Keep Frozen
Keep Frozen is an art-practice-as-research project with several artistic outcomes. Starting as early as in 2010 with a very personal gut feeling and urge for researching childhood memories of the aesthetics of living on the harbour, on the docks and by the sea, the project later developed into having a more broader focus on harbour aesthetics in general and more specifically the heart of those aesthetics: dock labour, movements and materiality.
“The project, which has been running for fifteen years and counting, examines the multi-layered functioning of the global economy via the specific local dynamics of industrialized fishing in Iceland. Informed by anthropological research methods as well as her own personal experiences, Guðnadóttir’s artistic techniques use strategies of displacement and de-familiarization to disrupt familiar narratives around labor, class, and urban development, as well as their entanglement with the arts. What we are presented with is a project revolving around a complex, dynamic, and historically contingent space where the Sub-Arctic is framed in relation to broader global imaginaries.”
The Keep Frozen research started by going to sites and conducting research through lived experiences and direct embodied encounter. The visits reached variety of locations along the Atlantic Ocean; to the isolated West fjords of Iceland; to New York City; to North-Africa and to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland; to a forgotten unloading port; to ancient trade center; to abandoned beaches; mid amongst the dock workers and to a village of 166 inhabitants. One of her key artistic method was not only observation on site but collaboration with its people. This became especially significant in a collaboration with a group of dockworkers in Reykjavik midtown harbors that gave birth to many artworks.
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.
Purchase the book at Distanz Verlag website.
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.
Works from the Keep Frozen series have in recent years been shown as installations within group exhibition as for example Based on True Story at Meetfactory in Prague in 2018 curated by Eva Riebová, Swimming Pool – Troubled Waters curated by Valerie Schulte Fischedick in 2021 at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and the Great Patch curated by Weronika Ptak at UFO gallery in Krakow in 2022. In 2024 - as part of research - Guðnadóttir curated an international symposium ‘The Great Defrost’ at the Nordic Embassies in Berlin that recontextualised the Keep Frozen research within the frame of contemporary topics.
“Looking back, it becomes clear that the research process of Keep Frozen went through different stages. While the initial years were mainly devoted to site visits and participatory observations, the focus increasingly shifted towards the production of discrete artworks, until the research primarily revolved around arranging mixed-media instalations that combined old and new artworks, using recontextualization as a strategy.”
After and along the initial stage of site visits and exploration the project evolved around solo exhibiions. Major solo exhibitions include All is Full of Love at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 2019 and WERK – Labor Move at Reykjavik Art Museum in 2021 but also a solo screening as part of the 12 x12 program at Berlinische Galerie in 2018.
As part of the mixed-media installation on two floors at Künstlerhaus Bethanien the Artist as a Puffin works that predate the Keep Frozen research were reonstextualized within the Keep Frozen research project. A new Puffin work was developed as The Puffin Shop currently in the collection of the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland. Another new work premiered in the installation was Thinking like a Mountain. Thinking like a Mall.
2016 was a major year for the Keep Frozen project. It included a premier of major art works such as the 48-hour dock worker performance and Labor Move at a mixed-media video installation at Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig and the the exhibition project Keep Frozen part four a mixed-media installation at ASI art museum in Iceland that showed the Golden Ship sculpture and the Shipyard Paintings and a found Ghostnet sculpture , all for the first time.
In April 2016 the feature length documentary Keep Frozen premiered in the 'Regard Neuf' competition category at Visions du Réel in Switzerland. The film was later nominated to dozens of prices where it was shown all over the world in contemporary art and cinema contexts.
The early research process up to early 2015 is described in The Story, a collaborative text between the artist and German curator Berit Schuck, that was printed in the the publication Keep Frozen: Art-practice-as-reseach. The artist’s View, a collection of texts and images edited by the artists herself.
Keep Frozen: Art-practice-as-research. The Artist´s view
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
2015
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.
Distribution: Torpedo Press, Oslo and Útúrdúr, Reykjavík.
Up to the publication the public parts of the research project had been the exhibition and art makiking project Keep Frozen part zero, a single channel video work, Keep Frozen part one, a mixed media installation event in Red-Hook, NYC, that also premiered the Buoy sculpture for the first time, and Keep Frozen part two, also a mixed media exhibition at Reykjavik Art Festival, where the video work Material Puffin and C-print series Artist as a Worker were shown for the first time as an installation.
Presentation and discussion with curator Jonatan Habib-Engqvist at Proqm, Berlin. 16th of September 2015 as part of Berlin Art Week. Moderated and organised by Berit Schuck.
“Keep Frozen is an ongoing art-practice-as-research project concep tualised by me – the artist and editor of this publication. The book is intended for other artists to use as a tool to reflect on their meth- ods and practice in a call for a pluralistic view on the topic of what art-practice-as-research might be. It was a conceptual decision to assume the role of editor and to invite other artists as well as non- artists to share their points of view and have their writing edited by an artist. It is my hope that many such stories will be published, all surprising us in their different ways.
I ́m not going to trace the thoughts of the different writers in this book, as is the custom of the editorial note; instead, I ́m going to credit everyone that got involved in this project in one way or another. I call each one of them my collaborators in order to make a statement about the production of art works. The end result, or the many results, was influenced along the way by opportunities that arose, chances that were given, infrastructures that offered support, and by all the people who made it happen through their faith, through the experiences they shared, through hard work, ideas and the talent that they gave to the project.
Dennis Helm, Berit Schuck, Valur Antonsson, Helga Rakel Rafnsdóttir, Hinrik Þór Hinriksson, Salvitore Maglio, Sigurþór Sigurþórsson, Jens Pétur Kjærnested, Sigurður Gáki Árnason, Dale Odle, Pétur Kristinsson, Pétur Már Ólafsson, Valur Ísak Aðalsteinsson, Dariusz Niescier, Piotr Pasiuk, Andrzej Szewczuk, Grezegorz Halys, Valdimar Jóhannsson, Guðmundur Jónsson, Svavar Ásmundsson, Hermann Gíslason, Stefán Sigurjónsson, Karolina Boguslawska, Grímur Jón Sigurðsson, Carolina Salas, Bogi Reynisson, Helena Hansdóttir Aspelund, Yrza Roca Fannberg, Unnur Guðjónsdóttir, Þórður Egilsson, Sjöfn Guðmundsdóttir, Guðni Þórðarson, Ingvar Högni Ragnarsson, Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, Guðrún Benónýsdóttir, Eivind Slettemeås, Karen Christine Tandberg, Dalia Castel, Frances Mossop, Ólafur Þórðarson, Hamid Drissi, Jón Þórðarson, Kristín Scheving, Dr. Ming Turner, Laura Arena, Aldís Snorradóttir, Hanna Styrmisdóttir, Candace Goodrich, Gréta Ólafsdóttir, Halldór Björn Runólfsson, Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Dorothee Kirch, Björg Stefánsdóttir, Edda Kristín Sigurjónsdóttir, Ólöf K. Sigurðardóttir, Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir, Kristín Guðnadóttir, Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Hlynur Helgason, Halldór Ásgeirsson, Hulda Stefánsdóttir, Kristján Steingrímur Jónsson, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Sigurður Guðjónsson, Jonatan Habib-Engqvist, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Mark Wilson, Sigríður Melrós Ólafsdóttir, Skarphéðinn Guðmundsson, Anja Lutz, Michael Polacek, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, Claus Lehmann, Lisa Matthys, Maria Lind, Nina Möntmann, Tinna Grétarsdóttir, Olof Olsson, Dafna Maimon, Laila Hida, Allan Sekula, Sören Kjörup, Andrei Siclodi, the staff of Medienwerkstatt and Druckwerkstatt des bbk in Berlin Bethanien and storytellers at Sirkus bar, Reykjavík, in the 2000s.”
Sculpture from Keep Frozen part one @ De-Construkt, NY. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
The following year the symposium ‘Keep Frozen Projects’ became a high-point of the research project. With symposiums and practical showing of artistic research of other artists both in Leipzig and Reykjavik the approach to the issue of the artist´s view of art practice as research was broadened up to become a discussion that included all artists and artists works.