liberty
2008
16mm film shot by the artist on a boat leaving Antarctica
Video installation with text
Film seen on screen through peep holes in the door
(ref: Marcel Duchamp Étant Donnes)
liberty is an installation with a silent 16mm film running in a loop. This film is displayed on a monitor which the viewer sees through a pair of peek holes drilled trough a wooden door or a wall. Approaching the holes, most viewers will need to bow down to look through them. On the other side one glimpses a moving image of an Antarctic iceberg whose shape resembles the Statue of Liberty. The iceberg floats majestically on its own with nothing else on the horizon. Bright sun illuminates both the sea and the surface of this immense mass of artic ice, creating a dazzling vista almost entirely in shades of white and blue. As the piece is filmed from the deck of a boat, the camera movement follows the rhythmic rocking of the waves giving the viewer a curious sense of being present where the film was shot.
Artist’s text to always accompany the work, preferably written in pencil on the wall in the artists handwriting:
It is a deep sadness to leave behind the pure white beauty of Antarctica when going north and looking back. You want to
return. Then, for a very long time you see nothing but ocean - enough time and space to prepare for what is coming. You
know all about the continents ahead. A lot of shit and pain made by us, basically. And there she appeared in the ocean.
First as a white spire in the sea, but then it was more and more clear. It was her, the Statue of Liberty. She was floating tall
and proud on top of a huge mountain. She had become pure ice and the strong sun made her brilliant and vibrant in the
cold. She was enormous. She was probably fed up with all the lies and wanted to get loose, finally. Her age was tens of
thousands of years*. She drifted very slow and passed the ship with such elegance. Her lifetime from now on was unknown.
The wound up 16 mm camera caught her for twenty seconds.
A K Dolven from sketchbook 2008
*According to Prof Hans Amundsen, glacier expert
