Rhythm of Labor/ Taktur í Verki
Monograph dedicated to the Keep Frozen art practice as research project.
Publisher. Distanz Verlag, May 2025.
Funded by Nordic Culture Fund, Icelandic Visual Arts Fund and The Icelandic Visual Art Copyright Association.
Editor: Julia Gwendolyn Schneider
Language: English/Icelandic
132 pages, 115 color images, hardcover with linen, 23 × 29.5 cm
Introduction written by Julia Gwendolyn Schneider. Essays by Heiða Björk Árnadóttir, Elisabeth Brun, Anamaría Garzón Mantilla and Katla Kjartansdóttir.
The Keep Frozen artisti research project which has been ongoing for over fifteen years, analyzes the operation of the global economy in the specific local example of the dynamics of industrialized fishing in Iceland.
An extensive essay section sheds light on Guðnadóttir’s exploratory performances and films.
Heiða Björk Árnadóttir charts the historical and social contexts of the Keep Frozen series. Elisabeth Brun shows how the artist challenges clichéd visualizations of the Arctic and Subarctic, while Anamaría Garzón Mantilla underscores the need to integrate the Arctic north into a critique of coloniality. Katla Kjartansdóttir discusses Guðnadóttir’s series of works that focus on the puffin, a seabird native to the North Atlantic, which has been co-opted by the booming tourism industry as an Icelandic symbol.
An introductory text by the editor Julia Gwendolyn Schneider gives an overview of the project itself and the artist methodology.
THE BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT;
+ PROQM, BERLIN, GERMANY
+ MENGI, REYKJAVÍK, ICELAND
+ SKAFTFELL, SEYÐISFJÖRÐUR, ICELAND
+ MOTTO, BERLIN, GERMANY
+ SALON FUER KUNSTBUCH, WIEN, AUSTRIA
+ LUGEMIK, TALLINN, ESTONIA
+ KUNSTNERENS HUS, OSLO, NORWAY
Keep Frozen: Art-practice-as-research. The Artist´s view.
Edited by Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
96 pages, 165 illustrations, 4 dust jackets.
Edition of 500 copies.
Funded by Nordic Culture Point and Icelandic Visual Arts Fund.
Text by Jonatan Habib-Engqvist, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir/Mark Wilson, Berit Schuck/Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir, Valur Antonsson and Sigrídur Melrós Ólafsdóttir.
Design by Anja Lutz.
Published by De-Construkt projekts, New York.
Kjötborg ( The Corner Shop)
directed by Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir and Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir
The Corner Shop is a documentary about one of the last remaining grocery stores in Iceland. Run by two eccentric brothers, it is the glue that keeps the community together. Armed with humor and good intentions, the brothers fight a battle against more efficient models of consumption. How far does one go to help one's neighbor and how much can one talk on the topic of potatoes and chewing gum? This is an unusual love story, a funny and intimate film that shows the art of shop keeping in a new light.
producer: Þorfinnur Guðnason
dop: Friðrik Guðmundsson and Þorfinnur Guðnason
script: Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir and Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir
sound: Þorbjörn Ágúst Erlingsson
music: Sindri Már Sigfússon
editor: Stefanía Thors
release: 2008
length: 45
genre: documentary
Screened at various film festivals.