BERGLIND JÓNA HLYNSDÓTTIR PORTFOLIO

Please visit www.berglindjona.is for more information, installation views, sound examples and pdf catalogues that are connected to the works.

THE CHANGING ROOM - work in progress

POLITICS OF EMOTION 2015-2016

OPENINGS:

Rupert Center for Art and Education, Vilnius, Lithu-ania Oct 14. 2015

Pabrade, Lithuania Nov 26. 2015

Visaginas, Lithuania Dec 17. 2015

Gallery 1857 with Oslo Kunstakademi. Oslo, Norway. 21. Jan 2016.

Living Art Museum, NÝLÓ, Reykjavik, Iceland 3. Mars 2016.

Music and vocie by composer Shipsi Sipkevics

The Changing Room is a dancing, spinning, talking singing changing room that changes charecters. It speaks as a border, a boundary, a curtain, cover and stage.

Excerpts from the text:

“Imagine a curtain in the dark end of a retail hellin the far suburb of a subprime state

hanging in the cornerof the deepest stallof a changing roompennies for a bra

its mirror sells confidence at the pennies end.

These are cloaks and daggersmaterial matersLIKES and Mick Jaggersa pattern that flatters”

...

“Now watch me moving across the floor, see my folds as the swerve and surrender to the movement of my feet. With me the boundary moves, the borders broaden, the bondage breaks. My desire to bind can be blinding, I am just trying to keep it together, tacking the pieces to-gether, arranging and rearranging my inner structures. Giving role and purpose to those within and those without. Giving myself a purpose.”

...

“How do we intertwine meaning and prolong the fic-tions that constitute our identities and our nationalities without letting them stratify and castrate our imagina-tion, our empathy and our capacities for new, daring, adventurous ways of living? How do we protect bound-aries for freedoms we believe in temporally without letting them permeate and stagnate the evolution those freedoms could take. How do we create things that can adapt or that will know when to self-destruct when they have served their purpose?”

GANGVERKIÐ: Endurminningar klukkun-nar á Lækjartorgi -Sigurverk augnablikanna

(The INNER WORKINGS (THE WALKWORK): Memoirs of the clock at Lækjartorg Plaza)

Innstalled from the August 16th - 3rd of September2014 in the old clock at Lækjartorg Plaza, Reykjavík Iceland. The soundwork is 1hour13min34sec and looped all day long.

The role of the clock was read by Thelma Marín Jóns-dóttir.

In this historical fiction the old Persil clock of the Læk-jartorg Plaza tells her own story, pondering her role in the city, how she came to be, how she has been treated and talked about through the years. She tries to de-construct the fiction of how the city and Plaza came be written into reality, through public debates and articles. She rewrites her future role and ponders questions of time. Sound installation and publication in the public space, Sponsored by The Icelandic Artist Wage and the Cultural Night of Reykjavík, Iceland.

Short excerpt translated:

What are the achievements we count in our old age? Are they the mortgage less mass of concrete we will own by then, the hours on the check in clock that paid for all of our IKEA furniture or the hours and gasoline liters that we invested to get ourselves to the gym.

I, the clock of daily life stand accused of falsifying time. It might have been around this time in my life that I started seriously pondering my abilities for time travel -- I had certainly gotten a clear affirmation of my talent for bending and breaking down time. So my imagina-tion took flight or maybe it was fleeing from those that accused me. Fleeing from those like the Plaza Clock Hater that wrote to the Broken pen column in the Peo-ples Newspaper (Alþýðublaðið) hysterically 12. March 1948:

“Dear editor.

I am in such a state, It is hard for me to write, -- but I have to do it. Still, because I have to do something! OH, if I had the bus driver in my hands! I would... I would... No, the poor man only has half the blame.

I can no longer stay clam in the face of this animal! I will one day run down to the plaza and break every piece of her and then dance with froth in my mouth over her broken parts!

Do you know what has happened and why it has hap-pened? No, how could you know?

My girlfriend has dumped me. -- And it is the fucking clocks fault first and foremost.

I had told her that I would come to her at a certain hour. -- The girlfriend of course not the clock. I have a watch that that always works correctly. But when I come down to the plaza the bus is leaving 2 minute before it was scheduled. I was so surprised. I just stood and stared. A bus before schedule! Then I look at the plaza clock fucker. She was 3 minutes to fast. While I am in these thoughts the bus disappeared down the road of all worlds. The real storybook ending is quick to be told:

The next wagon didn’t leave until half an hour later. It broke down on the way. I came to my girlfriend 50 minutes to late. She demanded answers. Didn´t believe that buses broke down at the same time that the clock went haywire. The argument when out of control! Me too, Tragedy! Everything finished between us. The plaza clock may she-- may she.... (skipped)

What should I do? Sue? and then who?

I only know of one thing I will for sure do! The Plaza Clock will with me whole and alive never cause more catastrophes!

Your sad, Plaza Clock hater.”

If we now jump to this news article that was published in the morning paper: “The old Plaza Clock at Lækjart-org has had difficult days. Hooligans have gotten ven-geance for their strange desires, broken her and ruined and then she has been left like this for days and weeks on end.

Endurminningar Hljómskálans– Frá Lúðrum að Lýðræði

(Memoirs of The Sound Pavilion - From Horns to Democracy) Work by Berglindi Jónu Hlynsdóttir in colaboration with the composor Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson. Installed in the Sound Pavillion - Hljómskálinn, Reykjavík, Iceland from August 9-25th 2013. The sound work is 1hour46min50sec and then looped all day long

The role of the Sound Pavilion is read by Friðgeir Einarsson.

In this public space installation The Sound Pavilion comes to life, it tells us its story, the story of music in Iceland and a part of the story of Reykjavík. It recites parts of its musical history and even composes its own music like a self-playing piano with the help of Guð-mundur Stein Gunnarsson composer. It looks at how we see new buildings in the cityscape now and then. Passersby are invited to listen, as its voice is projected out of the lower floor windows into the park and they are invited inside to sit or walk around and listen in the beautiful upstairs rehearsal room. The building is usually not open to the public. The work was sponsored by the Icelandic Artist Wage for Fine art and Music, the National Music Fund and The Cultural Night of Reyk-javík, Iceland

Short excerpt translated:

“I dream of the documents that could lay in the archives of major-league nations with concert lists form the past or beautifully drawn collections of musical scores.

Composer Árni Thorsteinsson remembered listening as a young boy to 20-man ensemble from the lifeguards of the king and remembers being jealous of two 12 year old boys who played in the band: “I listened mesmer-ized to the music, I found it inspiring, it was a spectac-ular moment because of course it was something com-pletely new here to hear a band play.”

The experience of listening to the bands of the army ships and passion they awoke became the spark needed to start a collection from town’s people to build up a music group in Iceland. The donations where enough to buy sex beautiful brass horns that traveled by ship to Iceland. Around these horns, it would be necessary to educate blowers, cultivate lungs, tongs and mouths that could make up the support that would be becoming of these riches.

I imagine many false and funny tones and see them getting stronger and more beautiful with endurance, passion and the sense of adventure these idealists had. Maybe my foundation does not lay here in the mud beneath me but in these 6 shinny horns, the idea and desire that brought them to beaches of Iceland --for all buildings begin as ideas. Even if I live in the reality we except today I was clearly written into it like every other fiction in this city. No part of the city is a holy truth-- she is all some sort of collective fiction, woven and unraveled according to the perspectives of each present.

The Guiding Light

A part of the SINOPALE 4: WISDOM OF SHADOW: ART IN THE ERA OF CORRUPTED INFORMA-TION. The 4th International Sinop Biennal in Sinop, Turkey 2012.

The soundwork is 25min38sec long

The Guiding Light - guides you through the Sinop historical prison grounds, it tries to create a tool, a viewfinder for you to see through, looking at how structures like prison and the lamp come to be. When the audience uses the lamps, to walk around the prison they recreate the performance of cynic philos-opher Diogenes that was born in Sinop that brought his light to the market in the daylight to look for an honest man. The works attempts to illustrate the act of seeing.

Experts from the soundwork:

Hello, I am a lamp and a light – I am a tool, I am an ob-ject, I am a cultural production, I am a form of movable light that has evolved over time. The form I embody at this moment in time was produced in China but is now for sale in Sinop. My form is the consequence of my use and an image of my user, whose human body, my size and weight, are figured from and proportional to, my function is the production of the mind belonging to this body and is at its will. At this moment in time it is your body, mind and will which I am referring to.

You first encounter with me is as your tool, one that you sign for and take responsibility for like the prisoners of the past signed for workshop tools to be accounted for at the end of the day. .... Let’s start here where we are, in the Sinop Penitentiary-Children’s Ward which was add-ed to the prison complex in 1936, with a lesson that was once taught here to the young inmates about the Cardi-nal Directions of north, east, south and west. The teach-er of this lesson was soon interrupted by a young voice whose question was about the use of these directions for himself and the others as their movements were con-fined within this space and heading in any direction was not on the horizon. The magnet of a compass would find no peace in a place like this but would just spin its needle in circles slowly forgetting there ever was such a direction as north that used to give it reference.

Just as I am the product of multiple authors, one of whom now gives me a voice, these walls within which we stand, the ones that are not companionate to mag-

nets and give no need for directions, these walls also have multiple authors. They are the ideas, product and labor of numerous leaders, architects, city planners, workers, politicians and civilians which have at some point moved these stones around, shaped their role and with it the city itself.

... Like Diogenes I ask you to bring my light with you even in the daylight to animate the act of seeing, and to use my light to remind you of the things we forget can be seen or at least sensed. Things drowned out by the sunlight, voices lost in the crowd, ethics whose value has been lost to society. I am speaking in this sense of both the visible and invisible constructions that are pos-sible to be sensed in the world. When Diogenes brings his light to the market to look for an honest man he is performing the act of looking and affirming what he is looking for at the same time. He creates a tool through which others can see what he feels is missing.

.. Maybe we can never really reach reality, which, for me is the understanding of every component of everything in all its complexity in both time and space, through all matter and all moments at once. But like the archaeol-ogist we can chisel at the grounds of these great ruins and find our way along its trajectory but not forgetting that we are already a part of that trajectory ourselves. For that reason we will never have a fixed vantage point because we can never stop time whether it exists or is only a perception of organic lifetimes.

THE GUIDING LIGHT:

A part of the SINOPALE 4: WISDOM OF SHADOW: ART IN THE ERA OF CORRUPTED INFORMA-TION curated by: Aslı Çetinkaya, Elke Falat, Işın Önol, Dimitrina Sevova, Janet Kaplan, Beral Madra, Sean Kelly, Associazione E (Francesco Ragazzi & Francesco Urbano), Jacqueline Heerema and Ana Riaboshen-ko. Participating artists: Alpin Arda Bağcık, Francesco Bertele, Brigitta Bödenauer, Quynh Dong, Amélie Brisson-Darveau, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, Monika Drożyńska, Harun Farocki, Karen Geyer, Shilpa Ghupta, Andreas (muk) Haider, Berglind Hlynsdottir, Minna Hint, Ashley Hunt, İnsel İnal, Volkan Kaplan & A. Erdem Şentürk, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Chris Oakly, Petra Elena Köhle & Nicolas Vermot, Petit-Outhenin, Bernd Oppl, David Rych,Cat Tuong Nguyen, Monika Rechsteiner, Reinigungsgesellschaft, Sümer Sayın, Liddy Scheffknecht, Lina Selander, Özlem Sulak, Riikka Tauriainen, Hande Varsat, Stefanie Wuschitz, Francis Alys. The 4th International Sinop Biennal in Sinop, Turkey 2012.

Endurminningar Söluturnsins (Memoirs of the Salestower)

The Salestower tells his memoirs and stories from the city life. Sound installation, paper sculpture and publication. A part of NÚNINGUR / FRICTION curated by Einar Garibaldi Eiríksson, Ólafur S. Gíslason and Kristinn E. Hrafnsson. Museum of ASÍ, Reykjavík 2012.

Critic by Hlynur Helgasson from the National Radio: Rás 1 - in the main cultural program Víðsjá. 18. April 2012

‘But there were certain artists and perhaps the best works are by artists who were not on site. We have Berglind Jóna Hlynsdóttir who is now in Brazil. Who makes a very interesting work, where she has made a small model of the Salestower in Lækjartorg (Söluturn-inum á Lækjartorgi) and calls the piece Memoirs of the Salestower and she published a meticulous catalog with the text, which is performed by actors from within the Salestower. The text is performed as if the Salestower itself is reviewing it’s own lifespan and this is a very interesting work and it just fits completely into this context and she is working strongly with it even if she is not physically present, she is clearly in Brazil shaping the work with goodtime.”

Abstract from:Memoirs of the Salestower in “Lækjartorg”Translated from Icelandic Finally in the spring of 1918 the town council agreed to allow Einar to relocate me on the plot between Kalk-ofsnvegur and Hverfisgata by Arnarhól. It apparently happened like this: “Great ropes were attached to the top of the tower, and then» pulled « with a great inten-sity. But midway the rope broke and the tower fell on its side, with a great bang and sound of cracking. On his way down he took with him quite a few phone lines and the towns people were without a telephone connection for much of yesterday. There were crowds of people gathered to watch »this transfer« and there seemed to be unilateral joy that this infamous »tower« is now about to disappear from central area.” This description was printed under the caption “The Salestower slain” from these words they use you can see that both my care takers and the administrative officers behaved as if on the battlefield and I was just another branch caught in the way, to be cut away from the apposing political forces and removed from the central playing field of the city and put on the sidelines. You can just imagine my joy over being chopped down and moved especially when the town’s people found it in their hearts to cheer and celebrate my removal. I was hardly a day in the new ground when the police in Reykjavík started to fuss over the gaping hole I had left behind on the central plaza of Lækjartorg and the papers wrote of “gaping dangers in the street” as if it wasn’t enough to be pulled up by the roots and replanted on the sideline just to be scolded over the muddy pit I left behind.

ENDURMINNINGAR SÖLUTURNSINS / MEMOIRS OF THE SALESTOWER:

The Salestower tells his memoirs and stories from the city life. a part of NÚNINGUR / FRICTION curated by Einar Garibaldi Eiríksson, Ólafur S. Gíslason and Kristinn E. Hrafnsson. Museum of ASÍ, Reykjavík 2012. ( for sound excerpt and pdf of the catalouge: www.berglindjona.is)

NewStand -confession of a Lietuvos Spauda

Sound installation and publication, produced with the Nida Art Colony, Nordic Cultural Fund and Myndstef, Nida, Lithuania 2012. The sound is 39min03sec long looped

About the work:

The work is a monologue recited by a newsstand on the Curonian Spit in the central square of the town Nida in Lithuania. The stand belongs to the biggest chain of newsstands in Lithuania that bear the name Lietuvos Spauda. In the piece the newsstand appears to reopen almost autonomously during the winter and fall season through which it normally stands abandoned. Reopened and lit up it starts to tell its own story about the town, its own history and the history of the spit as it distributes a new newsletter from it´s small window opening. The newsstand questions the public memory and official histories told, questioning how all societies choose to create their image with selective memories from the past. Through this it creates its own playful fictional perspective of itself in the past and present as well as of the history of the area, which is built on the artist’s research into the historical record and numerous interviews and conversations with locals.

The uninhabited newsstand spoke out to the surrounding square and passersby with a warm male voice, during a time when most of the towns tourists had left, leaving only locals and random Russian shoppers from Kaliningrad stopping for cheaper food on the Lithuanian side of the boarder of the Curonian Spit. During fall, winter and early spring the city drags in its wings leaving numerous buildings, restaurants, hotels, museums and other services in hibernation for a large part of the year. These are the same services that give the area most of its income. The newsstand addresses this as it comes out of hibernation to speak to the locals who frequent this square and the local Maxima store which is the only large supermarket on the Lithuanian side, which along with the fact that it is open all year round make it a central figure in the city life. The animated shed attempts to create a strange presence in this familiar and central site.

Excerpt from the sound piece:

“Being the clone that I am makes me wonder about reality, standing here on this sand spit between two battling bodies of water, far enough from the mothership to somewhat lose my allegiance. I wonder about my own reality and being, sometimes I wish I was built into a real timeline and that I was something other than this postmodern time-traveling impostor, but my historical camouflage comes with a good imagination and an inbuilt time machine. I have read enough history to know that everything is relative and after reading the news every day of my constructed life I can feel that the public memory is lacking in the everyday and local existence. Yes, maybe we are just grains of sand in some giant’s ocean and our smallest organic components do mimic images of large and vast galaxies in a way that might make us think that the infinitely small and infinitely big are somehow just the same mumbo jumbo. No matter how small and short of time we are in the vacuum of history, to our own senses always play the leading role as we draw breath and take steps through our possible landscapes.”

THE NEWSTAND – CONFESSIONS OF A LIETUVOS SPALDA:

is a monologue by the new stand, an installation and newspaper made in the central square of the town Nida on the Curonian Spit in a news stand that had been shut down for winter. Made for the Nida Art Colony, sponsored by the Nordic Culture Point and Myndstef Art Fund. Lithuania 2011. (for sound, monolog text and instal-lation views see: www.berglindjona.is)

About the work:

was a performative conversation, artist talk, open studio and collection of stories and memories from the stores customers regarding the regions history, I was based in front of the cash registers as people are leaving the store in a stand set up with over 30 store signs, Stating things like: Introductions are in order, For the love of compa-ny, Artist seeking stories about the Curonian Spit, Value of the day ect. The work was made for the exhibition IT´S OK, THEY LIVE HERE! – a public space exhi-bition created by the Nida Art Colony residents at the local supermarket Maxima in Nida, which is one of the main intersection points for the locals. I made made another work for the show that was integrated into the stores products called NIDA – Cashmere Moments, originally NIVEA- Cashmere Moments, a parody of how this small seaside town is excessively marketed for tourism.

INTRODUCTIONS ARE IN ORDER:

performance based installation for intviews with locals at the Maxima supermarket, the interviews where later used to create the charecter for the THE NEWSTAND shown before. Part of the exhibition IT´S OK, THEY LIVE HERE! Made for the Nida Art Colony, sponsored by the Nordic Culture Point and Myndstef Art Fund. Lithuania 2011.

Excerpt from text:

- the bandstand of the square of liberty is speaking -

So how do we, the citizens of this city, negotiate a rela-tionship with the past without being naïve and romantic about what it was? I think we can only understand the past from where we stand now, from our perspective in the here and now because time has changed us as much as it has history. We can never revisit what it was, but we can investigate the prescribed intentions of that history by being aware of our roles as the index to any knowledge we draw from it. I, a coreto in the liberty garden, have seen the city from this vantage point since my creation; some things I remember, others I choose to forget, and that is the only reality I can ever conceive of. I was constructed as the bandstand of liberty, in me the march for and songs of freedom were to roam. I was built on the same grounds as they inaugurated the city, where they built a temporary bandstand to use for the celebrations; I was conceived out of this festive envi-ronment and took the place of that bandstand as the coreto of the liberty gardens. I have stood here through progress and decline, through liberty and repression, I have been through numerous phases of decadence and reconstruction, I have been ignored and maintained as the garden of liberty who has been through various states; in 1969, they year after military government in-itiated AI 5 – Ato Institucional 5, it became the market that is now Feira Hippie. After serving as a market for many years, it was then it was cleaned up and restored to almost its original state in 1991—like a museum to itself. This is the same time that Brazil opened up to external markets. Maybe this treatment of Praça da Liberdade reflects how liberty was being treated.

Maintaining Liberty

was a monologue for the bandstand of Praca de Liberdade realized both in the public space as if the bandstand itself was talking and an as an installation with a model of the bandstand at the JACA art center for the show Entre Pontos, curated by Janaina Melo. It included a bilingual publication of the monologue. The piece looks at whose role it is to maintain liberty, how social ideas can be maintained with in struc-tures. Belo Horizonte, Brazil 2010.

Soundwork 47min19sec

Excerpt from text:

- the bandstand of the square of liberty is speaking -

So I ask, what is the quality of life we mineiros seek for? Liberty although late like the flag says? Is it equality, freedom, education, health, social agency, friendship, love? How are these questions of the quality represent-ed in the qualities we want of public spaces? Does a bench equal friendship, the sidewalk society, the trees our need for nature, a coreto love? How does the urban space compensate for these values? Is it assigned to them or are they inherent in their design? What values do I harbor as the child of the new republic, inaugurat-ed at the dawn of new liberties? I was inspired by the French Revolution but still coined with Versailles in mind and in that way I am both an image of the revolu-tion and what was being revolted against. It is this inner contradiction that might be the source of my internal torment. Ironically, although I was designed during a time called pre–modernism, the dawn of rational think-ing, some say I was already a postmodernist with my mismatch of references, so maybe I am not so unlike my fair lady Rainha da Sucata over there.

MAINTAINING LIBERTY:

was a monologue for the bandstand of Praca de Liberdade realized both in the public space as if the bandstand itself was talking and an as an installation with a model of the bandstand at the JACA art center for the show Entre Pontos, curated by Janaina Melo. It included a bilingual publication of the monologue. Belo Horizonte, Brazil 2010. (for sound, monolog text and installation views see: www.berglindjona.is)

Class Divider

A kinetic sculpture, moved by motor and sensors, fabric, carpet, plastic, wall mounts, advertising signs. Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Sweden 2010.

About the work:

In ongoing projects since 2005, I have been researching development and prefabricated structures in the greater Reykjavik area. I have done this to try to understand them, the underlying systems that develop them, as well as their international contexts, their local framework and impact. During this process I have found a number of strategies that have helped me evolve my work. In Class Divider a number of these strategies, like the isolation and transformation of the object, come forth.

A class divider is a curtain, a divider a partition for separating the different classes on a airplane. It blocks the view between one section and the other separating the first class from the second, 1 from 2. As much as it is a dividing structure it groups and binds together people who share the same social, economic, or occupational status. The class divider that I am captivated by is a curtain that is shaped like an airplane or a bird to perfectly create a cross section through the negative space of the airplane´s structure dividing its insides in two compartments. It is a flimsy and soft construction that does not bear great structural stance on its own but is a great placeholder for the real and very significant economical divide between the passengers on either side of it. In Konsthallen the Class Divider shifted and moved its barrier from place to place, from person to person, and changing the dynamics of its divide like a dance.

CLASS DIVIDER:

is a motorised and interactive sculpture. A realistic model of a class divider from an airplane divides the audience at will, the installation is triggered by a sensor when the audience passes through either end the divider changes it´s direction causing it to either come towards or follow the spectator - this movement makes the class dividers curtains swop and flow like a ballroom dress. A group show curated by Paula Zamora, Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Sweden 2010. (see: www.berglindjona.is)

Draw Your Horns and Husband Your Resources

photo sculptures mounted on aluminum and cut out. NEW NORDIC PHOTOGRAPHY curated by Linda Frisk. Hasselblad Center, Sweden 2010.

About the work:

Berglind Jóna Hlynsdóttirs´ work is playing around with concepts of collective holdings. Things of value bound together, properties cultivated in groupings and the bonds that hold them together. The bonds and hold-ings themselves are often of an evasive form. The names they are given are not so unlike the names given to works of art and their references can be from the tactile to the very superficial. The names are fictional additions that add to the value of the arrangements the properties are placed in.The photographs were taken in January 2009 in the middle of the economic collapse in Iceland. They are of stacks of expensive stone materials used in construc-tion, the kinds that make for fancy tabletops and they are bound together by straps. They are now the unmov-able property of a company based in the outskirts of Hafnarfjörður.

Image text:

Draw Your Horns & Husband Your Resources -- Tangi-ble Assets, Junk Bonds, Mixed Economy, Hard Curren-cy, Fixed Assets, Premium Bond, Fiscal Earnings, Joint Venture, Dedicated Portfolio, Hard Assets, Gross Profit, Real Property, Bond Fund, Physical Assets, Government Standard.

DRAW YOUR HORNS AND HUSBAND YOUR RESOURCES:

15 photographic pigment prints mounted on aluminum and sawed out, hung in perspective to recreate 3 dimentions acompanied by as many economic terms made up of compound words. I was nominated for the Victor – stipendium from the Hasselblad Center, shown as a part of NEW NORDIC PHOTOGRAPHY curated by Linda Frisk. Hasselblad Center, Sweden 2010. ( for installation views see: www.berglindjona.is)

Images from the collecting clones series

I started to document these structures in 2005, there was just something off, something about the way that they where being built, how many of them were popping up and how fast. These units meant for storing life that kept multiplying in the city landscape, they seemed to be the copies of copies, which were then already coming from a whole family of earlier copies. Something must have gotten lost on the way. Endless cloned unites making up prefabricated houses and patios had started to eat up more and more of the nature surrounding the greater Reykjavík area at an unprecedented speed. Even the lava fields were being devoured as part of this meal. In older neighborhoods the lava chunks had been incorporated in to spectacular gardens,

whose formations would sometimes even reach the rooftops of the old houses. Now they where mostly being bulldozed down by steamrollers - which would support the argument that maybe you can have too much of a good thing.

The cloned units that started popping up like fungus from the ground were clearly a symptom of a growing disease. I documented these eternal hives because they where the only part of this invisible infrastructure that I could hold on to. From the very beginning I was fascinated by how quickly we tried appropriating these structures and adapting them to our towns and cities to make them apart our home and community. We adapted,

bent and stretched them, as well as ourselves and the city, to try to normalize them but at the rate that they were growing it seemed like a losing battle. That’s when illness started to become more and more apparent. I think it was the bluntness of their size and banality that excited me. They were at the same time so obvious and took so much space in the city scape that it was easy to take them for granted and see them only as place holders, occupiers of landscapes not as the hives of infrastructures that had taken hold of society as a whole and reformatted with a virus that seemed only to want to destroy or simplify the notion of value.

Then came the fall and with it the abandonment of all that was once thought of as normal and these structures stand out, naked like the emperor in his new cloths, their camouflage fading like snow melting in the spring. For a moment everything is uncovered in the chaos like the ruins of the lives that people were still living whose futures had

already died and started decaying. Everything was accelerated; it was like watching the mental breakdown of the exterior world, which I am partially a product of. I started searching for any piece of information, web cast, sound bite, news update out there and listening, reading and watching all this material at once until I felt nauseous. Because of the chaos I felt like I was watching this worldview, with all of its complexity and dimensions at once, collapsing in slow motion. The noise of the situation was so much that I felt I could isolate myself and slow down the experience of this time. I am sure this comes from the brain’s primal instinct to be able to comprehend time differently and enhance the senses when exposed to extreme situations but I am not so sure this is good for the temporal health of the human heart.The scary thing about this otherwise fantastic visual turn was how quickly things went from being traces of something hidden in plan sight, and then unveiled for a moment just to become over simplified signifiers of that very event which at the end leaves them under read for the most part. The moment of uncovering and deconstructing was followed so quickly by a wave of new power formations and new political convictions that at the speed that they where traveling, many of them tended to over see and misappropriate many of the things actually uncovered. An archive of this totality runs much faster to oblivion then the one of the museum. As important as moving on, is what we are “moving on”, as in on top of and what we are actually moving from which are all so important in creating the destination of where we are moving to. I feel we have left a lot in the trenches and I saw these prefabricated structures frozen in the dead of winter just as the economic markets in Iceland had come to an almost complete stop, as some sort of potential tools. They were accompanied in this stand still by endless stacks of marble plates meant to be fitted as someone’s fancy kitchen tops which were now fixed in a limbo of uncertainty facing illegal immigrants waiting to find out if they will be deported or detained. They were now the unmovable property of a company based in the outskirts of the city, frozen sets of holdings, their value on ice. These stone plates had now lost their context; the prefabricated houses they were meant for, were themselves, in a state of emergency, both monuments to the economic crisis and the fiction of value.

Is a short story writen to acompany the work Draw Your Horns and Husband Your Resourses in the exhibition La X marca el lugar which opened November 15. 2012, currated by Juan Canela for the Bacelos Gallery in Ma-drid, to be later shown in Vigo.

by Berglind Jóna HlynsdóttirCOLLECTING CLONES

Dear Malevich

Video Installation 9min long. Found wood from loca-tion. Industrial straps. LET ME THINK! currated by Laura Mott for 3rd Moscow Biennale, Red October, Moscow. 2009.

About the work:

Dear Malevich is a video installation that came out of journey I took in Russia in a City called Vyshniy Vo-lochok while staying at the Academic Dasha. Where I photographed different architectural platforms con-templating the institutions that created, maintained or neglected them and the ones they currently housed then subsequently constructing a platform based on this research from of the remains of the women’s locker room of the Red October, which was under construc-tion to be transformed into the exhibition space the work was later shown in. This platform was then used as the backdrop and screen to project the sideshow on. The story juxtaposes 4 different but related narratives: the platform, the images and their movement, an open letter to Malevich contemplating perspective and sound from the Russian and American space race.

DEAR MALEVICH:

is a photo based video installation 9min looped, free standing scaffolding and screen built from scrap wood from the womens lockerroom in the former Soviet chocolate factory Red October. A part of the group show LET ME THINK! currated by Laura Mott for 3rd Moscow Biennale, Red October, Moscow. 2009.

Just Change. (The PPPTPC Institute)

Photo prints, mounted, sculpture, fabric, wood, glass bowls, Icelandic kr, publication. Rotor 1, Gothenburg, Sweden 2009

Excerpt from the campain: Just Change

We at the PPPTPC believe that the Change is just that: Change. Using our economic, structural and political strategies we have been successful in bringing about change with change. We destabilize local economies to restructure and establish power which we then again maintain through our long term development projects. Our strategies have proved successful in numerous local communities that we adapted and re-adapted them to meet, they have enabled us to tackle difficult local challenges with great prosperity . By issuing our own currency we are able to control the exchange rate and we make our new currency desirable through the sales of our many ventures, like the DisNý developments, PPPTPC financial departments and insurance companies to name a few. After gaining a market lead we drop the rate of our currency to be able to restructure the market. You don’t have to go farther then to Iceland to see the amazing ability of our Just Change campaigns there we have destabilized the local economy making the country ripe for the complete restructuring of value. Our Gothenburg projects are well on their way due invaluable efforts of our Gothenburg based supporters that have offered great help, guidance and insight into the local peculiarities. Thanks to these people our new GÖTE mint is already circulating in the city. The PPPTPC Just Change mission is to bring about change with change. Help us make this great exchange of change right here and sign up to become one of our pioneer members. The PPPTPC offers you to take home a token 1 Icelandic krona to remind you of the power of change.

JUST CHANGE:

is an exhibition installation and publication based on the fictional organization THE PPPTPC INSTITUTE for econom policy and development. First realized in Reykjavík and here implimented in Gothenburg, the institute works with publicity, propaganda, popular thinking and pop culture. All of the installations are made from abstracted parts of the logos from the all fallen banks in Iceland and the text are remixed from real foreign and Icelandic economic campains into the fiction of The PPPTPC Institute . Rotor 1, Gothenburg, Sweden 2009 ( for installation views see: www.berglindjona.is)

*The installation views seen above are from campains Just Change and Vík Vulture - Fund.

HEIMILISFRIÐUN = HOUSEHOLD RESERVE:

Is a site specific installation in two parts for the ex-hibition SJÖMÍLNA SKÓR, Cultural Center of Mos-fellsbær 2007.

About the work:

HEIMILISFRIÐUN = HOUSEHOLD RESERVE / (PEACE FOR THE HOME) is an installation in two parts dealing with nature and the home, how we collect and surround ourselves with kitsch images of nature in relation to how we deal with real natural environments that are close to our homes. The exhibition was held in a space run by the town of Mosfellsbær, which is in the greater Reykjavík area. The space is located inside a library which is intern located in a small shopping mall. I placed one part of the installation inside the exhibi-tion space, it was a collage of representations of nature from the home from house plants, embroidered images of plants and animals to photographs of exotic far away rain forests. The name plays with a common saying hung over the doors of people’s homes Heimilisfriður (peace for the home) and friðun which is something that has been declared protected like natural reserves and friðun samviskunar also points to the freeing of your conscience from guilt. The other installation was made outside of the library in the public space of the

shopping center. There I gathered all of the fake plants in the shopping center and aligned them in a single row in front of a heap of mud taken from the construction sites around Mosfellsbær where natural areas are being destroyed to build rows and rows of multi-manufac-tured housing. The installation was made in front of the signs that the city put up to show the new plans for those natural areas. The works are contemplation on our relationship with nature, our needs for it and questioning what we are going to replace our natural nature with. The work was taken down 2 days after the opening at the request of the maintenance supervisor and the head of the library because of their fears for it being destroyed by the teenagers that use the mall for recreation. The excuse was that all of the teenagers in Mosfellsbær are supposedly so badly raised that the work would be destroyed for sure. The irony being that there was nothing to destroy, the plants had always been there and I offered to clean up the mud if it would be thrown around.

HEIMILISFRIÐUN = HOUSEHOLD RESERVE:

A site specific installation in two parts. SJÖMÍLNA SKÓR, Cultural Center of Mosfellsbær 2007.

Don’t You Love Me Baby?

installation with a dancing plant / public servant on a robot vacuum in the City Hall of Reykjavík for SEQUENCES: Time Based Media Festival, City Hall of Reykjavík 2006.

About the work:

This was an installation I made at the City Hall of Reykjavik with a dancing plant/public servant. The sad plant danced around cleaning the floors of the City Hall to melancholic love songs from the 80´s. It was running on a robot vacuum cleaner, which has sensors to deci-pher where dirt has gathered in the public space. This desperate housewife, public servant extraordinaire felt unappreciated for all its work and loving care. Although most people found the plants strange movements and shifts funny at first they soon sensed the bitter sorrow that it emitted, which the songs underlined. During its installaion time I observed people chassing it, scream and laugh histaricaly and tilting their heads in sympa-thy.

DON’T YOU LOVE ME BABY?

This was an installation with a dancing plant / public servant on a robot vacuum in the City Hall of Reykjavík. A part of the SEQUENCES: Time Based Media Festival, City Hall of Reykjavík 2006. (www.sequences.is)

THE PPPTPC INSTITUTE

Installation and publication for SEQUENCES: Time Based Media Festival, in the old salestower, Reykjavík 2009.

Excerpt from PPPTPC campain:

is a private joint venture that aims at producing a new Reykjavík that reflects the new Iceland. We have a whole network of departments specialized in different fields that deal with the past, present and future of the city. We work within the commerce of tourism, mar-keting, analysis, finance, development, news and poli-tics. Our business is in publicity, propaganda, popular thinking and pop culture (PPPTPC). We try to use all the tools available to us in today’s information society. We use multimedia, various forms of catalogues, bro-chures, websites, and public events to reach our people. In this brochure, we introduce some of our projects. Thus, reflecting our identity and energy which emerged within the shores of Iceland. We want to enlighten you about Iceland and the wonderful city of Reykjavík. You will see the city through our eyes, learn about its history though our filters and start to understand the important projects we are building for the future. We have invited our partners around the world to partake in this project bringing you our vision of how to utilize and develop the city.

THE PPPTPC INSTITUTE:

is a this fictional organization for city policy and development, a private joint venture that aims at producing a new Reykjavík that reflects the new corporate Iceland. It is made up of online and offline campaigns, the brochure Reykjavíkurvasakver all using the the Old Salestower as headquarters. Sequences, Reykjavík 2009.

CONTACT:

BERGLIND JÓNA HLYNSDÓTTIR Born the 16th of November 1979 in Iceland WEBPAGE: www.berglindjona.isEMAIL: berglindjona@gmail.comIcelandic phone: -354849989brazilian phone: +5511962616625French phone: +33676102716