Direction

 

"Writing books is a means of losing creative freedom (….) Reviewing books is an even more base form of penal servitude. A writer you can at least claim to have enslaved himself by choosing his field. The critic is in a more awkward position. The reviewer is as tightly chained to the work he is reviewing as the prisoner is to his wheelbarrow. The writer loses his freedom in his own book, while the critic loses it in someone else´s."

                            Stanislaw Lem, A perfect vacuum

 

Nowadays most of the labour goes into planning. Concerning what circumstances, what medium is appropriate, what entertains me, what resources are available. A vague "collage" is laid out, after a while the questions I sense are materialised. I try to find the answers by naming the work, finding a suitable medium and the complements extracting what is essential to me. During this crystallisation, the hope of finding a bright diamond appears, but often enough the result is yet another ill-defined piece of carbon.

Titles, regarding me, are a matter of conducting.

The stereo painting Point of view is a motif I worked on before, first as an oil painting and later as icon. Last was a stereo photo derived from the stereo images I exposed one night in 1990. The motif: one of the abundant in imagery, the crucified.
As I felt a bit embarrassed, I waited till everyone had left the school building. I raised a cross in the atriums, lost the momentum… realised this was a balancing act I could not manage.
In the defeat, unexpectedly a new angle and a solution to the practical problem appeared.

– Do it subjectively

  In the animation sequence Moment of clarity, I am using associative and audio-visual sound mixes to enhance motion. Describing movement in an unspecified space, using the points of reference which establish the substance, has been a challenge; sensing pretension has sometimes darkened my will. The painting Escalate is closely connected to the animation sequence.

 

Point of view is a concept used in cinematography, the camera representing the audience.

A moment of clarity is an expression used within AA, a sudden insight regarding one´s own condition.

The escalator was developed for department stores in USA more than 100 years ago.

Malmö 040118

Jesus, Dante and Jacob

I wrote the above before really being past the draft stage. And quite right, having started painting Escalate, I smelled the outcome after a couple of weeks. Being unable to stand the result made me start drafting a new one, which in the end resulted in the animation sequence Escalator. The painting Point of view was transformed into a photographic reproduction.

The three names

I am not sure how to put it, but the first one can´t really be ignored in this connection.The other one´s story is something that has come to me during the process. With the latter I ponder the ways which seem to be at hand.

 

David Krantz 040305

Translation Sofi Meijling