Reykjavík Grapevine - aug. 2023, Side 18

The Reykjavík Grapevine 11 / 23 18Culture
GRÍMUR
Kjetil Berge & Goran Ohldieck
Curated by Ynda Eldborg
WORDS Catharine Fulton
IMAGES Art Bicnick
In Hjalteyri is an old herring pro-
cessing plant. Touted as the best
in class during its years of opera-
tion from 1937 to 1966, the 1500 m2
space was given a new purpose in
2007 when it was occupied by the
Verksmiðjan á Hjalteyri art collective.
“It’s a magical place and also kind of
isolated,” says French artist Joseph
Marzolla, who was invited by Verk-
smiðjan to participate in an exhibition
in August. “It’s a huge playground for
artists to do things like this. That’s a
nice way to experiment with art. It’s
nice for more people to know about
it.”
At the time he spoke with the Grape-
vine, Joseph was on his way to
Hjalteyri to meet up with nine other
artists participating in the exhibition.
Google maps pegs the small village
of Hjalteyri on the western shore of
Eyjafjörður, a quick 20-minute drive
north of Akureyri – or a four and a half
hour walk. It’s the latter calculation
that Joseph takes into account. It’s
just one leg of a longer walk that has
delivered him from Amsterdam to
Iceland on foot.
“I walked two months through the
Netherlands, Germany, Denmark
and to Iceland,” he explains while
resting in Reykjavík. He took the ferry
from Denmark to Seyðisfjörður on
Iceland’s east coast before walking
to the capital. “I took a short path
through Iceland, though.
In Iceland, it’s very complicated to
walk long distances. When I walk, I
go from one point to another point. In
Iceland, I had to take the road and it
had no food supply or water, because
it’s more of a place where you drive
from one base to the next.”
THE SLOW RETURN
Joseph, 51, called Iceland home
some 23 years ago. At that time he
worked in a fish factory, attended Ice-
land University of the Arts and spent
time as a mountain guide.
Though he grew up in the French
Alps and worked among Iceland’s
own slopes, he insists he’s “not an
adventurer.”
“I walk more as a statement or a
philosophy, a way of thinking and
a practice,” he says. “This time I
walked with a sign that read ‘I walk
for peace, love and kindness.’ I know
it’s a bit naive, but I wanted to have
this message and to carry with me
as a statement for this exhibition. It
helped me move forward and have
interactions with people that I met
along the road.”
While some may consider it extreme,
Joseph’s walking art practice and
lifestyle is what feels right for him.
He estimates he has covered 16,000
km by foot over the course of his
practice, walking for a few months
and then stopping to participate in
installations, work or just be for a
couple more.
“When you take a car from A to B,
like going to work, it’s clear how
far you’ve travelled,” he says. “But
when you walk, it’s a very different
situation. You have to do more. I’m
not really into measuring what I’m
doing. The walk for me is the deepest
meditation and a kind of a spiritual
experience.”
“Everything in this life is about going
really slow,” he continues. “It’s all
about reducing speed, going slow,
being connected to the Earth and
having this low impact. It’s a practice
that brings me a lot of feelings and a
lot of material that I can work with.”
SLOW ART
Joseph has been living an entirely
nomadic life and engaging in walking
as an expression of his art for roughly
10 years. “This is my life and my art,
combining these elements,” he says.
“So I’m fully living this moment.”
While he admits that his lifestyle is
not something that all people can
emulate, Joseph is hopeful that his
message of reduced consumption
and increased focus on ecology
– what he calls a “soft approach”
– is something that resonates with
others.
“It’s a message maybe to inspire
people,” he says. “For example, dur-
ing this walk, I had people coming
up to me in the road and thanking
me for what I’m doing. I’m not purely
an activist. I take a soft approach to
give my message. I’m also not some
sporty guy, I’m not this person who
is strong, but I manage to do these
things.”
A slow and less consumer-focused
approach is something Joseph par-
ticularly hopes to see resonate with
the art community. “The art world has
a problem with consumption – it’s
consuming more and more and it’s
something we have to change,” he
says. “New technologies and oth-
er new things that are coming can
sometimes help. We are living in a
world of change and that’s what I
want to embrace.”
FINDING AN INSTALLATION
Once Joseph arrives in Hjalteyri, he
and the collective of other interna-
tional and Icelandic artists will spend
nine days collecting materials to
make art together.
“We’re going to be creating – it’s all
about the process of being there,”
Joseph explains. “People invite me
to places and we take some days to
gather items and create something
out of what we found. It’s going to be
maybe a video installation or paint-
ing, or something else with what
we find. So at the moment we don’t
really know what we’re going to find,
but it’s also about being together and
talking about community and chang-
es in this world and these subjects.”
“The concept of the show is for the
artists to spend time in the space
and the area of Hjalteyri and make
work, have talks, performances,
perform music and more during their
stay there,” explains Verksmiðjan
board member Þorbjörg Jónsdóttir
of the event she’s co-curating with
Joseph.
Once open on August 5, the exhibi-
tion will remain in place until Sep-
tember. There is a loose plan in the
works to extend the feeling creat-
ed in Hjalteyri all the way back to
Reykjavík in the form of a one-time
event, though Joseph was unsure at
the time of writing precisely when or
where that would take place.
Make the journey to Hjalteyri to
experience the sense of commu-
nity that will be brought to life in
Verksmiðjan. Walking there is not a
requirement.
Culture Feature The Long Walk To Hjalteyri
Being creative while reducing consumption