PART I

What is an artist
and what is art? If we were to answer that in full we would never get to the
story. Suffice to say that artists them selves ask this question every day
without ever getting to a conclusive answer beyond that something is art for I
say so, and I can say so for I am an artist. As you can see that is not a very
helpful answer since it begs the question what makes you an artist?

Anyone who creates
something that does not have a functional value can call them selves an artist
and what they make art. This one might say is a bad definition since it is so
big that it becomes meaningless. But I would disagree for it is what makes art
important.

(Toddler fools art World into buying his tomato ketchup paintings, dailymail.co.uk)

We strive to box
and categorise everything around us in to neat systems. But the word art and
art it self, resists systemisation and categories. In effect art is a force
that we can use to see beyond our selves. Hence art is as essential as science
for our development as a species. If we only think within the box we will never
transcend.

This leads me to
my problem with our current system that relies on capitalism, the buying and
selling of products. Such a system needs to lock us inside a box, it needs its
consumers to become more homogeneous, it needs predictability and it needs to
make us dependent of it’s products. It is a system that appeals to our desire
for perfection and happiness. But it can never give us that for in so doing we
would no longer need the next product.

Such a system does
not need artists who challenge it. Hence the idea that for art to have a value
it needs to generate money. Which in turn only encourages art that is
predictable and conforms to current values. In the past the English government
has helped fund the production of art, suggesting that they acknowledged the
importance of a “product” not governed by the market. However drastic
changes are currently happening in our society, which is resulting in large
cuts within art funding. I believe this is a sign that we are going towards a
society that is even more boxed in. Such a society I believe is damaging to our
souls, because I believe our purpose as humans is to grow, and if the box
becomes to tight we will never be able to grow beyond it.

In 1937 Thor
Heyerdahl and his wife left civilisation for the Polynesian island Fatu Hiva
with the purpose to return to paradise. However after a year it failed because
the couple realised that they could not survive without civilisation. They
needed mosquito nets and medicines to survive. This story leads me to the
ending of the Sci-Fi Series Battle Star Galactica, about a humanoid space
traveling society looking for their new home Earth. By the time they finally
find it we have seen first hand how they are stuck in a never-ending cycle of
destruction. Wanting to brake out of the cycle they decide to give up their
technology and regress back to the Stone Age in the hope of finding Paradise.

Battle Star Galagtica
draws allot of inspiration from the Old Testament such as the stories of Noah’s
Ark and the tower of Babel. Both stories are about civilisations out of control
and the answer is to wipe the slate clean and regress to an earlier state.

An ending and
solution I strongly disagree with, it is not our creations that make us evil.
We have free will we decide how our creations should be used and since we are
individuals we decide differently from one and other. The problem is when our
free will is manipulated by a system to make a uniform decision.

Since I have
already mentioned the bible, I want to point out the story of Adam and Eve. Who
were given free will, they could decide to eat the fruit of knowledge or not.
They made a decision for human kind depriving the rest of us from that choice.
I mention this story because I believe it to be a good metaphor for a governing
system and why we should not let it govern our individual decisions since doing
so actually deprives us of free will.

A system should be
like soil, giving a multitude of plants and trees the earth to grow out of.

Now lets underline
the actual points I wanted to make out of these two examples. One, to
acknowledge that our current society works on many levels, two, the answer for
how to develop as a species is not to regress and three, we have free will,
hence we can chose not to be manipulated by what ever system governs us. We all
have a responsibility to think out of the box.

I can now tell you
my personal definition of art and why I call my self an artist. Art is work
that helps one think outside the box, but does not tell you what to think.

From that
definition I must point out that this text is not art, for I’m telling you what
I believe you should think.

PART
II

I have been living
in England for eight years two months and five days.

I believed and
still do that I have a story that is important to tell. I just had to choose an
arena. I came her to become a photographer, but discovered that what I really
wanted to be was an artist.

Recently I have
been obsessively questioning that desire and thinking about key moments that
led me to this path.

The first would be
as a child, strapped in to the back seat of a reed Opel with leather seats. I
had a thought about death and what it would imply not to exist.

The second is not
a moment but has to do with how I was influenced by my parents and teachers. I
was often encouraged to question the excepted truth, to challenge people in
their thoughts. It has to be said that my father played a large role here, a
man who never backs down from what he believed in.

(Still from the short film “Reality” 17min)

At the age of 18 I
discovered Plato and his story about the cave. I was so fascinated by this tale
that it inspired a short film that a friend and I made caled “Reality”.

A
story of a family who lived in a room and worshiped a projection that showed
their future. The son would try to escape this existence, but the mother would
stop him, the son would become the father and the mother would become the
daughter, who would try to escape, but the father would stop the daughter who
would become the mother and the father would become the son. The projection
that they worshiped would ensure that the cycle never would be broken. For
those of you who know my work it is no surprise when I tell you that I acted as
the farther.

After this I thought I was destined to
make films, but I soon discovered that producing a film is about compromises.
And I don’t compromise, I want advice and help to make what I have to say
better, but I do not want to turn it in to something it is not. The best
example of this I can think of is the comic book “Wanted”. In a
nutshell the villains have killed the heroes and taken over the world. In the
film version this concept is gone, the action is still there but the hart of
the story has been ripped out.

(Anniken Valstad, anniken.nu)

At the age of 21 I
did the first piece that incorporated free thought or automated writing. I sat
down and wrote a short story non-stop for five hours titled “The Door to
Darkness” Essentially exploring perverse sexual fantasies and creating a
character that was a catalyst for an alternative society. A slightly edited
version of this appeared in the Norwegian fetish Magazine DUO nr. 4. Year 2000.
I even got to meet the editor Anniken Valstad who to this day still is one of
my idols.

(The cover of “Gods Lie“)

I was then truley
biten by the writing bug and started a project that became a smal book caled
“Gods Lie” About Godfrey the son of Heaven and Hell who essentially
rejects his parents and brakes the current paradigm of excepted existence. I
printed of about 20 editions using the military’s printing facilities that I
had access to and sent of examples to Norwegian publishing houses. They all
rejected the book and I lost my writing bug.

I decided to try
my hand at becoming a photographer, hence I moved to England to take a BA. By
either divine luck or intuition I found my self on a course that propelled me
towards art photography and away from the photographer purely as a camera
operator.

The first two
projects we were assigned on the BA course were self-portraits, and looking at
them to day I see what they were truley about. Me trying to brake out of my own
box.

A man pushing a map up a hill, a strong
reference to Sisyphus, the king condemned by the Greek Gods to forever push a
rock up a hill.

A space ship made out of an onion
crashing through a field of egg asteroids traveling towards a new planet. The
eggs representing the boxes I was trying to escape.

By the time I got to the third year at
UNI I realised what the reed thread through my work was. Me. I had become the
story I wanted to tell. A person who tries to break the box he is within. This
is why I decided to apply a performance style that uses a free flow of thought,
hoping to use the unconscious as a means to brake free of a paradigm. With this
my artistic practice was borne.

Even though I have
ben doing what I have always wanted I have ben riddled with anxiety and
depression for nine years. I believe this is because I find my self repeatedly
making work about braking out of the box, but I am still firmly inside it. I
feel like Sisyphus, but I’m yet to be happy.

Belief is a powerful solution to any problem,
particularly if one believes in a compassionate deity. It can keep you going
against al odds and when you achieve something one will thank God, for it was
he/she who guided you. This concept of relinquishing one self to a deity is
particularly helpful in the face of failure. For it was not you who failed but
God testing you or that he/she works in mysterious ways. Hence no need to
take responsibility for ones failure. If your whole life is a misery, but one
has never faltered in believing at least you can be assured a place in heaven.
If one thinks of Religion like this it becomes clear why it came in to
existence and that I should start believing a.s.a.p.

What if you are like me, someone who denies nothing or
you step on to the other side of the coin and deny the existence of any higher
power? Then one has to believe in one self and take responsibility for both
success and failure. But it is hard believing in one self because you know how
fallible you are.

What I have said in
part II brings my definition of Art from part I in to question. It becomes
apparent that it is an attempt to justify my practice as art and to give
meaning in the temporal loop I find my self within.

(Sisyphus by Titian, 1549)

Part
III

Karhu Ö finishes
writing about the fictitious artist Bjørn Venø. He put’s his IPod and Bluetooth
keyboard aside and leans back in the sofa. He sighs, feeling relived from
getting the words of his chest.

It had been a
sunny day, he had even spent some of it outside in the garden for the first
time for at least six months; the winters are too long. It had been refreshing,
however he did not last as long as he might have wanted. The sun had ben
burning hot, even through the straw hat he had dug out from the attic.

Now however it is
to cold, for darkness has laid its soul over the world. The magic of night
works it’s tricks on Karhu, making his eye lids heavy, forcing him towards
sleep, but he does not want to give up on the waking world just jet.

Karhu forces him self out of the sofa
and towards the front door for a midnight stroll to help him stay a wake for a
bit longer. The cars speed past him with their lights blazing and the chaves on
the corner are having a heated discussion about who has the right to walk the
Delce.

Karhu sees a car swerve and lights
coming directly towards him, a flash of pain is followed by darkness.

Karhu wakes with a
scream greeted by a calm and serene voice that tries to explain something to
him.

“Karhu Ö you
are aboard a space ship, the life you thought you were living until now was a
fabrication, everyone you knew or loved were electrical impulses created by the
ships computer. Under normal circumstances we would not need to tell you this
when awakening a traveller from cryosleep, since your original self would have
been restored. Instead your real self has been lost due to extensive damages
across the ship.”

“So
I’m not me? Then who am I?”

“You
were, strike last sentence, you are a character that was created for the
traveller to play whilst he slept”

“So
part of me is the traveller?”

“To a certain
extent yes, but let me draw you a metaphor. Imagine playing a computer game
where you are playing an assassin, the choices you make would not correspond to
the choices you would make in your reel life”

“Ah…
so can you tell me about this new world that I find my self in”

“I’m
sorry there is no need.”

“Why
the HELL not?”

The door to the
cryochamber explodes and a ringing sound fills Karhu’s ears. The dust and smoke
slowly settles. Through the door steeps a man covered in living black latex. Glowing
reed eyes fixate on Karhu, communicating the words “Time to DIE”
directly in to Karhu’s mind.

With
those last words Karhu’s head explodes in agony.

Karhu can hear his
girlfriends alarm clock ringing. But his soul is tied to the bed. He has
forgotten the dream. His body is exhausted as if he had not slept for days, and
a total apathetic feeling lays over him like a duvet. Lana tries to wake him,
but Karhu does not want to get out of bed for he can not bear the thought of
dealing with existence. Annoyed Lana leaves Karhu to his self-imposed misery.

Karhu slowly
awakens to an overwhelming feeling of dread. That he tries to drown by
immersing himself in to a new Sci-Fi novel that he bought for the Easter
holidays. He reads non stop without eating and allowing himself to urinate in
the bed because he can not bring him self to getting up, since it will mean
leaving the book and opening his mind to the thoughts and feelings that are
threatening to wash over him.

He hears Lana
returning from work. Guilt smacks him in the face when Lana walks through the
door. She can smell the stink of urine over the room. She knows what has
happened for it has happened so many times before, and she feels powerless. She
wishes that if only Karhu could see how much it is hurting her, maybe it would
stop him from falling so far. She shakes that thought from her mind; she knows
that it is like a phobia that he cannot control.

She gets Karhu out of the bed and in to
the shower, whilst she changes the bed sheets and wipes the urine from the
protective cover that was meant for dirty and wild sex.

Karhu sits down in
the shower, and wonders if he can count al the drops. By the time Karhu gets to
six Lana enters the bathroom and tells him it is time to get out of the bath.
The house splits in to two as a bobble from a different dimension explodes
releasing black living latex that covers Karhu and Lana.

Karhu feels life
surging back in to his body. Oh how wonderful. He looks around the devastated
room and can sense every little object. It is as if the world is sparkling at
him.

Karhu and Lana can
sense the living latex. It is like soil for them to grow out of, to become what
ever they wish. But they can also sense one and other. They are still
individuals but it is like they have started to become something more. They are
like beautifully carved marble stone blocks, that in them selves are remarkable
but what they might become when they are put in contact with over latex beings
is beyond imagination.

One could say they are the first two
marble stone blocks that will create the most magnificent castle. (Do not let
this metaphor diminish their individual splendour.)

Filed with pure
energy and joy their bodies slide together, feeling the juices streaming out of
Lana Karhu enters her with force and they copulate like wiled beasts with
mighty screams of passion that draw spectators to this sight of carnal
pleasure.

At first the
spectators stare on with disgust and with a mind to quickly notify the
authorities. But the fragrances these two latex beasts produce tear down every
bystander’s perception of reality, releasing them in to this wild foray of pure
lust.

The more
spectators arrive the greater the castle becomes. But people are different some
fit together and some do not. Resulting in a vast array of different
constructions that deliver the human kind to another level of existence.

Karhu wakes from
Lana’s soft voice telling him it is time to wake up. The last thing he remembers
was counting the shower drops falling over his body.

“I
was having a shower”

“Yes
you fell a sleep, I had to dry you and pull you to bed”

“I’m
so tired”

“I
don’t understand why, you’ve ben asleep since seven”

“Do
you think you will be able to get up to day?”

“I
don’t know?”

Lana looks
disappointed, but knows not to push him to far, since this is something he has
to get through on his own. So she changes tactics.

“I read your
story about Bjørn Venø, I understood everything, maybe I’m getting brainer.”

She
laughs with that beautiful smile.

“Or you have
started to understand how I think.” Says Karhu instead of saying what he
was really thinking that he has finally managed to get down what is in his head
in a consistent and readable manner.

“It was very
nice, it was positive. Shows hope.” With that Lana leaves and Karhu is
left with a smile. However the overwhelming feelings threaten to knock him out,
so he scrambles to pick up the sci-fi book he has been reading.

It is about an assassin
on a deep space mission to terminate a planets inhabitants before they can
threaten the order of the universe. A universe that thrives on capitalism and
individualism.

After a long ordeal the assassin was successful
in destroying the planet filed with sexual deviants that preached that if one
bonded together in to units one could reach a higher level of existence.
However a tiny speck of the latex that had covered these creatures managed to attach
it self to the assassins space craft.

Karhu feels even
more drained after reading the book, not knowing what he shall fill his mind
with he starts to use his iPhone to research the author of the book and finds
that the author is writing under a pseudonym.

The authors name
is Bjørn Venø.

An
out of body experience forces Karhu to look up from his phone, and ask:

“Is
their hope for me, will I brake out of this cycle of self destruction?”

A voice says:

“You
just did”

‘To be an artist is to fail as no
other dare fail’

Samuel
Beckett