JOURNALS

The day and week had finally arrived, CULTEX was about to really happen. An extremely intense period of producing new work was completed and the next final step before the opening was about to happen, the actual exhibition installation.
 
My two individual works were to be shown in two rooms inside the gallery. I knew the installations were not complicated or time consuming technically and that I therefore could allow myself to spend all the time I felt I would need considering the space and room before and during setting it all up. Machiko and my collaborative installation was more difficult to predict how much time we would need, and I felt that the installation would to be the most unpredictable and biggest challenge for me during the installation. We had always intended this installation to be site sensitive, receiving its final form during the installation week. We had only seen some assembly drawings of the green house a week before the installation week as well as received some descriptions from curator Siv Hofsvang at Gallery F15, so we didn't know precisely what to expect. We had to create an immediate response to its size, form and position and that proved to work very well for our partnership. The green house was beautiful and we were both very pleased that it was made out of glass and not some plastic material that many green houses often are. Initially, we thought it was very small, but after we had completed the installation, I think we both ended up really liking its size, and was quite amazed how much it actually could take. Because of its size we could not let the audience enter our installation and green house, as we originally had planned, but it works as well having the green house "overfilled" and letting the audience examine and explore it walking around the house and looking through the glass. We have installed some lighting in the ceiling, which doesn't have much effect during daytime, but the intention is that this light will let the installation live on after hours and in the evenings as well. 
 
Working inside the green house was a nice experience witnessing how the outdoor area of F15 is used everyday by the local residents of Moss and Jeløya. It was interesting to see how people (and dogs) seemed to be magnetically pulled towards the green house, and to hear and talk to them about their reactions and reflections. It was one little boy who examined my green creatures thoroughly through the glass in the sunlight and said to his mother that "these are lamps, I can see the electricity coming through them". Dogs kept pressing their noses against the glass wanting to smell and check out these creatures more closely. We had several conversations with people about the many sides or faces of the colour green; being associated with something fresh and natural as well as something poisonous, sick or radioactive and how we tried to express the global environmental situation through our installation. It seemed to have become an installation that many could relate to one way or another no matter age or background, and it even seemed to engage the local dogs, which really made me think that we somehow had succeeded in creating a "natural unnatural environment". The world of man-made objects had blended in to the natural environment as if it made sense that these objects were inside a green house and out in a natural environment. This installation has in many ways become similar to the nature; it is in continuous transformation depending on season, weather and the on-going changing surroundings that becomes an integral part of the work through reflections in the many mirrorsheets of the installation. 

Greenhouse, detail with reflections.

I think both of us were a bit nervous or unsure as to how we would make this installation and how it would work. Not because we didn't believe in the idea, but because we deliberately had made it a collaborative project that was not to be planned in detail beforehand, but to be created through dialogue and our instant response during the actual installation period. I think this unpredictability and immediate way of working was quite new to us both, at least in a collaborative setting, and probably something we couldn't have done if it was the first time we were working together. But because we do know each other well, have a deep understanding and respect for each other I think we had reached a new level in our partnership were it worked surprisingly smooth to take these kind of risks. I think both of us really enjoyed the process. We worked quite slowly, allowing time for discussions, reflections, getting to know the site and the space and taking in everything around us. We didn't work towards a definite "finish", but after a few days we both realised that we had created an environment and installation that represented the ideas and thoughts that we had discussed over the past year. We stopped working and left it like it was at this point. Doing this instant creative and collaborative exercise together and feeling that we also had “made it” was amazing to experience together. It also made me really look forward to all the other versions of this installation we are to create in the other venues of CULTEX' exhibition tour, in new environments and different sized and types of green houses.