SELVSKAP
Abstract
ENG:
SELVSKAP (82 pages, pdf)
A project comprised of four carved wooden works and a written self-criticism. The four wooden works that make up the physical part of SELVSKAP (E. selfhood) are named: I’Moustache, Taweret-panel, Sentry, AUTO-PROBLEMATICA. They are all separate and integral to each other, both wood and words.
CONTENS
PREMISE (p. 5-10)
NOTES FROM A COMMENTATOR (p. 11)
PART 1 Anger (p. 12-21)
PART 2 Auto-Problematica (p. 22-48)
HERMENEUTIC MODEL (p. 34)
PHOTOS OF SELVSKAP (p. 35-48)
PART 3 Taweret (p. 49-82)
Utenforskap (p. 50-55)
TECH DRAWINGS (p. 56-61)
Wood and wormholes (p. 62-65
Mythic mahogany (p.66-68)
Close encounter (p. 68-70)
Failure (p. 71-73)
Danger (p. 73-76)
Suspicion (p. 76-78)
The suspect (p.79-82)
This pdf documents the act of writing reflections as a research process [1] accompanied with photographs of the wooden results they are reflective of. The writing is relative to these artistic works, but also relative to the previous projects in the development of this PhD. The aim of the work, documented here, is that it might lead to reflection that is explicit, on the reason of this being part of a larger PhD-project (Ornamentskap/Skapornamentikk), which by programmatic standards demands such a reflection. As the project SELVSKAP is element to this project, it is an experiment which attempts to discover something of importance regarding writing reflections as a critical exercise. Since we have moved from critical to explicit, I need a new frame.
I begin with critical in the sense of what it may hatch instead of critical as a balancing act on the cusp of crisis: Krises, from Hippocrates, describes a turning point in the progression of diseases to either recovery or decline, and root to the word critical. The critical frame, then, might extend this point forward in time. Could this framework also be carried over to a suspension of artistic choices, too? Could I leave behind critical as a way of nursing a problem, to a surgeon eager to cut? The explicit concept is frightening because it implies a disclosure of what is implicated in the woodworks. It isn’t easy to know this, so the self-criticism may well be part of this learning. I have therefore substituted the documentation of the physical processes with writing. A design aimed at searching for this frame, found or not.
Either way, this document underscores the difficulty of writing, reflecting, and disseminating from inside an artistic process, from a mode of curiosity, euphoric engagement, and naivety, carried over from the mode of the workshop. It is written from a frustrated perspective where artistic choices and skills are accepted as a kind of esoterica while the reasoning, understanding and intelligence of a text is part of the public tools. The question of the critical or explicit frame becomes a question of what the transferences between the act of writing and the acts in the workshop/atelier are doing to each other. They don’t seem to enable the same thinking, even when done by the same person. It is seen as an opportunity to work with/in the schizophrenic spilt in our collective consciousness described by Paul Tillich [Theology of Culture, 1959]
[1] Øyunn Syrstad Høydal. Når samfunnsforskere skriver som maskiner. Morgenbladet 3. Jan 2025)
Maren Bang Tøndevold: commentator and reader.
NO:
SELVSKAP (82 pages, pdf)
Dokumentasjon av (selv)kritisk refleksjon som del av den kunstneriske forskningsprosessen, med fotografier av hva det er reflekterende av.
Et prosjekt bestående av fire treskjærte arbeider og en skreven selvkritikk. De fire trearbeidene, som utgjør den fysiske delen av SELVSKAPet er gitt navnene: Barten, Taweretpanelet, Vakttårnet, AUTO-PROBLEMATICA. De er alle separate og integrete i hverandre, både treverk og ord.