HANNE NIELSEN & BIRGIT JOHNSEN _ VIDEORAUM

LUNCH & BLOWERS / Shared Space

BLOWERS 

(LUNCH & BLOWERS / Shared Space)

21:31 min.

2020. Edited one installation / two screens projected on two separate facing screens

The 2 screen video installation Blowers & Lunch deals with the relation between the individual, the community around.

Both are performative-filmed actionsin which a lunch scene and wind blowers both compete with the sea and the wind.

In a stormy weather, a lunch are made at the beach in Lunch and in Blowers several wind fans are lined up along the shore

Lunch & Blowers is basically about inclusion and exclusion on many levels, from the individual to village,- to community, -to other nationalities and cultures.

It's about being individual, with a given point of view and the difficulty of including the world, with all that involves of knowledge about and problems around abuses, power, gender and climate issues and cultures.

On one screen is a fight is to set up a lunch table in stormy weather. The dinner situation is in the family and in the community an act that generate mental surplus and togetherness in a community.

The table are placed in a stormy weather on the beach, where the fight against the sea, that eats in and swallows land and houses is present and where it is vital that the citizens work together on planting dunes, erecting dikes and coastal fortifications.We stand facing the sea, which establish a border between the local and the global and the struggle is expanding.  It is the effort to maintain a good life, despite the wind and climate challenges, and despite the see and nature forces.

Parts of the things from the lunch table, plates, bottles and coffee cup, are blown in the river course and float out into the sea - are to be swallowed up.

Plates and cups appear empty and as an altruistic act it fails and also the message towards the world outside become hollow. Though the bottles are once between howling towards the sea and another attempt is made to make contact and include the world.

On the second screen, 2 women (the artists) are seen sitting on the beach. Throughout the film the act is right in the surf of the coast. The individual looks towards the horizon line and out towards the world. The statement is open, and can refer to both longing or fear of the unknown, fear of crises and apocalyptic climate predictions.

A similar action of Sisyphus is taken place and the position of the individual unfolds in a larger perspective. It is a pathetic attempt to fight against the forces of nature and with large electric fans and to blow the waves back into the sea. Walls are built in reeds, wood and stone facing the sea.

The walls can be seen both as walls and fences build at borders between countries, and the materials referring to old cartoon The three little pigs and the big ugly wolf. The walls are slowly swallowed by the sea. Dealing with the fear of the unknown the necessity to start cooperating is present, acknowledging that the world and the climate is not,- to be controlled even if we stop the exploitation and starvation of resources.

It is a fight that is already lost, and it questions the individual's position in a larger global context and initiates a discussion of how we live.  

Blowers. Meetings ET4U