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dear reader - some
notes about my work
by Peter Land
Dear reader:
The texts you're about to read have been written over a period ranging
from 1995 to shortly before the publishing of this book. And as
my views on my work have changed over the years, I've reserved the
right to edit some of the early texts, just to bring them up to
date.
Peter Land 11 August 2000
Notes in general I figure that in my own work, through the recording
of acts and their repetition, I'm trying to reflect some basic conditions
of my own existence and perhaps to fill some sort of apparent meaning
into the meaningless. Maybe this meaning is to expose the meaningless.
In all my work, I try to isolate different aspects of my own self-perception.
It's like testing my own identity by means of reflections in the
form of recordings of myself in different staged situations. These
situations are often grotesque, caricatured or driven to extremes
as a way of isolating and enlarging the issue, to crystallize and
to mediate it as clearly as possible to myself as well as an eventual
audience. I regard extremity as a way of focusing, or as the Danish
painter Asger Jorn once said: "You either go to extremes or you
don't go at all".
This also relates to the apparent abjectness in some of my works.
By putting myself in situations within the work where I'm removing
myself from my socially provided feeling or idea of dignity, I try
to negate my own identity to a degree where a revised or renewed
self-perception may arrive. In that way I hope, from my work, to
receive a reflection that will clarify for me who I am.
In my case, the need has arisen from a feeling of a lack of social
spiritual meaning; an inability to establish my own meaningful existence
by means of the social. This is not meant in the sense that I'm
not able to find meaning in the more intimate short-term social
structures that arise in forms such as conversations, going to the
cinema or taking the bus. It's far more a failure on my behalf to
recognize my own identity as someone whose occupation of a place
in society serves as something meaningful in a spiritual sense.
This meaninglessness has to do with a sense of a decline of ethics.
Not in the sense that I'm loosing track of my feeling of what is
right and wrong in my everyday life - I think my social and cultural
background more or less successfully provides that - but in a sense
of lack of an overall meaning behind the fact of me being around.
I think that life without some sort of establishment of meaning
is the same as life without boundaries. And as this implies a paralyzing
spiritual as well as intellectual collapse, the issue of existence
becomes an ethical one.
It's by now a common philosophical idea, and at least very much
of a feeling to me, that there is no longer any apparent overall
ethical meaning behind existence, only a scientific explanation
of 'how' but not 'why'. The ethics of existence are no longer being
automatically provided from the outside world in the form of an
all embracing church or its likes, and the ethical structures that
I try to create on my own become invalid or don't apply as my perception
of reality changes or is being changed, and has to be rebuilt repeatedly.
I guess my work with art is instrumental in my pursuit to establish
an ethical meaning behind my own existence. In that way you can
say that I need it to preserve myself from dissolving mentally,
descending into apathy because of a lack of guidelines on how to
interfere with the rest of the world, and I also need it to reflect
to myself that, at least, this hasn't happened yet.
Peter Land 1995 (edited by the artist 2000)
Notes on Peter Land 6 February 1994 Before I entered the art academy
in Copenhagen, my attitude towards art-making was pretty innocent.
I wanted to make paintings. I didn't have a clear idea why, but
at the time that didn't prevent me from doing it. Then, after entering
the art academy, I was confronted with questions from my teachers
as well as the more scholarly part of my fellow students as to what
I wanted to say with what I did. What was the purpose? I have to
admit that I'd never thought about art in that way before. After
that, it went pretty much downhill for Peter Land the 'abstract
expressionist painter'. I got more and more confused as to what
I wanted to do (and what I wanted to say). In the end I decided
that I had to abandon painting all together. In a sense I felt that
I had worn out that possibility for myself.
Now the question remained, if I was not supposed to make paintings
(which at the time was the only technique I knew), then what should
I do. I got so far as to the point of considering quitting art altogether.
This is when I encountered the early video works of Bruce Naumann
and Vito Acconci as well as 'Heidi' by Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy.
That's about as close as I can get to the time when I decided to
try out the video media on my own as one last resort. It had two
qualities I was looking for. 1. I liked what I'd seen so far by
other people working in the media. 2. It was total virgin territory
to me.
After having decided on using video as a way out of my creative
crisis (because I think that's the proper term) only one, but very
important, issue had to be settled: What should I film?
As the creative crisis mentioned above had also soaked into my understanding
of myself and my life, I was in an existential turmoil at the time,
and had a very low opinion of myself. I decided that the first video
work I did should be instrumental in putting things in their right
place for me: By challenging some of the values I had been brought
up to believe in, and which were still very much part of my psychological
make-up, I wanted to put my perception of myself as a moral being
to the test. I still just didn't know how.
That's when I, walking through the red-light district of Copenhagen,
came across a small notice in a window of a porn shop saying that
for a rather low fee, you could go and make your own photographs
of nude girls. My first thought when I saw this note was; "I'd never
do anything like that!". I grew up with a single mother, and as
such I think I'm pretty sensitive to women being abused. A bit further
down the street it struck me that my inhibitions about doing something
like that was the exact reason why I should do it. Test my own limits.
I wrote down the telephone number, and after a great deal of hesitation
I phoned the place named in the ad. I got a girl on the phone who
told me a little bit about the conditions. I asked if I could use
a video camera instead of taking photos. She didn't see any problem
in that as long as I paid the fee. We agreed on a date. On the 6th
of February I went out to the suburb of Copenhagen to the address
in the ad. I was very nervous, so I had had a few drinks. I was
greeted by a fat guy with long greasy hair who showed me around
on the premises. The 'studio' was a 'one family house' which had
been decorated with fluffy carpets, pictures of nude girls and kitschy
couches. I was told that occasionally they also made hardcore porno
films there.
Now I was introduced to the girls. From the video you'll know what
they look like. They seemed very tough. They scared me. Asking these
two girls to strip dance in front of a video camera was quite an
ordeal in itself; not just because of the girls themselves, but
also because of my own inhibitions.
As I already knew at the time that the video was going to be shown
publicly, I decided to make my own presence in the whole thing more
clear by walking back and forth a few times in front of the camera
during the shoot. After we'd finished shooting the video I tried
to explain to the girls that the footage was going to be shown as
an artwork. They didn't seem to understand. The answer I got was
"This is art!? That's what they all say". I see the video very much
as part of a personal and artistic strategy; an act of liberation
from a socially induced self-perception. By making this video, and
especially by showing it publicly, I tried to liberate myself from
what I perceived as moral expectations on the part of society. By
doing and showing something that I knew a lot of people would find
morally unacceptable I felt I achieved this, at least in my own
mind.
Peter Land 2000
About Peter Land 5 May 1994
This was my second video, and the purpose behind it was very much
the same as in Peter Land 6 February 1994. It was also to a large
extend derived from a feeling of guilt that I'd been carrying around
since showing the first video. Also, I wanted to encounter a personal
feeling I had at the time, that a lot of the art I saw around me
was more of a front for the artist, a kind of cool surface, rather
than a genuine attempt at saying something sincere. To me art is
very much a way of communication, a kind of one way conversation
that will become dull to the listener as well as to the person talking
if he/she is afraid of unmasking him/herself and showing their vulnerabilities.
I think art is inherently a vulnerable business, and if one is not
prepared for the costs involved, one shouldn't work in this field
in the first place. Another thing that played in my mind at the
time was that I wanted to comment on the media-generated notion
of bodily beauty as seen in ads and magazines and the whole body-fixated
culture of the eighties and early nineties. I wanted to do that
by putting up a counter-image; that of my own, far from perfect,
body.
In the beginning, I thought it would be a fairly simple task to
shoot this video. It would be me, alone, in my one-bedroom flat
in Copenhagen, strip-dancing to a selection of pop tunes. There
would be nobody else in the room except myself, a CD player and
a camera on a tripod. It turned out to be far more difficult than
I anticipated. After looking through the first attempt, I realized
that I was far to self-conscious and inhibited when dancing. What
I wanted to be a roar came out as a chirp. I decided I had to film
the whole thing all over again, just this time I had to do something
about my shyness.
The next day I went to a local bar and had a few drinks. Just enough
to make my head buzz. Then I went back to my apartment and tried
again. It still didn't work to my satisfaction.
After seven days of excessive drinking and video-filming, I at last
thought that I got it right, but I have to admit that I don't remember
anything from the actual shooting of the video.
Peter Land 2000
About Pink Space
The video shows me in a series of sequences dressed as an entertainer
in a gold lamé suit entering a pinkish space containing a
barstool and a table with a glass and a bottle of whisky. This happens
to the sound of quiet piano music. In each sequence I try to climb
the barstool but subsequently fall down.
It is possible to show the video along with an installation of the
artifacts used in the video, but not necessary.
The work is about my feeling of failure in my attempts at establishing
meaning on a personal as well as an artistic level. The feeling
that I'm expected to say or do something meaningful; to interfere,
but that the mental apparatus needed for such an act has collapsed
or evaporated, and I'm left dumb. I'm using the role of the entertainer
as a metaphor for this: The entertainer is expected to handle the
situation, to tell jokes or sing and dance within a given set-up.
This makes perfect sense/meaning when rapport is established between
the entertainer and the audience. In this video the attempt of the
entertainer (me) to fulfil this function in a sensible way; to perform
in the way that is expected of him, is made impossible by the fact
that he constantly falls down from the barstool he's supposed to
sit on.
Peter Land 1995 (edited by the artist 2000)
Thoughts on Step Ladder Blues
I've always been deeply fascinated, and at the same time repulsed
by people who seem to have a clear sense of purpose in their lives.
People who can distinguish between what's important, and what's
unimportant, and refer to their surroundings in terms of their place
in the 'Big Picture'. I guess it's a kind of jealousy. I envy these
people for the stubbornness with which they are able to maintain
their beliefs, the orderliness of their lives, their ability to
focus themselves in this world. A world that to me seems utterly
confusing and disorderly. A world in which any foundation for firm
convictions or beliefs are transitory and untrustworthy.
As an artist, one of the questions you constantly are forced to
consider is: "What is the purpose of what I do?'". And in the immediate
neighborhood of that question you'll find these: "What's my purpose
as a human being? What's my justification?". These are the questions
that present themselves most strongly in my work as an artist, but
also in my perception of myself as a person who breathes the oxygen
we all share, takes up space in this world (and in the line at grocery
store), and bothers people with messages that may be important to
no one but myself.
I guess that my work with art is instrumental in my pursuit to establish
a valid meaning behind my existence as the ethical structures that
I try to create around me become invalid or don't apply, and as
my perception of reality changes or is being changed.
This is the Sisyphean condition that Step Ladder Blues relates to:
The scenario of the housepainter trying to fulfill his purpose in
vain, constantly climbing the step ladder to perform the seemingly
simple task of painting the ceiling and constantly failing at it
represents this inability to maintain an underlying meaning to support
one's existence. How does one establish meaning when the ideological
apparatus needed for such an act collapses or at least seems very
unstable (like the ladder)?
I guess a few words about my choice of music for the video are necessary,
too: I know that the choice of Wagner is regarded by some people
as controversial.
I have to admit that politics played no part in my choice of the
overture of 'Tannhäuser' as the soundtrack for the video. The
reason for selecting that piece of music was purely based on the
fact that it fit so well with the scenery of the video. The music
is extremely 'heroic' and romantic, and seems to 'climb upwards'
all the time, whereas the housepainter is anything but heroic and
constantly falls down. On top of that I found out that the story-line
of this particular opera is about a knight on the quest for divinity.
At the end of the opera he finds it, but at the cost of his life.
I see that very much as a romantic parallel to my housepainter
Peter Land 1998 (edited by the artist 2000)
A few notes on The Staircase
The video work The Staircase is a double video projection: one projection
depicts a man falling in slow motion down several flights of stairs.
The video has been edited, so that it seems that the staircase is
endless. The other projection is a computer-generated image of the
universe, with stars slowly moving towards the spectator.
The idea behind the work is based on my longstanding interest in
falls and failures also manifested in earlier works like Pink Space
and Step Ladder Blues. My concern in these works has broadly speaking
been the relationship between the personal and the universal: The
feeling of being a bacteria-like creature trying to make sense of
and create some meaning and justification behind his/her existence
in a vast and ever-expanding world where the individual may seem
unimportant.
My interest in infinite falls stems from the idea that when you
question the basic conditions of existence, you at the same time
challenge yourself with questions that not even the greatest philosophers
and spiritual thinkers of our time have been able to answer to everybody's
satisfaction. (Anyway, I don't think there are that many philosophers
left who see the construction of an eternally valid explanation
of the world as part of their job-description today). However, it
is exactly the above-mentioned issues that set me ticking as an
artist: "What am I doing here?", "Is there a purpose of me being
around?", in other words; "what's the value of me as an individual?".
When you start asking yourself these questions, you in effect challenge
the very basis of your existence. All of a sudden the values you
may have taken for granted on all kinds of levels, socially as well
as spiritually, become dubious, and what might have seemed to you
as eternal rock-solid truths before, suddenly appear relative and
shaky. You have in effect stumbled (pushed yourself?) over the edge
of the stairs and into an eternal fall, a kind of existential limbo,
from which there's seldom any escape. I'm still falling.
Peter Land 1998 (edited by the artist in 2000)
About The Cellist
In The Cellist, I have tried to make a video in which a number of
my inspirations are merged. In that sense the work can be seen as
homage to slapstick comedy, DaDa, Fluxus as well as the theatre
of the absurd. It's also derived a lot of inspiration from earlier
works by myself such as Peter Land 5 May 1994, Pink Space and from
my deep love for classical music. Peter Land 2000
Joie de Vivre I've always believed that a work of art should be
open to individual interpretation, and of all my video works so
far I think Joie de Vivre is by far the most open.
The title of the video is derived from early surrealist works by,
for instance, Max Ernst and André Masson, in which they in
their own manner try to expose the basic conditions of life.
Joie de Vivre is a double video projection of two heads (my own)
laughing endlessly without any defined source of fun. Thus, instead
of defining laughter as a reaction to something outside the person
laughing, the laughter becomes a mystery: Why is this person laughing.
The sound and images have been slowed down to create a sinister
atmosphere, as I didn't want people to think that the only possibility
was that this person was having the time of his life. I wanted to
open up the possibility that maybe this guy was on the brink of
insanity as well.
Anyway, it's up to the viewer to make the final decision about why
this person is laughing his head off.
Peter Land 2000
A note on The Lake
In this video, the spectator is confronted with a man dressed as
an outdoorsman; a hunter, gun over his shoulder, who purposefully
strides through a forest-like environment. The soundtrack is taken
from Beethoven's 6th Symphony also known as the 'Pastoral'.
The object of his excursion is not revealed until he reaches a small
boat at the edge of a lake. He rows out into the middle of the lake,
fastens the boat to a pole in the water, all this still happening
to the tunes of Beethoven. He then proceeds to stand up in the boat
and releases the safety hatch on the gun, as if about to shoot ducks.
He then aims the gun at the boat and shoots.
Immediately at the sound of the shot the music stops.
The next half of the video shows the hunter sitting in the boat
as it slowly sinks until all that's left is the hunter's hat floating
on the surface of the lake. The only sound that can be heard is
birds chirping in the forest. The video finishes with a series of
shots of forest scenarios, insects, the sound of a cuckoo nearby,
etc. The forest without any human presence. As in other of my works,
The Lake revolves around the relationship between the individual
and the rest of the world. But in The Lake, focus is very much directed
at the impossibility of trying to imagine the world without oneself
in it. The idea that the world will continue, also after I'm dead:
A thought that's always scared me, but which I guess I should find
reassuring.
Peter Land 2000
A few notes on the drawings
As I think I've stated somewhere else in these notes, I started
out as a painter. That is not entirely true. I started out, as I
think every child does, destroying my parents' books with crayons,
pencils, markers and whatever else I could lay my hands on. Later
on, my parents decided that it might save them some agony and a
lot of expensive books if they bought me a drawing block instead.
What I'm trying to get at here is that I am, and always have been,
very fond of making drawings. Unfortunately, as I experienced a
dry spell in my relation to painting around 1993, I also found it
enormously difficult to make drawings. It took me three years of
work in different media (mainly video) to get back to the point
where making a drawing would make sense to me again. That point
arrived around 1996, when I made the first drawing which I perceive
as derived from the same basic source as my video work; Exit/Entrance.
In this drawing, I'm trying to depict the same Sisyphean condition
that I think one finds in a lot of my video work: A no-win situation
where you're bound to be unsuccessful no matter what you do. If
you walk through the entrance you'll be doused with a bucketful
of water. If you try to exit you'll get knocked out by a boxing
glove at the end of a pole. In later drawings like The Strange Dream
Came Back Again Last Night, but also Back in Focus and My Recapitulations
I draw on the tradition of the expressionist self-portrait mixed
with caricature to present people (myself) in absurd situations
where a loss of control is taking place.
For a long time, I've been deeply fascinated by the books of Lewis
Carroll and with them also the original illustrations by Sir John
Tenniel. I tried to appropriate the style of these drawings in Walks
and Wonders in the Jeanette Forest, a series of nine large watercolor
drawings I made in connection with the video The Lake. The drawings,
like the video, depict a hunter and his experiences on a walk through
a forest, but whereas the video is pretty much down to earth, the
drawings incorporate quite a few surreal elements that you don't
find in the video. The hunter in effect becomes a portrait of myself
as Alice.
Another longstanding fascination of mine has been the work of the
'outsider' artist Henry J. Darger. The mere fact that this guy spent
a lifetime making two thousand drawings, and writing fifteen volumes
of text without anybody finding out until after his death is remarkable
in itself. But on top of that, these drawings are actually well
executed and give you an insight into the secret world of a very
remarkable man indeed.
He's most definitely the source of inspiration for my latest drawings
such as The Children's Unit 1 - 2, in which I try to combine the
dreamlike quality of the fairytale, with the outrageousness of Marquis
de Sade. Basically I don't think that there's anything new in doing
that. If you read the stories collected and written by the Grimm
brothers, a lot of them are pretty scary themselves. And I firmly
believe that even the worst nightmare, the grimmest vision, simply
by being within the boundaries of human conception should be brought
out into the open rather than being suppressed. Suppressing them,
I think, is the same as running the risk that they might come true.
Peter Land
2000
Originally published
in Peter Land, published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, for the exhibitions
in Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Kunsthaus Glarus and Stadt Galerie Kiel
ISBN 3-7757-9056-X
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