Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.10.2018, Blaðsíða 44

44The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14— 2018Culture
Rakel Mjöll Leifsdóttir is the singer of the
UK/Icelandic band Dream Wife, as well
as being a visual artist and more besides.
We asked her to share some of her forma-
tive influences.
Agnes Varda - Ópera Mouffe
I did one semester of film studies, when
I wasn’t sure what direction to take in
my education. My mother said to me
“Even though you don’t finish the de-
gree, you’ll learn something.” She was
right, and what I took from that was
a new love and passion for European
new wave cinema. My favourite direc-
tor was Agnes Varda. A few years later
I was studying performance art at the
University of Brighton. One day, to my
surprise, I bumped into Agnes in the
university corridors on my way to a lec-
ture. Now a woman in her late 80s, she
was there as part of the local art festi-
val. She held my hand, gave me her time,
and told me stories. She was one the
reasons I was studying art in the first
place. We said goodbye, and I cried in
the elevator from the shock, and arrived
very late—but glowing—to my lecture.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
I remember hearing this song for the
first time in my adolescence and felt
a feeling I had never felt before when
it came to music. The song just stayed
with me after that. I waited in front
of PoppTV for what seemed like hours
for the music video to appear on the
screen—oh, the days before YouTube.
The video did the song justice with its
subtlety and crashing waves of emo-
tions.
The Strokes - Is This It?
This was one of the first CDs I bought
as a pre-teen after hearing “Last
Nite” on my sister’s iPod shuffle. It
completely blew me away. Everyday I
walked to school listening to ‘Is this
it,’ until the CD was so scratched that
I had to throw it away. The vocal and
the guitar each have their own melo-
dies that are ever-fluctuating whilst
the bass and drums hold it down. The
guitar and vocal are running a differ-
ent path, and end up together. This
mix excited me then, and excites me
today.
My Family
I don’t know what I did in my past life
to be born into a family with so much
warmth and creativity. Theatre folks,
musicians, dancers, writers, art-
ists, engineers, teachers and forward
thinking humans with the kindest of
hearts. Family parties are always the
best. Since I was little I’ve accompanied
them to work, or worked with them or
for them and seen all the hidden areas
of the theatres of Reykjavik and heard
so many incredible stories. Their pres-
ence and encouragement made me al-
ways feel like I could do anything, and
there weren’t any boundaries. Here are
my sisters and I in our uncle Ragnar
Kjartansson’s piece ‘Song’ in Carnegie
Hall in 2011.
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller -
Road Trip (2004)
I stumbled into this couple’s show on
a trip to Vancouver. Every experiment
I did at uni after was inspired by their
artwork. In ‘Road Trip,’ the artists
found a carousel of slides, mostly of
empty landscapes, that originally be-
longed to George’s grandfather. His
grandfather, whom he had never met,
had travelled across Canada to meet
with a doctor in New York for the can-
cer that he was dying from. The slides
are projected onto a screen, while the
speakers play the artists discussing
the order and reason for the slides,
trying to discover the mystery behind
the images. The magic of what’s lying
there in front of you, the mysteries,
the stories from different sides or sto-
rytellers that tell more than what the
images can show you.
Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique
Sophie Calle is another artist that looks
for the meanings and clues about a life
or moment of a family member. She
creates works exploring the tensions
between the observed, the reported,
the secret and the unsaid. This collec-
tion of photographs and diary entries
of Sophie Calle’s mother is a gem. A
daughter reading her mother’s deep-
est secrets hidden in old diaries on her
mother’s deathbed, by her own request.
“My mother liked people to talk about
her,” Sophie said of the work. “Her life
did not appear in my work, and that
annoyed her. When I set up my camera
at the bottom of the bed in which she
lay dying—fearing that she would pass
away in my absence, whereas I wanted
to be present and hear her last words—
she exclaimed, ‘Finally.’”
MAKING OF
AN ARTIST
Words:
Rakel Mjöll
Leifsdóttir with
John Rogers
Photo:
Joanna Kiely
Rakel Mjöll's Inspirations
New Wave cinema, indie-rock and introspective Art
Rakel Mjöll (centre) with her Dream Wife bandmates
gpv.is/culture
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