Norwegian Film Art: Marianne Heske
Minimalen celebrates Marianne Heske’s first 60 years as a practicing artist with this unique opportunity to experience a broad selection of her video art in a cinema theatre.
Marianne Heske is an internationally recognized conceptual artist and one of the most important living Norwegian artists. She is particularly known for her video paintings, installations, and interdisciplinary projects. Heske is considered the creator of what is regarded as Norway’s first conceptual artwork, Project Gjerdeløa.
Heske’s work is rooted in the international tradition of conceptual art, particularly as it developed in the Netherlands, but are distinguished by a greater degree of spontaneity and openness to unforeseen and accidental deviations from the planned course, as well as a pronounced sense of the dramatic and the humorous.
She was educated at the Bergen School of Arts and Crafts, the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Royal College of Art in London, and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. She was awarded a state artist’s grant in 2004 and is widely regarded as a pioneer in her field. This autumn, a number of her works were acquired by the British Museum.
The quotes are from Marianne Heske in conversation with Marit Paasche, Conversations with Norwegian Video Artists.
Print Source: Marianne Heske
Programme
Using the well-known MGM Studios logo as a point of origin, Heske has played around with the internationally known icon to make the lion behave in ways quite unlike what we have come to expect. The film can therefore be experienced as a meta-commentary on the history and development of the film industry.
The idea underlying phrenology is the postulation of a connection between the skull’s external outline and the different areas of the brain, areas where talents and aspects of the personality are localised. Today, nobody takes the theory seriously. Marianne Heske makes use of it to ask questions. Are there eternal truths and values in science (and art)? And the things we believe in and practise today, what will history’s verdict be about them?
Shot in Paris, with people walking around wearing puppet masks.
'Masquerade II was recorded in Maastricht. I filmed puppets wandering through the streets.'
'I have been fascinated by William Shakespeare all my life. Already at the age of seventeen, I traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon and spent a summer there. In [this] video, I pursue themes related to roles and the stages on which they are played out — in this case the religious, the musical, the artistic, and the arena of life itself, which culminates in death.'
Video portraits of Anne and Peter, which entirely revolve around the idea that everyone plays their roles. 'I went to Speakers’ Corner and listened to those standing on their boxes preaching. One believed he was Jesus, so he invited me home to talk about what he was doing. Peter was fiery red-haired and a convinced Marxist, and Anne from Ireland was a super-feminist. Everyone is blessed in their own belief, you might say.'
The camera focuses on a cud-chewing camel, the sound has been dubbed to give the impression of a distorted discourse on video art.
'The video was recorded with a Portapak and is in black and white. Norwegian landscapes are, after all, black and white in winter. I walk with the camera in Tafjord and record my own footsteps in a forest of birch trees. It is winter, the snow is wet and heavy, and it is utterly indescribably beautiful. Unfortunately, this video is short (...): the colder it was, the faster the battery ran flat. That’s how prosaic it was.'
Postcard motives from Norway, in colours.
Sound and visuals.