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About the Image and the Space: An Interview with Kirstine Roepstorff
In this article you can discover the work of Berlin-based Danish artist Kirstine Roepstorff. She explains what notions of the image and space
mean to her and how their roles have transformed throughout her artistic career. One of her recent installations – Vita Umbra (2013) is
currently displayed in the MeetFactory’s exhibition Plato’s Third Eye.
In the past, you were mainly known for your multicolor collages made from numerous images and materials. Can you explain a
little bit about why you chose this specific medium?
It sprang from some sort of a frustration with looking through newspapers, magazines, with reading stories and news from our collective
reality. I was literally stuffing myself with all this representation of the realities throughout different worlds, reading tons of newspapers,
always thinking to myself that it was not quite enough, that there was more to say about it, that something had been left out, cut away. In
the beginning I worked very physically with these representations. I cropped them, moved them around so to speak. Opened the images
up. The scenes were cropped out from the image and from the represented reality. That is why I have chosen the medium of collage.
Could you say some more about these collages? How are they constructed? What are they made of? Which kind of imagery did
you use?
When I was young, I was really angry, probably for many good reasons. And it was maybe because of this frustration that I started cutting
out and adding things, thus enlarging the depth of the image. I have mainly been using images which go between us and our common
consciousness, like from media, newspapers and magazines. I was trying to put them together mostly for myself, so I could understand
what structures our world is built of, what kind of structures the incidents, happenings and world spectacles had, what kept them
together and what separated them from each other.
Eventually “the collage idea” came out of a need, an excitement and a definitive frustration. After that it slowly became what people now
call “my medium”, because I have probably formed my mindset to create my “collage thing”. It has also had an impact on what I do
today, because I call it collage, even though it is a sculpture, or looks like a theater play.
But I do think that is really more about a mindset than it is about a medium. In this respect, my mindset is focused more on the space
between the objects. For example, when you have two images, there is always a space which is in between them. This is the space of
possibilities, of an unknown, of an expansion, where a viewer can enlarge the space according to himself or herself, because it is endless.
So basically, images help us to get a direction, to navigate. It is like walking in a forest where you see tree trunks, but you do not walk
straight into them because you see them, but you navigate yourself between them. And the collage functions in the same way. Therefore,
the images become secondary and the space in between them becomes primary. When I started to work as a young artist, it was really
important to me to work with the images, to understand what is going on and to be sure that a spectator, a receiver, would have the same
understanding as I had. With all these experiences I could let the space in between the images open up more and more, so the unknown,
the path or the possibilities can open up. So today I consider the collages much more as the “not-space” than the space, as “in between”
more than an image. And that makes it much more interesting.
As you mentioned before, in these collages you have been reusing various images from mass media, journals or magazines. Could
you describe more specifically the area of topics or events you focused on during the process of creating such a work?
I would say that my interest is more focused on the structures, on the different forces at work within an incident. My interest is more
centered on who really decides who decides than the actual decision maker, and on the energy between various objects and what
motivates the movement in either direction.
For many years I have been called a political artist. Of course, I used political images, which sets a certain tone. But for me it has been
much more about structures and using this kind of image concerns more a reference to the situation which everyone could relate to, for
example war in Iraq, young people sitting around smoking a joint, or George Bush giving a speech, whatever. Our common
consciousness frames this situation or structure immediately, be it a power structure, or a social or cultural one. In this way I can get
people into a position where they start to see the abstract, to see the unknown or the poetry in a situation. Using these, what people call
“political images” is more of a trick to the stated situation than really having an opinion on what is going on in the world.
Inspired by different aspects of collage you have also created a piece for the theater (Stille Teater, 2008) which presented this
medium, usually considered as two dimensional, in 3D. Could you tell us a bit more about this project?
This particular project was a sort of liberation of the collage elements from my own perspective. For a long time I did nothing else but
collages. It happened so that I reused the characters from them – a wolf which would correspond to an image of “loneliness”, a ballerina
balancing balls as “balance”, or tree trunks as the representation of the “in between”. Whenever I use these images it means that the
collage would have some sensibility relating to these areas. For my part, launching a theater project was to liberate them again, to release
them from the images and to use them just like abstract phenomena. Eventually I wrote a play about all these images. The “in between”,
“balance” and the dog called “lost” were among the characters who were acting between two alter egos, where one was called “Image”
and the other “Space”.
Because of the fact that I am not a writer and I have not created a play before, at the beginning I set myself a dogma that everything I write
should be linked with a direct experience of my own, the narrative should form a horizontal “8” or the visualization of a breath, so to
speak. It should be full, then empty, and then full again. It would also concern these two characters – Image which would act as a human
mind and Space which would resemble the universe or the endlessness.
This theater piece consisted of a dialogue between these two figures. Whilst Image was very like a human being trying to understand, to
frame, to make everything logical and rational or to bridge two situations in order to make a meaning in life, Space was just there. In their
conversation, Image was trying to explain why he was full and Space was empty. But through the process of dialogue we were
apprehending the reverse situation when Image realized that because of the fact he was so full, he eventually turned out to be completely
empty. In that moment, he emptied himself, so he was ready to be full again and he started again from point zero. So one could say that it
was an educational play about learning to be yourself and to allow yourself to be empty.
Kirstine Roepstorff – Vita Umbra, mixed media, 2013.
Looking at your recent work one realizes that you have moved in your artistic practice from the “image”, in other words from
something two dimensional, hung on the wall, to more spatial forms represented by various sculptures and installations, for
example Vita Umbra (2013), which is currently displayed in the MeetFactory Gallery. Could you explain this shift towards a new
kind of medium?
I think it is a normal evolution. What is next after the image? And what is next to the frame? If you leave the image there is space. Space is
of course also both within the image and within the frame. It might sound complicated, it is not really, space is everywhere, but if you
leave the image, there is only Space. This is an exercise for the mind to comprehend.
This particular project, Vita Umbra, which is here in MeetFactory Gallery, is mainly built on images but concerns space. It goes both ways
– the space that goes outwards and the other that goes inwards. Like air you inhale and breathe out. It is also working with notions of
shadow and light. When you have a light source and you cast a light on an object, it casts a shadow, regardless of what you do. A shadow
is an unlit spot. It is the potential for possibilities, the unknown, the unrevealed, the issues which are not yet ready to bloom and be
realized. But what if you want to avoid a shadow, what do you do? The only way is to have a light source in the centre and it will radiate
360 degrees. If you place the light in your own center and let it radiate, you throw no shadows yourself. Vita Umbra is about this radiation,
it is about the shadow and the light, it is about generations following each other. How our parents’ generations cast shadow into our
lives, how our challenge in life is to put a light to the shadow of the lives of our parents, and if we have the surplus then also to make sure
that we cast less shadows into the lives of our children. So this piece talks about the process of lighting and darkness and the process of
being aware of the interplay between - and the qualities of the two. The shadow is a dark thing, but it is all potential. It is the home to the
unknown, all the things that are not yet obvious to us, it is the parking spot for qualities which we do not yet know we have. This
installation is rather about the potential of space and of the human mind or human progress. Vita Umbra, that is why.
Kirstine Roepstorff – Vita Umbra, mixed media, 2013.
Talking about your recent works, could you tell us what your main preoccupation or the central subject of your interest is these
days?
Nowadays I am very interested in the notion of what in german and danish is called “Klang”. Basically, it is the materialization of a sound,
like the music. But it is not a piece of music, but that “thing” when you tap or clap. But what does it look like? What does it feel like? It can
be just like an accordion or a piano, but it can be also like a raindrop. And they have their own materiality. So for a while I started to make
this “Klang”, the between and the in between two objects and what the materialization of a sound between them would be. And since
then, I have done a lot of sculptures and other things because of their visual resemblance of a sound or of a internal music. But they are still
kind of a visual music – I cannot play on them, but I call them the instruments. They create phonetic sensibilities in the mind through the
eyes, not through the ears.
Interview by Barbora Komarová
Photo credits: Anne Mie Dreves, Michal Králíček, Tomáš Souček
#gallery
#meetfactory
#contemporary art
#kirstine roepstorff
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19 minutes ago
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