FAGER KVELDSOL SMILER, 2019
Two men are chopping timber during a lingering sunset. They take turns chopping the same tree, over and over again. The sun continues to hang over the horizon. One man recites the poem Nat. by Vilhelm Krag, in his longing for the night. The lumberers are trapped in a sysophic loop. They are in themselves a cliché we cling to - the masculine worker, and the sun goes down on their way out of a vicious circle.
In Vilhelm Krag’s (author, poet 1933) letter to Edvard Munch, he tells about how his painting «Sick mood at sunset. Despair» inspired his work «Nat.» Fair Evening Sun Smiling takes place somewhere between Munch and Krag, the film is filled with visual and lyrical references that reverberates through the medium, like a haunting echo through space and time. The Sun setting is commonly used as a metaphor for something ending, hence the title Fair Evening Sun Smiling is borrowed from a hymn, traditionally used in funerals. This loop is simulates working conditions in capitalist society, where the concept of “Summer Time”, where the clock is set forth one hour in summer, and then back in winter in order to have more efficient working hours, is a manipulation of time itself. In this way the «sun hours» are something that we are conditioned to believe belong to work and productivity, while freedom belongs to the night.
Exhibited at
KANAL screening space, Delfi in collaboration with with SixtyEight Art Institute, Sydhavn St, Destinys Atelier, She Will and Vermilion Sands, 2020
Agder kunstsenter, Kristiansand 2019