In the studio I am now continuing with another step of the wayfahrer project - Wayfahrer has become C.F. Wayfahrer. Soon he will take new steps.
Previously, this year I worked with Freezage No I (membrane), which was finished a couple of months ago, and you can see that particular result of by clicking here. What you see below is a continuation of that process. The present work I am calling C. F. Wayfahrer, and seems to be more and more a development of the character Wayfahrer into a "person" or a personna. Again, all parts: videos, texts, photos, and perhaps even poems, will be assembled during a couple of months and exhibited in beginning of June. At the moment the plan is to present it the 12th of June at my home. An event which I call an "exhibinar" - since it is an attempt to disuss an art driven research process, in a new way. As a result I will try to develop another way of discussing thje results - through an installation as well as a full written text, partly as a artnographic text (autoethnographic text) and partly as a philosophic text, focusing on the conception(s) of reality.
The presentation, here, on the web, has two sections: a) what I am doing right now, and b) the previous work and process that has led to this point in chronologically order when scrolling down this page, as an artnographic description of the whole process. The capture of the whole thread goes far back, back to 1999, and includies some writing about it as well. The ideas of "a view from in-between", and the planned theory piece of "reality between realities", will be presented in june 2009 alongside with the revealing the whole process.
section a: what I am doing right now ...............................
RIGHT NOW !
C.F.Wayfahrer
As a consequence of the recent work with Freezage No. I in april 2009, and its rough finalization as an almost finished piece, I now take the next step into working and polishing on the wayfahrer project, now called "C.F. Wayfahrer". In the same manner as Freezage No. I, this work also covers a considerable timeframe. The whole process with C.F. Wayfahrer includes a broad variety of artefacts: writings, poems, objects, photos and videos during a time period of ten years, between 1999 and 2009. And as it feels now, it will be a continuation beyond what we see here.
C.F.Wayfahrer (At a secret military airstrip in the deep forest of Sweden, May 2009)
To be continued this summer . . . . . . .
section b : the artnographic description eventually leading to this piece ..........
Autumn 2008 - a desicion to continue next summer......
The Fictive Exhibition Tour (summer 2008)
Some of those performances took place at sites around the world. They were documented, in video and photos. None of them had an audience other than the nature, in which they took place. That was the intention. Having no audience, in contradiction to traditional performance striving for contact with the audience, but in line with some works of other artists (e.g. Joan Jonas, Vulcano Saga), was my idea. Another idea was to make the performances at odd places, using my ordinary life, and presenting the material as a kind of exhibition - to none. It became a fictive exhibition tour: at real sites, at real spots, making real performances - but telling no one, and therefore having no audience. The tour was, however, announced on the Internet, well in advance.
Wayfahrer in the woods (July 2008)
Internet poster announcing the up coming project. First published in february 2008.
Micro-scripts to the wayfahrer project (mainly 2007 but also into 2008)
Ideas to the work with the performance project wayfahrer, was bourn through the work with micro-scripts or poems, written mostly in 2007 but continiously edited into 2008 (and still is under editing and developing). The initial idea with the very short texts that emerged during the summer of 2007, some one hundred of them, was to assemble them in a book and publish them as poems. Many of the poems had a "creature" in the writing called "him" even though "me" appears in the same text. The odd thing was that "he" is not another man; it is just another "me", appearing alongside with "me". In a way, those two "me" in the same text, have different characters' and agendas, not completely but slightly sliding a part. In many of those poems, "he" is walking, on the edge, on a thin line, between something, but always somewhat straight ahead. Below, a few of them are translated into english.
The Empty Copies project (mainly in 2005, but perfected in 2006)
If, "Follow Me" (See below), nurtured a performative person, the thread was not followed by more works in the same direction, at that time. Many other things passed on, during the years instead. However, this performative person showed up again in 2005. This time, the person was "absent" but at the same time capturing the event with photos. During two summers, in 2005 and 2006, a series of photo sessions took place around Sweden, in the deep forest. The piece was named "Empty Copies". and the photos were numbered in a sequence. The "copies" are made as copies of my body, exact measured and copied in white cloth and white stiching. There was made some ten copies. Again, this piece were never exhibited at any gallery or space, and since kept in the studio.
Empty Copy No. 42 (2006)
Empty Copy No. 29 (2005)
Empty Copy No. 33 (2005)
Follow Me (Scherdin & Thulin 1999)
The initial video, clearly influencing my present work of today, ten years later, "Follow Me" (Scherdin & Thulin), was produced on an airstrip in 1999. Unfortunately it has a poor quality, due to aging and much too cheap videotapes. The idea, at that time as I recall it behind the man walking endlessly on an airstrip, was to create a creature that made a somewhat absurd performance claiming that the audience should follow him but at the same time "him" making a pointless or completely meaningless act. A built in doubleness in following "him", but why and where. The original video "Follow Me" was never shown ifor an audience other than at art school and has stayed in the studioarchives ever since. Even though it is hard to see in the video, it consists of two camera views, merged together in one video documentation. One video captured the full scenery from behind and the other video is captured by "him", during the performance, walking. After the performance the two videos were merged into one, adding effects, in the studio - all finalized in 1999.
Video documentation of the performance "Follow Me" (Scherdin & Thulin, 1999)
Furtermore, I will try to dig into and digitalize some photos of a tour made in France in 1998. /The Kurt-project/
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