ThThe Future Is Right Here

by Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam

“The plan is for this small part to which you now have access to grow tenfold in size. On completion, the structure will stand as a monument to our shared cultural heritage. Whenever any of us come here, our thoughts will turn to our common ancestors and their achievements, which form the foundation for the work that we continue today” 2012.

Jesper Dalgaard’s oeuvre is growing. Since his student days at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s, his focus has been on developing a science fiction-style universe comprised of meticulously crafted floating planets, videos, paintings, miniature model interiors, watercolours of stick figures and curious spruce stem constructions – all of which sport long quirky titles. Now this science fiction world is taking on larger dimensions, evolving into large-scale installations that viewers are invited to walk around in. The upscaling of the models brings it home to us that, rather than being confined to some distant future in another realm, they are part of our world, even as we are part of them.

Wood

Dalgaard has shown a special interest in wood throughout his oeuvre. Spruce stem structures and woodpiles have appeared as recurring elements, and indeed the quotation introducing this essay is the title of a large-scale wooden scaffolding structure that we as visitors are obliged to move around in if we are to get to see the wider exhibition.

In his article ‘Dreams Materialized’, Rune Gade draws attention to what he calls the “curious collision” between the artist’s science fiction style utopias and materials that “far from having anything particularly futuristic about them are distinctly ordinary and everyday”. And wood in particular serves to anchor Dalgaard’s pieces in the world as we know it. Dalgaard’s gargantuan spruce stem installation may be read as a comment on the megalomaniac human urge to build, ever larger, ever higher – an urge that is near synonymous with the whole notion of progress. Not that Dalgaard is any kind of Luddite. His mission seems not to be recommending that technological advance be halted, with us all going back to nature and living in log cabins. Well, not necessarily at least. Dalgaard simply asks us to stop for a moment and give some thought to what we are striving for in our lives and what we want for the world. This is arguably what he is getting at in the title of the slightly earlier spruce stem model, which reads:

“Nothing will escape our notice now.  We’ll soon reach the skies, look out over the clouds and survey the whole earth. Up there, you’ll have the earth at your feet. We, the inhabitants of the world, have finally demonstrated our superiority. Our neighbours will soon realize this and submit” 2008.

Dalgaard is interested in traces of human activity and he depicts human history through our relationship to wood. Wood is nature: something given, something primeval that we work and interact with. Wood is also an enabler, mirroring our progress from one (evolutionary) stage to the next. Perhaps through the ingenuity of a single individual, as in the piece entitled:

”For many years, we were forced to leave the village in the rainy season and take to the uplands, but not any more. Now, thanks to the sharp wits of the headman’s son, we all stay comfortably dry” 2005.

This piece consists of a little hut raised on poles, and is precisely what it purports to be. But Dalgaard also uses wood to more abstract ends, where the connection between title and visual work is less descriptive. Here the wooden structures represent social structures or models of society. Examples of this include a series of models constructed from thin spruce stems and a floating planet, closely tiled with firewood fragments, entitled:

“We all had a clear sense of being part of something special” 2008.

The title reflects our cherished belief in individuality, despite the fact that the wood fragments making up the piece are indistinguishable. With his planet, Dalgaard points up how incredibly alike we all are despite the widespread view to the contrary.

Platitudes Given Visual Form

In the 1870s, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote an interesting little book entitled Le dictionnaire des idées recues [The Dictionary of Received Ideas]: an alphabetically ordered glossary that with mordant irony and acerbic wit exposes the shibboleths, clichés and accepted pieties espoused by the French bourgeoisie at the time. Dalgaard is engaged in a similar sort of enterprise. His pieces vividly expose tired truisms, bringing them to life so that they lose their triteness and suddenly need rethinking. From the garden owner’s “Reconnaissance –14 different varieties in one season; that’s a record, surely!” 2010, to the householder whose house wall has been plastered with street art, ”They are my walls, bought and paid for by me. Why can’t they respect that?/ Where’s the arm of the law when you need it?” 2009, to the corporate sector’s management speak, “Believe me, we really do work as a team. There are practically no disagreements between us. We quickly sorted out who would be responsible for what. Which explains why we were able to meet as many of the challenges as we did” 2004.

Offhand, this last example has a positive ring. But when we take a closer look at the work itself, which consists of a spruce stem structure in miniature (here executed in ceramic), we discover that the outcome of the collective endeavour stands in ironic contrast to the title’s upbeat assessment: the structure looks decidedly rickety and it would seem that at least one member of the team has gone his own way and built a little tower for himself that is out of kilter with the rest of the composition. So, too, with the piece dubbed:

“It was a long, backbreaking process. The entire crew was working flat out, but we got there in the end – or so we thought, at least. For then new commands were issued from on high” 2010.

This title will surely strike a chord with many who have been involved in major merger schemes. And contemplating the rambling, labyrinthine spruce stem structure, we feel compelled to ask: What is the point of it? For even though the structure is continually being expanded in height and width, the multi-levelled platforms look exactly alike, and so it remains unclear what the immense labour that has gone into it has ultimately achieved.

Is it all an ironic farce or a wellspring of banality? Possibly both. But it’s certainly entertaining since it exposes the sort of thing that we are always hearing said and that we ourselves say to each other without batting an eyelid.

Iconic Stick Figures

Clichés and platitudes are conventions. Icons too are conventional visual representations whose meaning or content is immediately recognizable. We have grown accustomed to icons, which are used to communicate rules, prohibitions and practical information. They tell us that here parking is allowed, that lorries are forbidden to overtake, that smoking is banned and the consumption of ice creams prohibited. The red man tells us to stop and wait, this skirted stick figure indicates the ladies’ toilet facilities; pressing the arrow icon fast forwards the compact disc while pressing the green button confirms and completes a transaction. Icons become conventional signs that we almost unthinkingly respond and adapt to – or deliberately flout. And even though the individual’s happiness, love, disgruntlement or sadness may be felt as deeply personal, we increasingly communicate these emotions by means of the conventional symbols known as emoticons.

In presenting his stick figures, Dalgaard is using a familiar, relatable device, and yet at the same time, the loss of individuality may appear provocative in a world that sets such store by it. An example is the 2005 piece entitled “Nightmare/that night he died 100 times”, which shows a couple lying in a double bed. Thought bubbles that depict all manner of sinister and grisly scenarios emanate from the man’s head. Nightmares, which we see as a reflection of our own inner dread, are thus represented schematically: individual angst is generalized. Or again, a pink and white watercolour shows three black stick figures and their shadows: two of the figures, an adult couple, kiss, while a child tugs at the trouser leg of one of them. “The kiss/jealousy” is the name of this 2005 piece. Using the sparest of means, Dalgaard highlights a common but complex emotional dynamic in a nuclear family: a dynamic we might see unfolded in a film or a novel, or dissected in the psychoanalytic literature in terms of Oedipus or Electra complexes. But as opposed to conventional films and novels, Dalgaard forestalls any psychologizing identification on our part with the three figures. Given the degree of stylisation present, we simply identify the protagonists as humans. Dalgaard hereby underscores the fact that there is nothing unique about this situation. It is not about three individuals’ innermost feelings. They are anyone and everyone: a social structure – not so very different from the spruce stem structures – and visually even less so, not least in terms of their intertwined shadows.

Utopia

In Dalgaard’s broadly interconnected universe, the stick figures might plausibly conceived as inhabiting his small-scale models of interiors, as in the work:

“Living Room – The view is fantastic! My home’s hooked up to one of the biggest oxygen capsules and I have the most terrific natural scenery outside my windows. I do so enjoy watching all the spacecraft transporting the workers to and from the modules. And then there’s the wildlife – something quite on its own” 2010.

The occurrence of such terms as ‘oxygen capsule’ and ‘module’ would seem to indicate that we have been transported to a distant future, and through the work’s little white peepshow living room, we have access to the balcony view (as described in the title), which is a playing video. For the 2012 version, Dalggard has scaled up the piece, so that as exhibition visitors – and terrestrial denizens of the present – we now people it.

In the installation we are treated to a ten-minute-long speeded up twenty-four hours in Dalgaard’s galactic utopia. We are in a white living room with a ‘window’ through which we see a sky replete with clouds, birds and floating, revolving planets (Dalgaard’s own models). The sky modulates from night black to the rosy hue of dawn and on through daylight and the afternoon sunshine before returning to starlit darkness again, and all to the accompaniment of background music. This work has affinities with Pipilotti Rist’s 2005 “Dawn hours at the neighbour’s house” (a permanent installation at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum), where, over the space of eight minutes, a furnished living room is illuminated from a balcony window by a whole day and night’s successive gradations of light. In Dalgaard’s work as in Rist’s, both the piece itself and the shifting atmosphere across twenty-four hours – poetic and aesthetically appealing – envelop the viewer.

Apart from the view (which is to say, the rear wall video projection), the light is forever changing in the space, creating a world of kaleidoscopic colours. This aspect may evoke parallels with artists such as James Turrell or Olafur Eliasson who notably offer viewers colour-saturated experiences. But here as elsewhere in Dalgaard, a significant component of the work resides in the title. When Eliasson calls his circular walkway topping Aros “Your rainbow panorama” 2011, the title obviously adds a perspective. But its primary purpose is to punctuate the individual viewer’s perception of the city panorama through coloured glass, combined, perhaps, with a nod towards Aros’s own Dantean structure: its nine spaces ‘of hell’ now crowned by the rainbow – a celestial nimbus. In Dalgaard’s works, by contrast, the titles perform a quite different role – drawing attention away from what is immediately perceived and prodding us into reflection: reflection about the world, history, the future and our own place and role in it all.       

Also featured in the large-scale installation, in addition to the white space with its shifting play of colours and the ‘view’, are areas featuring model shelves and modern paintings – areas that appear to be segments of architecture detached from a larger whole and placed in the exhibition space. The hung paintings in this context function as markers for decorative artefacts rather than ‘art’. There is something samey about it all, reminiscent of the room displays in an Ikea store. It is homely looking – and yet, not quite. The entire installation is dubbed:

“Housing for a select band of citizens. The new development has been built to accommodate citizens who have distinguished themselves by their public spiritedness. And with anti-social elements eliminated, there is a shared understanding that peaceful coexistence in the community is the be-all and end-all.  While individual needs are important, they can never take priority over the community’s wants and needs. Luckily, this is well understood by all. So each strives for the good of the community, which is also the good of the individual” 2012.

The title implies a utopian society founded on some version of communism. For imagine how things might be were we to put our own needs to one side and devote ourselves to a greater extent to the good of the community. Wouldn’t the world be a better place for us all? Offhand, it sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn’t want to be among the select group? But with Soviet conceptions of communism at the back of our minds, there remains something rather disquieting about the knowledge that undesirables will be sifted out (and what might their fate eventually be?). Further, what might be the consequences if, as members of the select group, we should come to experience a tension between our own needs and those of the community? For while there is an element of feel-good inherent in the video, Dalgaard’s paradises are never without their serpents – there is always a whiff of irony or tongue-in-cheekness, an unsettling undertone, that leaves us slightly uncertain as to what is on offer. While a political streak informs Dalgaard’s utopias, it is never propagandistic.  His work is far too multi-layered for that.

Apart from denoting a somewhat dubious utopia in a society remote from our own late capitalist world, the title reads as a comment on the context in which it is set: an installation in an exhibition space where gallery-goers come and go. In his influential Esthétique relationelle [Relational Aesthetics] (1998), the French art theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud claims that contemporary art has seen a drift away from art objects to a focus on social encounters and communities. Bourriaud’s examples of human interaction are those that are played out in galleries, which he tends to see as democratic spaces. But was there ever a genuine openness? Or isn’t art, as Dalgaard’s work seems to suggest, for the select few rather, who sign up to the social codes that dictate decorous, appropriate and respectful behaviour? These close-to-home aspects are also addressed in Dalgaard’s work. Not least when, contravening customary codes, he has visitors climbing up over spruce stem scaffolding – or laughing.

The miniatures have grown. Now we are literally inside them. We are the stick figures, stylised and regimented in our thinking, with our actions exhibiting fixed, predictable and easily legible thought and movement patterns. That is so, at least, unless we step back and defy our deeply entrenched responses. Dalgaard’s works speak to us on many levels. They present utopian futuristic scenarios in distant worlds while making gentle fun of our own and displaying it to us. It may strike us as ‘far out’, but actually, it’s right here.