War Diary

The artwork was a text-drawing-painting and video installation. The inspiration for the artwork was based on the diaries of young soldiers,  who participated in a war that where beyond their world of experience. The texts in the diaries also had an poetic dimension, where small events lead out into the larger perspectives where death and life and the meaning of all things was considered. In this way, the texts also became distinctive metaphors, which formed the basis for my two installations.

The drawings where from a series in A3 format with portraits "Men with broken faces", of young men whose faces where destroyed in the steel storms of the war. In the installation I showed several small paintings around the same theme. On the wall I mounted texts taken from the diaries. The video went in a loop and connected directly to the metaphors in the diaries. In addition, I also used glass/exhibition mounts. graphic prints from art history battlefields and war scenes, texts from war diaries, drawings, artifacts, photographs, sheet music, etc.

Short Stories

The video work "Short Stories" was recorded during a trip I made to the disputed Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2013:
Boxing training in the capital Stepanakert, burnt Azeri tanks from the Nagorno-Karabakh War*, ruined city of Aghdam near the front line between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, a theological conversation and an opera aria outside the Opera House in Yerevan.

 *The Nagorno-Karabakh War  referred to as the Artsakh Liberation War, was an ethnic conflict that  took place in the late 1980s to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Let There Be Light

In September 2011, I travelled to Armenia with some of my artist friends. 
It was a journey, where I was dramatically confronted with the Armenian history, both in the past and the present.
We were working with an exhibition "On Trial - Christ 2012" which in June 2012 was shown in Oslo, Norway. It was a show that put faith and existential issues in focus. 
The Armenians are one of the oldest nations in the world and adopted Christanity in 301 a.c.  Armenia has geographically and historically  been placed between the hammer and the anvil, surrounded and caught between hostile muslim countries. Their strong Christian faith and love for their land has kept this nation together despite the greatest disaster , such as the Muslim Turks genocide of 1.5 millions Armenians in 1915.

In my video "Let there be Light" I´m also trying to visualize the very strong, almost religious and existential relationship the Armenians have to their biblical, mighty mountain Ararat.
The title "Let there be Light" is from a poem by the armenian poet Paruir Sevak.
A priest vacum cleaning after the religious service is over. The mighty mountain Ararat is awakening. The Sun is illuminating the top while a voice reads from Genesis (8:1-17), peasants working peacefully in the field below Ararat. A piano starts playing a partita by J.S.Bach, while camera is slowly moving horisontally in a dark room. The camera starts suddenly moving vertically, the scene is cut when the light suddenly flowing into the darkness.

"Let There Be Light" was presented during the 2013 Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival in Yerevan, Armenia:

Let There Be Light - 2013 Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival
Director - 2013 Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival

Visions of Purity

The video "Visions of Purity" is an attempt at questioning the human longing for purity.This is a longing that through out history and up to the present day have led to Genocides. The video shows some short sequences from documentaries where physical anthropologists and race biologists are working with theirs "scientific" material in the field.The video shows also, among other things, how important the physical anthropology was for the development of eugenics.

Little Red Ridinghood

The digital art piece ‘Little Red Ridinghood’ runs in a loop and lasts about five minutes. Though featuring the traditional folk tale’s two main protagonists, Red Riding Hood and the wolf, this video uses these instead as a starting point for a provocative composition. The wolf and the girl are both shown in identical sleeping poses, a similarity between them being suggested to the viewer, but not in an overly conspicuous manner. The wolf both is and is not Little Red Riding Hood. The sleeping girl’s breathing can be heard and one can detect small movements of the sleeping girl and the wolf.