31.12.2023
Happy New Year. This New Year I’ve decided to spend subterraneously. For the past four weeks I’ve been recording the audio for a new piece, interrupted very little, only by occasional snow making the joyful routine between my home and the studio, light and bright. Oh, the nights, I’m telling you, what a sight!
For the first time in many years, I’m in Denmark, the place I was born, which is rather odd, as the emotional structure of the Danish language isn’t present in my life anymore. I can recall words, things, objects, but to actually imbue the words with emotional quality is absolutely impossible for me. The language I spend the first two decades of my life in, partially, as we spoke English and Swedish too in my mother’s house, has become completely instrumental.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I wished to say a few words about the work I’ve been doing.
Coming straight from the work with The Man Without Qualities, I felt exhausted and a little tired of figuration and embodying characters.
I decided to abandon any sort of figurative qualities in the works, I’ve been creating here. Instead, I drew inspiration from poetry and fashion, and how designers give wear to each season and demands from themselves to reflect on it.
With inspiration from some of the poets who has meant the most to me, I’ve written four lyrical film pieces, one for each season. They are incredibly minimalistic, really reduced to just a few elements. I guess I lean into one extreme just to turn my back to it and face the other end of its opposition.
It has been a great joy, to lock four weeks in my calendar and live in isolation. I’ve finally had the chance to go back to poetry and confront some of the earliest systematic artistic thinking in my life. I can reveal that the Sei Shōnagon’s book The Pillow Book has been a fantastic companion during the work.
To all my friends I wish to say
As heaven has its stars, I’ve got mine too.
See you on the other side of midnight.