solo show at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway, 2008
The invitation by the Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen, Norway in October of 2008 felt like an exciting opportunity, especially since it includes a budget for the production of the show, two paid flights to Bergen, a five day stay in an apartment and an artist stipend. Preparations via email correspondence went smoothly, the curator, the exhibition manager and the technical wizard of the Hordaland Kunstsenter were enthusiastic and supportive about our idea to present our three channel projection of International Airport Montello within an airport waiting room/transit lounge environment, and a few days after we had sent a list of needed items, such as an airport coffee machine, a water dispenser, airport waiting benches, a line former (these stands with ribbon’s they put up at airports or in the post office to organize a line), floor covering (a piece of linoleum or industrial carpet), fake or real plants (fiscus, palm or bamboo tree), a flat screen TV hanging from the ceiling playing the current news without sound, some luggage, trash bin, vending machine/ arcade game, slot machine, wall clock, newspaper hanger stand and no smoking/exit/ bathroom signs, the list was checked off successfully. All items had been located, bought or rented, all we had to do to make this “a perfect show” was to bring our cardboard IAM employee-print-outs, our hand drawn airport map and a new windsock with us on the plane.
After we arrived, we met with the curator at the exhibition space where she discussed with us the last details of our installation, gave us our stipend in cash, went with us to the supermarket to buy for us cheese, butter and bread, walked us to a sparsely furnished artist apartment and then took off – left for a far away place in Asia. Even though her unexpected departure felt like a strange form of abandonment and alarmed us a bit, we were still in a happy mood about the general state of affairs for our upcoming solo exhibition and therefore wanted to celebrate in a bar with a drink and a few snacks. We went out into the hilly streets of Bergen, found a cozy looking place, went in, looked at the menu and realized that a drink and some bread with salmon or cheese would basically use up the total of our artist stipend that was supposed to last for five days. We left, and looked for another bar, found one, and discovered that the prices were comparable to the one we had been before. Really? Yes, really. Food is very expensive in Norway. Or the exchange rate to the dollar is totally off. Or, we have no clue. Or, we have not enough money to do anything else but sit at the kitchen table inside the grey apartment and eat the bread and cheese from the supermarket, which ended up to be the final result of all our “or” and “or” “or” equations. On the second day, after we had finished installing the paper cutouts and the map and the windsock at the Kunstsenter, and eaten whatever was inside the supermarket bag, the grey sky and constant drizzle pressed down on our mood. What else was there to do? Bergen, surrounded by seven tall mountains is considered to be the rainiest city in Europe, and the plentiful precipitation, we learned, is caused by an orographic lift, which sometimes causes more than two months of consecutive rainy days. The two times we randomly engaged in a conversation with locals, the conversation immediately went to the topic of how many minutes of sunshine the newly installed sun recorder at Bergen Airport was recording that day. “We had a total of 12 minutes of sunshine today, two more minutes than yesterday.”
Finally, the day of our opening arrived. In anticipation of some interesting encounters with people we put on colorful shirts and sneakers for the opening of: “International Airport Montello – an artwork about a fictional airport in the middle of nowhere.” Guess who came to see and sit and marvel at being stranded inside a “perpetual layover” at a fictional airport in the Nevada desert? Eric Heist from Momenta Art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – who had been invited to curate a video screening in the basement – and maybe two or three other people, one of whom sat down like a saint and patiently watched 20% of our three channel video projection.
And with that, new feelings attached themselves to phrases such as: being in the middle of nowhere, maintaining a grounded outsider position, and International Airport Montello is operated by the people of a town that refuses to die. Standing in the empty waiting room surrounded by the silent cardboard manifestations of our otherwise so lively collaborators in Montello, the curator’s absence made us remember that what initially drew her to our project were questions of authenticity. “The whole place seems kind of mysterious and almost like a fiction…” she had written about her encounter with IAM to us in an email. So, did it really happen? What is true about all this? We searched the archives of exhibitions the Horaland Kunstsenter for 2008 – but no record exists there.
