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TRANSCRIPT

2005

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video here

I had a company that´s aim was to produce and promote photography. Me and my co-worker John, he was a lemming with stigmata, got an office with a view. We arranged our props in a corner and named ourselves Altin Turk Agency after a Turkish canned beans brand. We had lots of rubbish, as it was, although back then it appeared necessary. I had always been attracted to all kinds of boxes.

Our ambitions kept company with the angels in heaven. Not that we had a dream; straight from thought to action, John taught me, was the only valid method. He believed in solving every problem in less than three minutes.

He was a passionate photographer of food. He appreciated having, what he found to be a gift, of portraying everything´s innermost character, or soul, as he called it. I insisted there is no soul in a banana peel. He didn´t care much for my critique. I explained the melancholic backdrop of his attitude as ”Nordic Light”, a term used to describe much nordic art-production in the nineties.

What field did we operate in? My intentions were abstract and solely emotional, like an itch in the jaw, back then, and his were that of the hybrid cultural producer. Visual art meets graphic design, meets marketing, meets the general adaptation of skate culture of the 2000s. As soon as I realized this in John, I felt it coming: the conflict of artistic emphazis.

I was about to vomit all over the portrayal of decay. ”Talk is cheap”, John said, ”action speaks louder than words”. I was now about to vomit over his lack of character, propably because I had become an academic, which annoyed me with equal strength.

Me, I´d long nourished my inner perro, that street dog: cool, smart, sexy.

We chose to focus on producing and promoting landscape photography. The brainstorming of titles got me feeling funky. Altin Turk, I thought, is a brilliant company. We put the titles onto landscape photographs. It was fucking depressing. We planned to put it on billboards all over town as a visual bombing. That would be our ticket to cultural producers´ v.i.p.-lists all over town.

I went swimming to deal with the post-landscape artistic frustrations. My head was spinning and I had a hard time reaching clarity. I became frustrated with terms in general. The nation state. Space. Love.

Still, I had my obligations to my job at Altin Turk, and I wanted to conduct it properly. I had to go local, so I went to the drug-store that trades general anger for pure and specific annoyance, the store called the third big and cheerful reform that makes our lives easier.

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Narrator: Kevin Murphy
Dancer: Maria Johnson
Text and editing; Marianne Hurum
Images: world wide web and Marianne Hurum

TRANSCRIPT

2005

image is video still

video here

I had a company that´s aim was to produce and promote photography. Me and my co-worker John, he was a lemming with stigmata, got an office with a view. We arranged our props in a corner and named ourselves Altin Turk Agency after a Turkish canned beans brand. We had lots of rubbish, as it was, although back then it appeared necessary. I had always been attracted to all kinds of boxes.

Our ambitions kept company with the angels in heaven. Not that we had a dream; straight from thought to action, John taught me, was the only valid method. He believed in solving every problem in less than three minutes.

He was a passionate photographer of food. He appreciated having, what he found to be a gift, of portraying everything´s innermost character, or soul, as he called it. I insisted there is no soul in a banana peel. He didn´t care much for my critique. I explained the melancholic backdrop of his attitude as ”Nordic Light”, a term used to describe much nordic art-production in the nineties.

What field did we operate in? My intentions were abstract and solely emotional, like an itch in the jaw, back then, and his were that of the hybrid cultural producer. Visual art meets graphic design, meets marketing, meets the general adaptation of skate culture of the 2000s. As soon as I realized this in John, I felt it coming: the conflict of artistic emphazis.

I was about to vomit all over the portrayal of decay. ”Talk is cheap”, John said, ”action speaks louder than words”. I was now about to vomit over his lack of character, propably because I had become an academic, which annoyed me with equal strength.

Me, I´d long nourished my inner perro, that street dog: cool, smart, sexy.

We chose to focus on producing and promoting landscape photography. The brainstorming of titles got me feeling funky. Altin Turk, I thought, is a brilliant company. We put the titles onto landscape photographs. It was fucking depressing. We planned to put it on billboards all over town as a visual bombing. That would be our ticket to cultural producers´ v.i.p.-lists all over town.

I went swimming to deal with the post-landscape artistic frustrations. My head was spinning and I had a hard time reaching clarity. I became frustrated with terms in general. The nation state. Space. Love.

Still, I had my obligations to my job at Altin Turk, and I wanted to conduct it properly. I had to go local, so I went to the drug-store that trades general anger for pure and specific annoyance, the store called the third big and cheerful reform that makes our lives easier.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Narrator: Kevin Murphy
Dancer: Maria Johnson
Text and editing; Marianne Hurum
Images: world wide web and Marianne Hurum