Reykjavík Grapevine - sep. 2021, Blaðsíða 12

Reykjavík Grapevine - sep. 2021, Blaðsíða 12
Witness Life, And The Loss Of It Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir takes on the confrontation between humanity and the natural world Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photos: John Pearson Six trees rorte slowly in a dimly lit room, outlined only by the re- mains of their ever-fading leaves and branches, which litter the floor around you, crunching under your feet as you walk. Only months earlier, the trees were vibrant, hy- drated and healthy—their stalks flexible and swaying as they spun lazily on their axis. But, of course, they were as dead then as they are now. Six trees slowly exiting the world—an au- topsy in front of your eyes, allow- ing you to witness, in real time, the degradation of what was once life. Enter ‘Hringfarar’ the newest installation by artist Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir. The prose of death The aforementioned trees, Anna explains, were sourced from lo- cal forest brushers. “They take out trees that either don’t need to be there or shouldn’t be there, so these are trees that were not de- termined to end their lives through me, but through another agency, and now I’ve brought them into this situation,” she says softly, sit- ting back in a side-room of Haf- narhús. “I am bringing them into a situation where they are slowly becoming their own shrine and going through the process of leav- ing their earthly existence. These are trees that have been alive for decades, so there is a lot of ac- cumulated life that is vanishing. These are the processes that living creatures go through when exiting. It’s almost like prose or a poem.” Anna sees this act—this slow witnessing of natural death—as a confrontation for humanity. “I am interested in what hap- pens when you are faced with this sort of setting because we make decisions like these on an every- day basis. All the decisions that we make within our lives have some consequence on our environment. All of them,” she says. “I’m sort of obsessed with the bluff that we need to maintain and the bluff that is necessary to do this, but at the same time, there’s a necessity to allow ourselves to feel the connec- tion, to witness and to be present for something outside of ourselves. It’s a fundamental element of hu- man nature and it’s really easy to go without it, to not allow yourself to think about it. It’s easy to only be faced with something that is man, or man-touched, or manmade. And I think there is great danger in that.” Changing the hierarchy Anna’s installation is part of the ‘I!avöllur: Icelandic Art In The 21st Century’ exhibition, which saw 14 artists take over the entirety of Hafnarhús to showcase the work of a generation. While there were no specific guidelines for the cre- ators, the loose overarching con- cept was to explore the massive changes this generation has seen since their coming of age, be that social, political or ecological. Anna’s piece fits in well. It at- tacks the topic dead on, forcing the viewer back into the natural world that humanity has, especially within our lifetimes, pushed to the brink. It brings into focus the hier- archies that we have become natu- rally accustomed to—those that deem the Earth to be the servant of man and nature a commodity. In light of our current climate catas- trophe, those hierarchies are now indisputable—unconscious tenets of a civilization where it’s cheaper to buy new resources than repair old ones. Anna hopes, though, that we can soon move beyond these be- liefs and redesign our own univer- sal beliefs. “We need to re-contextualise these ideologies, these transla- tions of our relationship to and with and within the natural world,” she says. “Not only in how we talk about things and how our system of definitions have been laid down, but in how we measure value. What is our value system?” But Anna’s questions go deep- er—getting to the heart of our core beliefs. “This is much more than climate change. This has to do with how we treat one another. It’s on a very basic and primitive level about interdependencies and inter-relation,” she states. “Our human nature is that we will al- ways be full of contradictions. We need to embrace that, but we also need to make clear guidelines on where we are a danger to ourselves and the sustainability of us as a species—no less the sustainability of the entire planet. This comes down, in some form, to ethics.” A brutal contemplation Anna intentionally presents no prescribed solutions to these problems—in fact, part of her con- frontation is that there are no pre- scribed solutions, for if there were, we wouldn’t be in this situation. “I’m a visual artist. I’m not a sci- entist or an engineer,” she smiles. “My work is not to produce solu- tions; my work is to produce con- templations and I think that’s just as necessary for the human spirit.” Walk through the installation and you can’t help but be am- bushed by the brutality of time. A live presentation of death, it’s a play in its most primal form— no embalming, no shroud and no tomb. Just a room with a rotating machine presenting the thread that connects us all: mortality. “There are six bodies in this space, six bodies rotating and changing and dying,” Anna con- cludes. “I think no matter who you are or how you think about things, your body is affected by witnessing this.” ‘I!avöllur: Icelandic Art in the 21st Century’ will be at Reykjavík Art Museum Hafnarhús until October 17th, 2021. Culture “Our human nature is that we will always be full of contradictions. We need to embrace that, but we also need to make clear guidelines on where we are a danger to ourselves.” 12The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 09— 2021 You can't see the artist for the trees. Almost. The shadow of decay

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