An interview:
Viel Bjerkeset Andersen
Hello Viel and welcome to NotRandomArt. To start with, would you like to tell us something about your artistical as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistical point in your life when you are now?
Thank you for your interest in my art!
I grew up in an academic arts and crafts family; my father has a PhD in nuclear physics and spent all his life at the University in Oslo, my mother was a textile arts and crafts teacher at the HiO-A in Oslo, so during my childhood I spent lots of time playing at their work. At both places I experienced the dualism between experiments and research, and the rational and logic. I felt free to disturb my parents colleagues to satisfy my curiosity on every topic I at the time was interested in. I loved being in those two institutions, the people were so generous. And the most popular birthday parties were those where my father showed physical experiments from everyday life.
At home we had a quite good workshop and dark room for developing black and white photos. I got my own camera at early age, and learned how to make photos the analogue way, to wind up films in complete darkness at the toilet, and I spent lots of time in the dark room. And I guess my handy parents took for granted that as a girl I should handle all tools as easy as my elder brothers did. I was not a very girlish child, and I liked to be by my self, to find out things by my self. I had little projects all the time.
But it was not at all evident that I should be an artist; I was very much into nature, deeply interested in being under water, investigating everything I could manage under sea level. As early teenager my leading star was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, I started early with diving. I wanted to become a marine biologist to be as much as I could under the sea. But my initial efforts starting at the university made me really unhappy, so I quit. Switched to the other part of my self; using my hands, creating things, investigating and inventing, creating stories. I applied to both architectural and art schools, and was accepted at both. I chose the arts and crafts, followed by the art academy in Oslo.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
Oh, it is not a simple answer to that question!
During my practice as a visual artist, I have been more and more aware of how light influences me. Of course, growing up in the far north, Norwegians are doomed to circle their life around the ever changing daylight following the seasons; depressive during the dark winter, delirious during the light summer. We are so to speak, a bi-polar people!
In the beginning of my art career I was very attracted to the candy shop-like room, full of all the world’s light technique I could dream of, but now I find it more and more interesting to be aware of the very subtle shifts in natural light, and how to use that light into my art works, either directly or metaphorical. I have left the candy shop now. The light technique per se does not interest me, it is just a question about how much you pay to get good technicians and the right stuff.
What interests me is what the light means as a human experience, and how to use light as material, a kind of paint or surface or construction in an art installation. To catch the light in such a way that the audience could confront it with their mind and body. Light is inter-human and inter-religious. It is a common visual communicative language.
Most artists are dealing with shades of light in one or another way, but when using light more directly as material and matter, as I often do in my art projects, it is impossible not to be affected by James Turrell´s work; how he manages to use light in such a sophisticated way. Many criticise him for repeating himself, commercialising the Skypace by putting it up all over the world. I have visited and spent quite a lot of time in different Skyspaces, and it is a different experience in every space! Depending on the latitude, temperature, humidity, time of day and year, natural sky light or mixed with the programmed inner light, combined with the mood in your mind and body, you will never see the same light and colours. And you need to spend time in the space to experience it, and of course, since I am much more interested in the light’s subtlety than many others, I can just sit there and let my gaze and thoughts go. It is very meditative.
As a part of the Art Committee at the new Ekeberg Sculpture Park in Oslo, I suggested that we should invite James Turrell to propose a site specific art work for us, and he has made a beautiful combined art work in an old water tank; a combination of two light works, a Ganzfeld and a Skyspace situated under a pond. You will not find this combination any place in the world. And because of this collaboration with him in Oslo, I was lucky to get the opportunity to visit his still ongoing masterpiece, The Roden Crater situated far out in the Arizona desert. To be in the crater was a huge, massive and subtle experience at the same time.
Good architecture of architects who know how to form space and light, like the works of Louis Kahn and for instance the convent La Tourette by Le Corbusier, where I stayed a couple of nights together with my architect husband when we were students, can give me the same physical experience, and can even influence me more than art.
With music it is the same. I go to lots of concerts and music festivals, and use different music as mind openers; a help to solve problems or to get energy. But I always get back to works by Steve Reich. His minimalistic, repetitive compositions flows like mantras, small changes in system and rhythm creating new rooms. I am fascinated by how the immaterial like light and sound, can make physic visions of rooms and space.
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