Breathing on the border, 2016
Casted Swedish policeman
Materials: Plaster, police uniform, acrylic paint. With short intervals steam is blown through the policeman’s mouth towards the glass in front of him. He is connected to a machine where ultrasound is breaking the bonds between water molecules, creating the steam.
Photo, mould making of the policeman’s hand
Film, mould making of the policeman’s face
Silicon moulds and casts of the polices hands and some of his equipment
I wanted to cast a border police and save the contours but I didn´t know any police. I checked the polices website, but could not see the right number to call. I asked some friends, they thought the right police would be hard to find. But then one friend said she knew the right police, and I asked him and he said yes. It took 10 hours to make moulds of all the parts of the police. It takes 10 minutes for the silicon used for his hands and head to harden. He said it felt quite claustrophobic but also relaxing, having his mouth, eyes and ears covered at the same time. It made him want to try “floating”, in that kind of tank with saltwater where there is no sound and no light.
He sees my artwork as political. I get interested in his will to show opinions in the artwork that he doesn´t show in his profession, in daily life. I wonder if he believes in art as a political means, or if he experiences the demarcation as so incomprehensible and unbearable, that no logic reason can help him anymore and myth has to take over. I am thinking that maybe he believes in magic. Maybe he believes that a manufactured object can have certain effects depending on intention, intensity and approach in the manufacturing process. Maybe he is thinking about particles following rules we don´t recognise, moving through walls, existing everywhere simultaneously and so on. I wonder if he dreams of the excitement of not fully watertight concepts, of artists not caring about if they seem naive, maybe he dreams about miracles. I don´t interview the police, I just let him go when the moulds are ready, in the way one had to let a rare animal free that one caught when one was a child.
Link to
>>> Model of how we are living together scale 1: 6 2016
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