honest."
Þórir concludes that "PBP's goal is
not to utilize the internet to create hype
or push our stuff upon people. We just
want it to be readily available anyone,
wherever they may be."
PbP PUNK dON’T CARE AbOUT ANyTHING
bIRKIR FjALAR VIðARSSON dONALd GíSLASON
Download PBP’s records at www. pbppunk.com
Few documents bring a nation’s
history and lost beauty more
vividly and nostalgically to life
than a photograph. In this re-
gard, Iceland lives in the debt of per-
haps its most prolific historian in the pho-
tographic medium, Hjálmar Rögnvaldur
Bárðarson (1918–2009), a selection of whose
black and white photographs is currently on
display at the National Museum.
Hjálmar Barðarson is certainly not un-
known to Icelanders: his ‘Ísland farsælda
Frón’ (1953) was the first book of photo-
graphs of this country to be published by
a single photographer, and he went on to
publish eleven more. He is best known for
his later books, especially ‘Ice And Fire’, and
‘The Birds Of Iceland.’
This exhibit honours the bequest to the
Museum of the artist’s 300.000 colour and
70.000 black and white photographs follow-
ing his death two years ago. It represents a
first attempt at making public a massive col-
lection of images that chronicles Iceland as a
land and as a nation over the almost 80 years
of Hjálmar ś photographic career.
The exhibit features black and white
photographs from the 1930s to 1970s, begin-
ning with a voyage he made in 1939 to the
desolate Hornstrandir district of his native
Westfjords, where he documented the rough
beauty of an area that in coming years was
to suffer depopulation. These are matched
by later photographs of the deserted district
from the 1970s that poignantly evoke the tri-
umph of nature over human habitation.
Most eye-catching in the exhibit are his
arresting photographs of the eruptions of
Surtsey (1963) and Vestmanneyjar (1973),
especially the scenes of houses crushed and
buried by the unstoppable advance of lava
and volcanic rubble.
Hjálmar had a successful career as a
marine engineer, but he photographed as an
amateur. The engineer’s preciseness is evi-
dent in the annotations he made to each pho-
tograph, giving the date, place, and name of
the persons photographed—an inestimable
gift to future historians of the land. The am-
ateur nature of his enterprise allowed him
great freedom to experiment in artistic ways,
for example in the sculptural use of strong
light and shadow in his portraits of artists
and industrial tradesmen from the 1950s.
“In this exhibition,” says curator Ágústa
Kristófersdóttir, “we are trying to cast a light
on him as an artist as well as a documentary
photographer.”
My personal favourite from the exhibit is
the exquisitely balanced ‘Boat on the Beach
at Arnarfjörður 1938,’ a simple but strongly
composed study of two boats, one beached
in the foreground, and its photographic echo
moored at a contrasting angle off shore in
the middle distance, leading the eye diago-
nally, with promise, to the mountain valley
across the fjord.
This fascinating exhibition will hope-
fully stimulate further interest in one of this
country’s most remarkable photographers,
and the moving tribute that his work pays to
his native Iceland.
A visit to the Hjálmar R. bárðarson’s
photo exhibition at Þjóðminjasafn
íslands
Exhibit open until April 8, 2012. Tuesdays –
Sundays, 11:00 to 17:00. Closed Mondays.
Casting A Light
On The Artist