UNHEIMLICHE SAGA. Chef of Death

Transcription

1 UNHEIMLICHE SAGA In search for a cure against despair Today we die alone. This is the difference between present time and the days during the cold war. Blown to bits and pieces on a bus, in a car, or when visiting the fruit market, by anonymous terrorists. Always on our own, always unexpected. This is different from the time of the cold war, when we would die together. All of the city, swept away by the BOMB, the nuclearbomb. We were standing there, hand in hand,united forever. I remember how the media showed me family's looking to the sky, looking at the missiles heading toward the city. Now we anxiously wonder; is this man, this women or that child the terorist? Always unexpected, always present. The Unheimliche Saga is fear and hope being aestheticed in contemporary society. The Sagas main goal is to understand and act on why so much of our culture today are based on fear. The Unheimliche Saga reaches for hope and change by various artistic methods such as performance lectures, workshops, exhibitions and writings. By connecting it self to Sigmund Fredus text Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny) and with inspiration from the novels by H.P. Lovecraft and Shirly Jackson, theories of the the universe, micro and macro and different city's such as Providence and Göteborg, the Saga force it self in and through different times and cultural phenomenon. By this it hopes to find the cure against despair in modern society. This is the end of the universe told by the Chef of Death. Part 1: Unheimlich Göteborg. Nature is your enemy, culture is your friend! From the heights of Göteborg natures true face is reviled, the one of the enemy. Nature is eating the city. Human and nature is in constant war with each other. Part 2: Uncanny Providence. A story told on three jackets. The story of Göteborg and Providence, and the story of difference ways the universe will end. Chef of Death

2 Image of Chef of Death The story of Providence: Miniature painted buttons telling the story of enter and exit Providence. Front: 1: Entrance Providence 2: Downtown daytime. 3: Downtown dusk. 4: The Capitol. 5: College Hill. 6: The house above St. Johns cemetery. 7: St. Johns cemetery. 8: St. Johns cemetery. 9: Exit Providence. 10: The colour out of space. Sleeves: Right arm: 11: In the darkness. 12: Mercer Street. Left arm: 13: St. Johns cemetery: J.D, Robin and Kajsa. 14: Mercer Street, Pontus. The story of Göteborg: Miniature painted buttons telling the story of enter and exit Göteborg Front: 1: Entrance Göteborg 2: Älvsborgsbron The largest bridge from the mainland to the island Hisingen. 3: Eriksberg. 4: Läppstiftet the lipstick. 5: Hisingen. 6: Skyline Ullevi. 7: Climbing the roof of Valand. 8: Skansen Krona the fort Krona ( the Crown) 9: Exit Göteborg. 10: The map of Göteborg from Sleeves: Right arm: 11: Innan tunneln before the tunnel. 12: The TV at Svalebogatan 45 B. Left arm: 13: Storan 14: Hotellet Barken Viking and the opera. Images from the three jackets shown in Uncanny Providence, Providence USA 2006

3 The Jacket of the Chef of Death Miniature painted buttons with different images of how the univers will end. Front: 1: Herman von Helmholtz. The first scientist who realized that the universe was not immortal and endless, but rather mortal and with an end, and that the universe sooner or later would die. 2: The first seconds of the newly born universe. 3: Olbers paradox. In 1826 Heinrich Olbers reformulated the paradox; "Why is the sky dark at night? The intensity of light reduces with the square of the distance from the observer. If the distribution of stars is uniform in space, then the number of stars at a particular distance from the observer should be proportional to the surface area of a sphere whose radius is that distance. At each radius therefore the amount of light should be both proportional to the radius squared and inversely proportional to the radius squared. These two effects will cancel and so every shell should add the same amount of light. In an infinite universe the sky would be infinitely bright." 4: The universe with galaxy groups. 5: Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics that tells us; order will pass and chaos will rule. 6: Ongoing cosmological phase transition. The universe is not completely stable as long as there is a lower form of vacuum. If there is a lower form of vacuum than the one we have now, sooner or later it will change in to the lower form, and in the speed of light. Everything will change, every law of nature will be different, and the form of life, matter, and energy we know will cease to exist. 7: The last dying stars of the universe. 8: The big crunch. Maybe the universe works like a pounding heart, expanding and contracting. It begins with a big bang and ends with a big crunch. 9: Expansion into nothingness. Or maybe not. It might just continue to expand in to endless distance of nothingness. 10: Circulation, revolution. Sleeves: Right arm: 11: Stars. 12: The universal sign for restaurant. Left arm: 13: Stars and the smiley face. 14: The universal sign for restaurant. Nature is your enemy. From the heights you can see the crawling terror infecting us all from below and above. Images from Unheimliche, Konstepidemin, Göteborg Protection. The jacket protects, serve and obey. Image from Unheimliche Göteborg "Nyarlathop... det krälande kaos..." H.P. Lovecraft

4 Images from exhibition Uncanny Providence, Providence, USA

5 Stills from car performance, part of the exhibition Uncanny Providence, Providence, USA By September all the vegetation was fast crumbling to a greyish powder, and Nahum feared that the trees would die before the poison was out of the soil. His wife now had spells of terrific screaming, and he and the boys were in constant state of nervous tension. They shunned people now, and when school opened the boys did not go. But it was Ammi, on of his rare visits, who first realised that the water was no longer good. It had an evil taste that was not exactly foetid nor exactly salty, and Ammi advised his friend to dig a nother well on higher ground to use till the soil was good again. Nahum, however, ignored the warning, for he had by the time become calloused to stranger and unpleasant things. He and the boys continued to use the tainted supply, drinking it as listlessy and mechanically as they ate their meagre and ill-cooked meals and did their thankless and monotounous chores through the aimless days. There was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if they walked half in another world between lines of namless guards to certain and familiar doom. p The Annotated H.P Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, H.P Lovecraft....about the meaning of unheimlich, namely, that the term 'uncanny' (unheimlich) applies to everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open. p.132 The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud

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7 The Unheimliche Saga Fredric Gunve tel: +46 (0)