HANNE LYDIA OPHEIM KRISTOFFERSEN • BELONGING ...

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NoRtHwaRD, BY tHe Sea
Hit the North
Manacled to the city
All estate agents alive yell down the night in hysterical breath
And from the back of the third eye psyche the inducement come forth
Hit the North
The Fall
it is impossible not to say something about northern
Norway in this context, so I might just as well say it
here at the very outset. I have, it is true, never met
an unpleasant person north of trondheim. i have
also never met a single person who has not been
seriously fucked up in one way or another. But what i
wonder is whether this is possibly an environmental
maladjustment due to the dramatic changes between
light and darkness, or due to the equally dramatic
landscape. or maybe a combination of these factors. it
is true that the intensely wild stare of almost everyone
with roots in this part of the country has found a deep
resonance in me, which of course comes from radically
different circumstances, but it is possible that this is
a common form of bipolar psychosis that follows us
through our everyday life. Quite frankly: i don’t know.
I simply note what my experiences tell me so far. As
well as what i think: can you in any way avoid being
manic-depressive when you grow up in a world that is
either light or dark, black or white, and only nuanced
on an exceptional basis. I think, at any rate, that it
represents good grounds for making excuses. A kind
of diagnosis, or a bonus, an excuse for situations that
demand an attitude of reserve that is out of reach. this
excuse is something I lack myself and admittedly could
need on occasion. it’s not the same thing to grow up
in central sweden when social democracy’s degree
of fitness is still on the plus side. i can’t blame the
same external factors to explain why I am fucked up.
of course there is a reason why i choose to start with
these speculations. i am reacting to pictures that make
it crystal clear that it is starting to get cold outside.
But not only that. i have just seen three video works by
an artist I have known for nearly 22 years and whom I
have not once seen fiddling with a camera. so this is
in no way the same old, usual thing, although I shall
be careful not to say anything about video art being “a
new and exciting medium”, because it has not been
so ever since nam June Paik broke a television set on
stage the year i was born. But here it is encountered
for what I believe is the first time. These are defined,
quite strictly composed works – methodically not
unlike the photo-realistic drawings we already know
from the past. narratives that overflow with the latent
violence that has always accompanied this artistry like
a subsonic, basic tone, not always easy to localise,
but ever-present. now of course it might be asked if
this sinister, everyday violence can be said to be lying
latent; these videos are so text-based that they might
rather be described as literary works, and the aversion
is in no way veiled in these painful tales of failed
sexual abuse and the almost insufferable banality of
having to eat while sitting by someone’s deathbed
waiting for someone to draw the last breath. Pizza,
for example. Or what was my starting point above: a
text about a place of origin without once mentioning
it by name, but like the drawings, concealing a face.
The consistent covering of the face used here, whether
it is a pair of knickers or large sunglasses covering
most of it, is a technique Kristoffersen has worked
with before. in the past she managed to make the
concealed face a meeting place for issues involving
the personal, the political and the sexual in a single
focused manoeuvre. now this effort is pursued to
invoke a synchronised doubt about the extent to which
this is a tenable basis for an identity. and then we
wind up in northern norway somewhere. Where it all
began, and is still beginning. Lately I have taken notice
of how many people i have around me who come from
one place or another. and how all of them have almost
identical stories they tell about family and childhood
friends. and the fact that my own personal history is
exactly the same. The fact that one has moved out
of context and is totally alone – and decades pass
without any other member of this childhood landscape
ever even considering a move out of the confines of
the municipal borders. Just a reflection that strikes
me from time to time: the fact that i am most at home
with those who are like me – those who once left
home and really meant business. But there is the other
side of the coin - the traces that one brings with one
from this lost landscape. We can take hanne out of
Northern Norway, but can we take Northern Norway
out of hanne? after having seen Belonging a couple
of times, the answer must of course be No – we
cannot obliterate our own background; it will always
be fundamental for what we choose to be. or what
we think we choose. What we like to think that we
choose. Our place of origin will always, unavoidably,
exercise a strong gravitational force on us. It has
occurred that i have driven by my own little hole of a
town a few times in recent years. and i have made a
few rounds past places I can’t get out of my system,
places that would have driven me completely mad
if i had to relate to them on a daily basis but which
i nevertheless have an urge to revisit either through
memory or physically when I can, just to keep this
organism somewhat intact. We are nothing without our
personal backgrounds. not that we are special in any
respect at all, but it has proven difficult to disentangle
oneself from these things that we once fled in panic in
our late puberty in order to get as far away as possible.
But we know this – the harshest winter in many,
many years; one has to dress warmly. Or be tough
as nails; one year I swam naked in Kirkenes in
late september. But i also once met someone in
tromsø who said he didn’t even go swimming in the
summertime. and it is here that the inherent logic
of the drawings washes over me; is this actually a
question of depersonalization? Isn’t the answer to
the question to an equally great extent that we seek
protection? and with what do we choose to protect
ourselves? and aside from the sub-zero degrees on the
thermometer, what should we protect ourselves from?
Tommy Olsson
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