Weight – Correspondence
between Andjeas Ejiksson and Ragnar Kjartansson
NOVEMBER 29
How are you doing? Well, now, a lot of stuff has happened. Me and Ásdís got divorced, all in mayhem. But much, much, much better now. I have my Cadillac and rock and roll.
I was invited to curate a part of the Gothenburg biennale. The idea is to book Stora Teatern for an experimental art show in September next year. I got this idea to ask you to curate it with me? Could we talk on the phone tomorrow? I’m always losing your number. What is it again?
Ragnar
NOVEMBER 30
My dear Ragnar, I was happy about your letter in many ways. Of course, I was glad to hear from you; even if there were nothing else, even if there were no respect and affection, we should always be glad to pass a nod. Even if there wasn’t … but you know there is. Your letter was such a bright spot that I wanted to answer it right away—Yes, I would love to curate the show together with you.
So much happens in a summer and now it’s fall or rather winter. I am sad to hear about you and Ásdís and the mayhem, but good that things are getting better (for Ásdís too, I hope … and Sólveig). Me and Ellen also broke up in May. It was sad (still is in a way) but not violent. It seems we can be friends. I moved into my studio like a true bohemian—temporarily I hope—and I am in love with the most beautiful girl, whom I am supposed to meet in twenty minutes—since I’m already late, I can write no more tonight. I certainly look forward to talking to you tomorrow. Your affectionate friend,
Andjeas
DECEMBER 19
How splendid it was to talk the other day. I think it is important to constantly be critically dissatisfied and never aim for a great show. The theater is such a banal place. Full of egocentric, sexually driven, and broken dreams. I have written down this note: “Think about artists that don’t do theater.”
I am glad we both agree that Carolee is a good lunch to pack when we start this journey, with her carnal, painterly, and expressionistic energy. Feminist art—the only true artistic revolution in the twentieth century. Everything else was mere form. We should aim for a totally hardcore feminist show, but not in a politically correct, euro hippie way.
I hope you and Denise have a cozy advent. I imagine you living this idyllic Swedish romance, getting up in orange bed sheets and making coffee. In another era, somehow: love in the eighties or something like that. Are you going to Gamla Stan for “glögg” and “rostade mandlar?” It’s a shame that you don’t smoke. A cigarette and warm glögg would be lovely. Just a cigarette on Sergels torg is also quite epic. The ultimate modernist stand. Maybe you do smoke … I am trying to picture you with a cigarette but I don’t have a ready image. Today I am going to take my daughter and my girlfriend, Ingibjörg, to this old pop singer and get a silvery Christmas tree from my family that he has in his garage. Somehow it ended up there. Fate. The tree is from the fifties. The pop singer had a string of hits in the seventies and eighties. Now he does huge Christmas concerts. With warmth,
Ragnar
DECEMBER 21
I am alive and perfectly well and on a train. I begin writing this letter as the train slowly leaves the central station in Stockholm. It is a little past six in the morning, still dark outside and it will remain so for another couple of hours. When I end this letter it will be evening and I will be on another train just about to arrive at the platform that I just left. But let us not think about that. I am reading a novel by Jeanette Winterson called Weight. It is a story about the titan Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders, his mother is earth, his father the seas. In the beginning is nothing, not even time and space; it is said that even if the whole universe were thrown at you, you could easily catch it on the tip of your finger. Because there is no Universe. This is how Winterson and Atlas understand it. The story is about weight, the weight of destiny and of the boundaries of existence. It is also about Heracles, the hero … or the ravager, depending on whom you ask. He is eventually murdered by a dead enemy, a centaur called Nessus, who attempts to rape Heracles’s girlfriend Deianeira. As Nessus is dying form Heracles’s arrow, still laying over Deianeira, he convinces her that if she collects his semen and mixes it with blood from the tip of the arrow that just pierced his body, she will have a potion to make Heracles eternally faithful to her. When, later, she does, it turns out she has been deceived. As Heracles dies a horribly painful death, screaming in agony, she stabs herself in the heart with a knife. They were so perversely dramatic in those days.
I so enjoyed our conversation the other day—even though I generally don’t like talking on the phone. At a distance I prefer to write as it somehow gives more weight to the conversation. Already two hours have passed since I left Stockholm, still dark as if there were no landscape outside. The only things left are this half-full train and a novel by Jeanette Winterson, where Atlas is just about to leave his burden to find that the sky stays in place, as though indifferent to eons of effort. Had he only been carrying his own weight all along?
It is a strange thing to watch dawn turn the night into day; all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there is a world outside. I think it would be great and maybe unexpected to aim for “a hardcore feminist show” and good not to take this theater situation too serious. I mean, to try and see beyond conventions, expectations, and the mere interdisciplinary approach. We should get ourselves into trouble and let the encounters lead the way. And now, it is already getting dark again as I leave Gothenburg on the train. The theater was rather beautiful—at least the theater hall, mid-nineteenth-century style with golden ornaments and red velvet. The stage is a little smaller than I expected, but it is dynamic and, unlike galleries and museums, there is little regard for the structure of space; it is all about gravity. Everything is temporary and you can use the stage in several different ways. There is even a bar in the back corner. We can also use other parts of the building that are mostly empty or sporadically furnished: there is another bar, a ballet studio on the upper floor, a couple of rooms that no one seems to use. The place is full of stairs, a labyrinth really.
On the way home I read a collection of essays by Allan Kaprow. I enjoy his writing very much (and his other works of course). In The Artist as a Man of the World he writes that ”(t)he power of artists is precisely the influence they wield over the fantasies of their public.” Perhaps that is what they call for when adopting the phrase “recapturing the radical imagination”. I honestly can’t grasp what it means but I doubt that is the point—it is the sound of it that matters. Perhaps we should think about our own title, but I guess we need to make other decisions first.
I am now at the end of my journey, the train will stop at the platform any minute. I am already there, and even if it was a different time and place and so many stories in between now and then, I think we should somehow begin where we ended our last conversation, at The End.
Andjeas
DECEMBER 26
I hope you have a pleasant holiday. I forgot to attach images from the theater. They are not great but I think they will give you an idea of what it looks like. There is only one stage and lots of corridors; the entrance is rather small. The most accessible spaces are the stage (of course), the bar and the ballet studio. There are also a couple of rooms here and there that look like the meeting rooms in a conference hotel on the verge of bankruptcy. (Actually, the theater seems to be a long history of failures, it never turned into the diamond it was supposed to be.) We may of course move the furniture. I guess it all depends on the artists we collaborate with. We might also use the façade (for projections maybe); the corridors and the entrance are also potentially ours. Well, I don’t know … what seems nothing now might be everything in the future.
Andjeas
JANUARY 3
Yesterday I finally read your letter. I compliment you and envy your Swedish trains. A train ride is such an elegant form of travel. I had saved the letter for a perfect read. No rise in the Christmas of it all. I dressed up in pajamas and a thick woolen forties robe and I sat down on the sofa in my new home and read it while Strauss’s Four Last Songs was humming in the background. I read it aloud to my lover and we lay long into the night discussing the weight of the world and the membrane between life and death, art and reality, the stage and the audience. How Nessus managed to shift the weight of murdering Heracles over to Deianeira. This tension of weight shift. Weight is such an interesting subject. Also considering the theater. In this whole building the weight is all in one spot, on the stage. A whole world designed around one center spot, for what happens there. Dressing rooms, bars, rehearsal rooms, and costume storage areas, all sinking down with the weight of the stage. In other buildings there is much more weight shift, more osmosis. It would be interesting to shift the weight of the building in our show. To give other rooms of the building strong significance, like the conference-style rooms. I was also surprised when I saw the pictures of how shabby the building is. Somewhere between a three star hotel and splendid grandeur. There are hints of Strindberg as well as euro techno. The furniture, the horribly ugly black bar. I love this tension, this weight shift between significance and insignificance. It is a melancholy, shabby little theater, as it is portrayed on these pictures. But then again theater always has the potential of becoming extremely powerful. Just like our lives. We are all Atlas in the modern world. We carry the weight. Every small gesture we make is so important in the economics and injustices of the world. The small is the big. When we buy cheap clothes and IKEA furniture we are supporting some kind of slavery and waste system. But at the same time it is so insignificant. The significance of the insignificant. And waste. The earth is always the same mass, it just changes form. The earth cannot become heavier; everything is built from earthly material that only changes form. No weight is added—I just realized this last night when Ingibjörg told me. You can’t create something out of nothing … which leads to Carolee’s interior scroll. Guts, guts, guts. Is that a title? John Cale singing “Guts, guts, got no guts.” The title sounds like a kickass show but then we just create something elegant and insignificant. More like “got no guts.” I don’t know, just bouncing it a bit. Then this idea of weight is interesting. Artists do carry the weight of truth inside them and try to diffuse it into the world through osmosis.
Ragnar
P.S. And one more thing concerning antiquity and weight. I just watched a beautiful documentary about Karl Lagerfeld. He is obsessed with the sword of Damocles, the constant threat of the weight of power. Tension and fear. He said that is the essence of friendship and love.
JANUARY 14
I did not hasten to answer your letter and now I have to pass you a note in between, and save most of my thoughts for later. I enjoyed reading about how the shift of weight turns the theater into a different cosmos, where the significance of space is drifting, and then the threat to the weight of power, friendship and love. We should look at this spectacle as an effort to gain a sense of weight. I myself, definitely need some of that—today most things seem afloat. There is a drunken man in the house who disturbed my rest last night. Normally he is very respectable but after a few drinks a most consummate fool. He stood on the top of the stairs and preached in the dark with no audience. At last, it was past midnight, I opened my door and shouted at him. It had the desired effect. He was clearly indignant; then, after a pause, “Well, if I am a fool, it’s only once in a while!” That was the end of it and he retired to rest. He is as bad today, and if he starts howling again I might just invite him for tea and Chopin and offer for him to rock quietly in a comfortable chair while caressed by the piano—shifting weight.
Andjeas
JANUARY 22
I am coming to pick you up at the airport. Trying to fix up my Cadillac DeVille, or else it is Ingibjörg’s very nice Mercury Topaz.
Ragnar
JANUARY 25
This is our statement, don’t you think?
“It’s not a journey. Every journey ends but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it. Plans disappear, dreams take over, but wherever I go, there you are: my luck, my fate, my fortune.”
We came across this commercial with Brad Pitt at a German airport the other day. Inevitable that good artists lose their cool. The ad agency must have hired a good poet as copywriter for it.
I feel we have come very far with the overall feeling of the show. No artyology or sociological references. Just feminine instincts and guts. We drop the Scandinavian baloney.
Ragnar
FEBRUARY 9
I realize how exhausted you must have been in Gothenburg with the flu on top of everything. I finally caught it too and have to spend most of the time in bed. Denise keeps me company from time to time so it is not too bad after all, but I am far behind on my work schedule. Will be up and running in a few days I hope. Wonder what you are doing now? Everything here is very silent.
Andjeas
FEBRUARY 11
I think of you eating cheesecake and being loved in a coma of fever … and snow outside. How blissful in a way. It is all thanks to me. The curatorial flu.
Ragnar
FEBRUARY 16
Finally, I can breathe and I have begun writing. I am still a little weak, but that is all … I talked to Stina the other day and suggested to her that we make three short sequences (spectacles?) at the theater and only that. Of course, they would like us to make some sort of permanent contribution as well. Let’s think about it until we have a perfect idea, or not. Stina also mentioned there might be a pavilion of some kind, floating on the water (could that be right?). I think it was part of the original plan for the biennial but so far only speculations. More soon.
Andjeas
MARCH 4
Please pardon me for not writing for so long. I feel I want to talk to you for a moment, even if there is no news to tell. This morning the birds had the most troubled hour. There was a buzzard in the neighborhood and the whole garden thrilled with terror and they sang so tragically that you wouldn’t even call it song if you heard it. They frightened me, screaming in terror for those who were dear to them.
I think we need to make decisions this week. Today and tomorrow are rather busy (I am painting flowers) but perhaps I can call you on Wednesday or Thursday? I passed a note to Sarah last week to see if there was any progress with the theater … Im Westen nichts Neues.
Andjeas
MARCH 5
Should we talk tonight when I have dropped Sólveig off? That would be around ten your time.
Ragnar
MARCH 13
At times I get terribly frightened about this venture, which seems to advance too slowly. And now we are moving backwards. Yes, I talked to Stina and they finally got the decision from the theater. It doesn’t seem to be possible to mount a permanent show (our conclusion already in February) at Stora teatern but we will have it for the opening weekend. On top of that, they won’t allow us to go through with the performance that Carolee suggested, unless she makes a version that would not affect the building. In short, we are pretty much back at square one and considering the experiences so far in this process, it appears difficult to find a new venue and establish a new collaboration. I suggest we spend all energy on the three days we have at the theater and make a very intense weekend—a one-time-only event that transpires in the theater. Why not make it into the spectacle that it ought to be?
Andjeas
MARCH 18
Great … and it was so good to talk to you on Saturday.
Ragnar
APRIL 3
I am neither happy nor bored, but there is a numbness in my soul. Well … how about this image for the presentation? I don’t know if heroin chic is really my style … at least not as flattering as the image of ten years ago. It is very difficult to look sexy and cool.
Andjeas
APRIL 7
This photo is fantastic. Please excuse that I did not comment on this photo for a few days. I was so shocked.
I love you.
Ragnar
APRIL 11
What do you think about allocating part of the show to other venues? To me, it is more tempting to go all the way with a most temporary presence of Weight—it happens once and then it disappears and will only exist as memories. I like the idea of installing even complicated works only for a few days. Perhaps I am a little too attracted to the ephemeral, of the word “art” I am on the other hand terrified. Terrified. Terrified of defining it. But it seems we need to attempt exactly that … for the catalogue. Yes, there are all sorts of deadlines ahead. Before I had the idea that we could just publish our correspondence, but maybe it didn’t turn out to be the kind of exchange that has literary qualities. We could, of course, write a more elaborate essay based on the statement, but that seems rather dull. Perhaps we can speak about it on the phone sometime on Sunday.
Then again, the short duration of the show might turn out to be a financial problem. Stina and Edi hinted that the biennial board might want to cut our budget if we only produce the two-day event at Stora teatern. They want something more permanent. I don’t think that would make much sense as it basically means we have to make two shows. Now, I am getting a little tipsy, I must admit, but here is a slightly different and rather silly proposal for how to make Weight a recurrent element in the biennial. A kind of ghostly presence, a simple transformation of the show into a mime. You are already laughing, but then consider what would most naturally follow on from the theatrical and the choreographic trend in contemporary art—yes, that’s right, a synthesis into mime. Basically it would mean to engage a group of mime artists to re-enact Weight at a different venue every second week of the biennial. The re-enactment would be an interpretation and reincarnation of the show with no words or props or other elements except the bodies and movements of the mime artists—just a simple mime act on a stage.
Andjeas
APRIL 12
This is a very funny proposal. It is better than the watered-down stuff, like something permanent in another space. I like it! It is so bad, it’s good.
Love from a bathtub.
Ragnar
APRIL 12
You are very kind. I am very drunk. So much love.
Andjeas
APRIL 13
… and now I have a terrible hangover. Let’s contemplate all this and I’ll call you on the weekend. I will go back to sleep and forget about it all.
Andjeas
APRIL 16
My friend, my beast. I saw two swans making love outside my window. What a glorious, erotic sight. They weave their necks together and the male gets on top so that the female is under water. Afterwards they both splash their heads a lot … to feel fresh after sex. I am so happy our comrades pushed our one weekend mayhem through the high council. Now there is this poetic feeling that our show will hardly exist.
Ragnar
MAY 1
Here are yesterday’s slightly less drunken thoughts about the show, which I hope you will enjoy reading … I thought about the reference to Kafka’s novel Amerika and the situation that leads poor Karl to the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Perhaps we should emphasize that and somehow turn our audience to little Karls. Have you read the novel, by the way? It is one of my favorites, a rather bizarre story about young Karl Grossmann’s adventures in the United States. He has been forced to leave Europe for New York in order to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. Karl stays with his uncle for a while but is abandoned by him after a disagreement. He then wanders aimlessly in search of a job. Eventually he finds one at a hotel but is dismissed for leaving his post. In the next turn of the story he is forced to become the servant of a wealthy lady called Brunelda. He tries to break out, but is beaten and locked out on a balcony where he talks to a student who is studying on a balcony nearby. The student convinces him to stay because it is hard to find a job. So he decides to stay. One day, wandering around in the city, he sees an advertisement for the Nature Theater of Oklahoma on a street corner. It says:
Personnel is being hired for the Theater in Oklahoma! The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is calling you! It’s calling today only! If you miss this opportunity, there will never be another! Anyone thinking of his future, your place is with us! All welcome! Anyone who wants to be an artist, step forward! We are the theater that has a place for everyone, everyone in his place! If you decide to join us, we congratulate you here and now! But hurry, be sure not to miss the midnight deadline! We shut down at midnight, never to reopen! Accursed be anyone who doesn’t believe us!
He visits the audition and is soon on a train heading for Oklahoma. This is the last chapter of the book, which was never completed. It is said that Kafka used to hint that within this limitless theater, Grossmann will again find a profession, his freedom, even his old home and family. Everything he ever desired … like magic.
A rather long digression, indeed. I wanted to suggest we produce a poster (or equivalent) for the show. Something that adds a layer of magic and attraction, as strong and engaging as the one that catches Grossmann’s attention on the street corner. Maybe we can even use one of the billboards.
Andjeas