Jakob Solbakken

Role: cinematographer
01

interviews

03:39

“Inspiration starts with a kind of suffering.” | Artist Kaarina Kaikkonen

”Inspiration, for me, starts with a kind of suffering. It comes from a problem that is unsolved.” Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen’s father’s sudden death when she was a child was a pivotal moment in her life and art. Follow her in her endless search for men’s shirts resembling what her father wore that she uses in her iconic, grand installations: “I want to use materials that have had a previous life. Then I change it and give it a new life, a new form of art. To make beauty from ugly.” “I like the suffering of life to become part of my art,” she says. “Inspiration is a question. And then you’ll have to try to find the answer.” ‘Get Inspired’ is a series of videos that draws close attention to the inspiration process that every artist must go through to create a work of art.” Kaarina Kaikkonen (b. 1952) is a Finnish artist who works with sculpture and installations. Her works are often made up of recycled materials such as used shirts, skis, or dance shoes, which she assembles into gigantic installations that cast a spell over viewers with an immediate and overwhelming beauty. Kaikkonen has held solo exhibitions at prominent museums worldwide, such as KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Kiasma in Helsinki, MAXXI Museo Nazionale Delle Arti in Rome, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and The Kennedy Center in Washington. Among the awards she has received the Finland Art Reward (2001), The Public Prize, Den Haag Sculptuur (2004), Honorable Mention in Cairo 11th Biennale (2009), and The Golden Chimera, 1. Biennale International d’Arte di Arezzo (2013). Kaarina Kaikkonen was interviewed by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen in her studio in Helsinki, Finland, in May 2022.

02

interviews

27:27

Anupama Kundoo: More Common Than Different

“We all feel that human society deserves better.” In this personal interview Indian architect, Anupama Kundoo reflects on her way into architecture. Growing up in Mumbai, she had an early interest in both the arts as well as math and science. Due to a test, which a family member suggested to her, architecture came up as a profession. “I stumbled into architecture, but it was a blessing. The second I realized it, there was no looking back. Architecture and design would allow me to develop my interest in everything. But they would also ground me and allow me to be of service.” “I had a very strong intuitive voice telling me to just prolong whatever I was doing, even though it did not seem clear from the outside. I decided to leave Bombay and move to South India to figure out and understand my country. I didn’t know where I was going. But I knew what I was leaving. I didn’t know what I wanted. But I knew what I didn’t want. If you see something, you cannot unsee it anymore.” Kundoo ended up in Auroville, engaging herself for many years in a project that defines itself as a “universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.” Kundoo also speaks about time as the most important human resource. “I feel that a lot of the problems we have in today’s world have come because of that wrong notion that time is money. No, time is the only resource we have when we are alive.” While we’re saving other resources, Kundoo argues, we don’t seem to mind spending our own time freely on anything. This is why she encourages people to use their time wisely – to use fewer natural resources and more human resources: “Use more brain, use more muscle, use more time. Because people grow clever in the end when we do that.” Anupama Kundoo was born in Pune, India in 1967. She graduated from Sir JJ College of Architecture, University of Mumbai in 1989, and received her Ph.D. degree from the TU Berlin in 2008. Anupama Kundoo was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her studio in Berlin in March 2020.

03

interviews

52:16

Lars von Trier: The Burden From Donald Duck

Get into the creative mind of film director Lars von Trier and learn how reading in his world is connected with writing. Trier calls literature his “basic medium” and reveals his inspiration from writers as Thomas Mann, Leo Tolstoy, and Marcel Proust. He refers to dramaturgy as his “toothache” connected to his reading of Donald Duck, but writing is “the greatest kick you can get,” he says. Lars von Trier (b.1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter, whose prolific career spans almost four decades. His pivotal work is known for its technical innovation and examination of existential, social, and political issues. Lars von Trier was interviewed by Christian Lund at his home outside Copenhagen in November 2020.

04

interviews

08:15

Anna Heringer Interview: The Walls Are Dancing

The Anandaloy Building hosts a center for people with disabilities combined with a small studio for the production of textiles and fair fashion. It is mainly built out of mud and bamboo from local farmers, thus the biggest part of the budget was invested in local crafts (wo)men. Much more than just a structure, the building became a real catalyst for local development. In October 2020 Anandaloy and Anna Heringer received the Obel Award that honors and recognizes exceptional architectural contributions to human development. To Anna the Anandaloy project underlines the importance of including everybody in society and let them have their share in the local community. For Anna Heringer, architecture is a tool to improve lives. The strategy of all of her projects is the use of local materials, local sources of energy including manual labor plus global know-how. As an architect and honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair of Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures, and Sustainable Development she is focusing on the use of natural building materials. She has been actively involved in development cooperation in Bangladesh since 1997. Her diploma work, the METI School in Rudrapur got realized in 2005 and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007. Over the years, Studio Anna Heringer has realized further projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Anna is lecturing worldwide at conferences, including TED and has been visiting professor at various universities such as Harvard, ETH Zurich and TU Munich. She received numerous honors: the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, the AR Emerging Architecture Award, the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s GSD and a RIBA International Fellowship. Anna’s work has been widely published and exhibited in the MoMA New York, the V&A Museum in London and at the Venice Biennale among other places. Anna Heringer was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Laufen, Germany, in September 2020.

05

interviews

03:07

David Hockney: The World is Beautiful

The influential British painter David Hockney talks about looking and painting for more than 60 years – and shares a story that made him reflect on our time. “The world is very, very beautiful if you look at it. But most people don’t look very much. They scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, but they don’t really look at things incredibly well, with intensity. I do, and I’ve always known that.” In the video, you also get to experience the world premiere of an animation technique, which Hockney himself calls “time-based brush painting.” David Hockney was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his home in France in March 2019.

06

art

03:05

Jean-Marc Bustamante on Per Kirkeby's Brick Sculpture, 1994

“It’s in between sculpture and architecture,” French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante says of a site-specific brick monument by the lauded Danish artist Per Kirkeby (1938-2018). Watch him reflect on the mesmerizing sculpture, which at first sight looks “like the house next door,” in this short video. Per Kirkeby (1938-2018) is one of the great, international Danish artists, having exhibited at museums all over the world, and is considered one of the most important painters in the second half of 20th-century Danish art. In the video, Bustamante talks about ‘Brick Sculpture’ (1994) by Per Kirkeby (1938-2018), situated at – and intended for – Humlebæk Station in Humlebæk, Denmark. The sculpture was erected in collaboration with the Danish Railways and belongs to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Jean-Marc Bustamante was interviewed by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen at Humlebæk Station in Humlebæk, Denmark in October 2017.

07

interviews

05:23

Mark Bradford Interview: Layers of Violence

“I pillage my own work. I tear it down and build it up in traces.” Let us introduce you to American painter Mark Bradford, who doesn’t use traditional paint but material “that has something to do with the social fabric of the times we live in.” Instead of paint, Bradford uses liquefied paper, which shares similarities with paint. He uses billboard paper from the streets or building material from any building supply store. Instead of “looking in,” which he finds to be typical of modernist painting, Bradford has chosen to “look out.” Bradford feels that his way of working on canvasses is aggressive, even violent: “It’s like tearing into the body. It’s very physical. It’s like if I just took my hand and reached in and pulled out the heart and then yanked it out.” Mark Bradford (b. 1961) is an American painter. One of Bradford’s concerns is improving society with his art as well as through a number of social projects. His work can be found in prominent international venues such as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, REDCAT in Los Angeles and Saatchi Gallery in London. In 2014 Bradford was presented with the US Department of State’s Medal of Arts. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Mark Bradford was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his studio in Los Angeles, California in January 2016.

08

interviews

17:07

Ian Cheng: A Portal to Infinity

When reading the book ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’ (1976) by Julian Jaynes, Cheng was fascinated by its theory that people in ancient times didn’t make conscious, reflected decisions, and that it wasn’t until recently that we got what Cheng refers to as “the app of consciousness.” This inspired Cheng to make the Emissary works: “I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s certainly weird, and it definitely captured my imagination for making these works called ‘Emissaries’.” “Technology is maybe the one underlying force that forces us as human beings to consider what the container of a human being really is and how much it can stretch or where it will break.” Cheng has always been very interested in artificial intelligence, and the live simulations were his opportunity to create his own model of the composition of the mind. The look of ‘Emissaries’ is inspired by the Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki, where everything in the background, such as nature, is unique: “I wanted to fuse the disciplines of procedural generation with traditional 3D animation to make unique motion capture, to make unique 3D models, to make unique rocks, plants and animals as a way of replicating this sort of cartoonish nature.” Ian Cheng (b. 1984) is an American artist known for his live simulations, which explore the nature of mutation and human behaviour. His simulations, commonly understood as “virtual ecosystems”, are less about the wonders of new technologies than about the potential for these tools to realize ways of relating to a chaotic existence. Ian Cheng was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg at his studio in New York City in September 2017. The Emissary works was filmed at MoMA PS1.

09

interviews

39:02

George Condo

George Condo was part of the 1980s wild art scene in New York. In this video, recorded in his New York-studio, the iconic artist shares his life-long love of drawing and thoughts on his artistic expression, which he describes as “artificial realism.”

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