Keep Frozen part one
Mixed-media installation, 2013.The installation consisted of a ‘Buoy’ sculpture made of six transparent plexiglass plates, 3mm thick, colours variable, shape irregular 50 x 60 cm, hemp rope in beige and and threads in yellow; ready mades, 20 cm high seagull tourist memorabilia statues bought at the Baltic sea; ready mades, bandana tobacco as gift from a son of a dock worker at Red Hook dock; ready-mades, fragile rope fragments found on the Atlantic beach of Morocco; ‘Keep Frozen part one’, HD, 00:06:34, 16:9 video loop projected directly on the white painted brick wall.
The first part of Keep Frozen series was shown and tested as a mixed-media installation and an event at DE-CONSTRUKT [projekts], New York. During the event audience performance took place where the guests were invited to throw a rope up on a original metal hook placed in the hatch of this former port warehouse space.
Installation view. Sculpture. Photo: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir.
“The artist is examining the mechanism of personal childhood memories of the fishing harbor and harbor culture. Those memories are approached from current conditions labelled ‘precarious times’ of cultures in transformation. ‘Loss of reality’ masks the foundation and dynamics of society. Illusion is displacing complex questions.”
Keep Frozen part one is a single-channel video work that was produced to be a part of a mixed-media installation Keep Frozen part one at DE-CONSTRUKT projects NYC. Length: 06:34 for installation view only. HD. The video was shot on location in 18th century fortified fishing town of Essaouira, Morocco, and in the artist studio in Berlin, Germany. In the video found objects from isolated beach on the Atlantic coast is cast as props. Keep Frozen artistic research project is an investigation into the childhood memories of the artist of the aesthetics of harbour and waterfront areas. The focus is on rhythm, repetition, forms, colours, labour, movement, touch, reflection, transparency, projection and materials. With the work the artist is focusing on the mechanism of nostalgia. She firmly believes that a step to the future is looking back at the past and recognising it. The research has been conducted in diverse places along the Atlantic in Bildudalur, Reykjavik, Essaouira Morocco and Red Hook in New York. All fishing villages and/or docks in various states of being. Keep Frozen the documentary is being produced by Skarkali ltd.
The exhibition wall size video installation: HD, 00:06:34, 16:9 loop.
“It is in the memories where permanence lingers. This permanence transforms into a landscape of fantasy where authenticity has found its home in rhythm, colours and shapes. The thrust of nostalgia is desire. It masks the crisis.”
Installation view. Ready mades, 20 cm high seagull tourist memorabilia statues bought at the Baltic sea. Photo: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir.
Installation view. Ready-mades: Fragile rope fragments found on the Atlantic beach of Morocco. Photo: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir.
Installation view. Photo: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir.
Installation view. Ready mades as gift from a son of a dock worker at Red Hook dock. Photo: Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir.
