by Anne Kølbæk Iversen
I fall in love and surrender to the place.
I am addicted to him and lonely.
I feel excluded and faraway, as if I’m floating. The feeling is heavy, like something that will not budge, and maybe that’s what makes it feel like floating. I can’t focus. I want to party and to disappear, to cry.
Can a place swallow a person? I can cry and you can drink.
Can you become addicted to a place the same way you can become addicted to a state of being? With the sculptural work Untitled, recently installed on the ramp outside the Drug Consumption Room at Halmtorvet H17, and the accompanying notes written between 2015 and 2023, Kirstine Aarkrog explores the relationship between location and sculpture. At the same time, the work raises questions about the relationship between the body’s surface and its internal states, desire, addiction and violence.
The sculpture, cast in concrete, features a rounded, organic form resembling a body crouched in preparation for a jump, or leaned over, hugging itself. From one angle, the contours suggest two buttocks; from another, the form resembles a foetus, all curled up. The work is the outcome of an extended engagement with the site: the artist’s three-month residency at a studio opposite, at H15, in 2015, an exhibition held at 4 a.m. in 2017 and, most recently, the installation of the sculpture in November 2022. Thus, the work is a condensate of accumulated experiences and encounters with the place and its users over time. With its solid, immutable form, the sculpture remains unaffected by the activities surrounding it, standing as a fixed point amid the flurry of transactions and changes in physical and mental states.
There is nothing inside us humans that cannot break. Cells, bones, the psyche.
The place holds a longing that is shared.
In her practice, Kirstine Aarkrog works with the body as an interface, connecting to its surroundings through actions and interactions—including those of sexual, violent and psychological nature. The artist has described sexuality as inherently paradoxical: it is embodied and enacted through the body while simultaneously transcending the body’s limits. A distinguishing characteristic of many of Aarkrog’s works is their practically—they actually ‘do’ something. One such example is the ion-exchange columns featured in her 2021 exhibition Risø at Simian, which purify liquids by removing radioactivity and can themselves be cleaned by rinsing them with saltwater. In the meeting between the performative and the sculptural, her works also explore the body’s instrumental quality. While the ion exchangers deal with radioactivity and the invisible distinction between charged and uncharged ions, the Untitled sculpture prompts reflection on liminal states—being awake or asleep, intoxicated or clean, trapped in or released from the cycle of addiction. Both works highlight the exchanges taking place on multiple levels: cellular, physiological, pharmacological and economic. Bodies are permeable and susceptible to influence.
To kill a swan, strike its neck with a bat.
Grip the neck of a duck. Swing its body around with a force and speed which exceed that of the duck. The duck’s neck will break, and it will die.
The swan whips its head around as if it weren’t headless. It flaps its wings as if to fly, only the flapping is quicker. The swan swings its neck to evade the bat.
The work Stagger, a VR animation of a headless swan, is rooted in the idea of killing a swan and arose in connection with the project at Halmtorvet. This idea ties in with a curiosity about power dynamics, boundaries and the way power is exercised over, or violence is inflicted on, one’s own body and the bodies of others. Although it is possible to kill a swan by severing its head, the experience is not non-violent. In the animation, the swan is resurrected in virtual form, living on despite its headlessness. Viewers can touch it, even step through it.
What may appear as acts of aggression or violence in Aarkrog’s works—the decapitation of three geese, the use of bondage techniques, the inclusion of heroin in a recent piece or explicit shots of a pornographic scene—raise questions about the unseen aggressions that underpin overt violence. These investigations invite reflection on physical or mental illness as forms of aggression against the individual’s body and mind, or apparently aggressive acts as revolts against structural violence, as posited by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. According to Žižek, explicit, ostensible violence arises as a response to invisible, structural violence. He argues that the actions often deemed violent and criminal by society are often responses to deprivation and desperation among those subjected to exploitation.
The catch is that subjective and objective violence cannot be perceived from the same standpoint: subjective violence is experienced as such against the background of a non-violent zero level. It is seen as a perturbation of the ‘normal,’ peaceful state of things. However, objective violence is precisely the violence inherent to this ‘normal’ state of things. Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we perceive something as subjectively violent. [1]
How do we approach power and positions of dominance or submission? How close can we come to the boundary of inflicting violence on others? Could it be necessary, even beneficial, to erase oneself in order to enter into relationships with others? The line between benign self-forgetting and self-destruction is often difficult to discern. Although systemic violence is invisible, it must be acknowledged to make sense of subjective violence—for example by considering the social, physical or psychological factors which contribute to substance abuse. Addiction is characterised by a compulsive, repetitive craving or desire. People struggling with substance abuse often face multiple forms of marginalisation, and the drug consumption room was originally established to mitigate the heightened risks of infection and overdose while also responding to local residents’ complaints and concerns about the visibility of drug use in public places. The artist’s work in and about Copenhagen’s meatpacking district seeks to address the relationship between societal structures and individual responses to and experiences of them. But it also represents a wider investigation of liminal states and transformations. Within the framework of the artistic work, the ramp at H17 is seen as a stage for addiction and drug use, but also for the individual and collective dramas tied to social, physiological and psychological dissolution. There is a tragic and transformative element at play here—one that art can unfold, whether or not it is rooted in the dramas of reality. In Aristotle’s Poetics, tragedy brings transformation. This transformation occurs when the hero realises that he or she has defied the gods: Oedipus awakens to the reality that he has killed his own father and married his mother. Because he was blind to the truth of things, he must blind himself. In this moment the ground shifts and trembles, and everything changes.
In my need to attach to another person, I end up obliterating myself.
I’m fascinated by the work of the actor.
Do you have to be a human to play one?
[1] Slavoj Žižek, Violence. Six Sideways Reflections (NY: Picador Books, 2008), 2.
