The point of departure for this issue of Kunstjournalen B-post is the expression "Feed your darlings", a re-writing of "Kill your darlings". We've chosen artists and themes which engage us, both on clear and unclear grounds. "Feed your darlings" alludes to surrender, abandonment and enthusiasm - feelings which lack analytical distance - and therefore which lack critical positioning. Like aesthetic of amorphousness, this can appear/emerge as mania/insanity, rejection and antipathy. In social space, however, where individual enthusiasm is translated into a shared experience and thus made visible, critical evaluation enters the scene. And in the divide between desire and analysis, a kind of embarrassment emerges; an easy shame following in the tracks of surrender. The same feeling can strike after episodes of collective abandonment, like tribune fever or emotional blowouts at mass meetings/political rallies and rock concerts. We have asked ourselves how the choices we take - between the passion found in "Feed your darlings" and the painful rejection of "Kill your darlings" - touch upon how we become constituted as an "I". What happens to the relationship between reflection and immediacy when it meets with Art?
Erling Moestue Bugge examines elements shared by the attitude present in both Matthew Brannon's and Matias Faldbakken's works. Bugge shows how a dystopic angle can create new meaning as well as point in direction of something specific human. Meanwhile, Bugge also clarifies the wholly divergent choices each make in order to converse with the beholder. Micol Assaël's installations reveal an interest for a physical, factual meeting with the world. Rather than being representations of familiar concepts, these works open possibilities for perceiving new spaces and mental landscapes.
In his article in this issue of Kunstjournalen B-post, Kjetil Røed claims, "Fascination, or the unique attraction some artworks exert, creates a rupture in what one knows". Good art is characterized by exceeding our knowledge and thereby also our ability to evaluate rationally. Art which engages us participates in making us that which we are. It forms us and becomes a part of who we are. It therefore becomes impossible to step aside and judge art from a neutral perspective independent of that which has formed us, independent of who we are. Furthermore, Røed claims that what decides if an work of art is valuable is not primarily whether it fulfills certain standards, but rather which consequences it brings about, what it makes possible, what it enables us to accomplish. Art like what Espen Sommer Eide and Kurt Johannessen present falls on the borderline where what we know can be expanded into what we don't.
By producing documentation of actual conditions through their own efforts and heartfelt engagement, three people - in different corners of the world - have entered into situations which bespeak the decay, suffering, and needs of today's society. In her continuing attempts to redefine a place for humanity in a world infected by politics, Maria Rosa Andreotti uses the body as an important element of her artistic process. Her documentary leads us into the streets of Buenos Aires where we meet Ramón. In order to re-discover and restore a fracture in history, Stein-Gunnar Sommerset takes us with him through the nighttime streets of Istanbul to listen to sounds emanating from old wooden houses. There he brings into being his identity. Doris Bloom says that the most fundamental experience which can be had is felt with the body. Through her performance, Bloom defies both her own physical discomfort, art's demand for distance and culture's demand for discipline. Her claim is that art can, now and then, profit from a break with the demand for distance, in a way similar to how culture can profit from a break with discipline.
The map is a document which hides as much as it reveals. For Eva Kun, Marcus Neusetter, Stephen Hobbs and Toril Johannessen the map is a link in an artistic process. The map's ability to carry facts, to give a true account of the world, is investigated. We know the terrain since the map shows coordinates and cardinal directions, but it also binds an understanding of the terrain to a picture with little depth. The resolution is neither great nor flexible enough. The map gives us enigmatic coordinates for a world in constant motion, it folds out topography and relations and depicts the world as comprehendible experiences. The map is also an account of entropy, collapse and fragmentation. - The word is magical, a researcher whispered to Toril Johannessen. It is also a place where we can get lost using a magical map.
Thomas Kilpper takes great conflicts such as the Second World War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and illegal immigration from Africa to Europe as his point of departure. The gravity and engagement with which Kilpper tackles these complex problems does not prevent the results of his work impressing one as playful. His architectural interventions break down the outside and inside of artistic space while including public space. Kilpper enters into projects with full dedication and his works show a stalworthy and contagious energy. When we read Tora Visnes's text "History of Ladrom", we notice bit by bit that the text is not what it first appears to be. One seldom meets a text with this level and power of exaggeration and fascinating diversions. With this text Visnes shows why she has chosen to combine visual art and fiction writing. Her text is an example of how these two fields can intertwine, the visual and the fictional meeting and generating a powerful confrontation of thought in the reader.