LONG PLACE
2005
Material Time / Work Time / Life Time
Reykjavik Arts Festival
curated by Jessica Morgan
collaborators:
Anne Kockelkorn / Neulant Van Exel /
Darri Lorenzen
2005
Material Time / Work Time / Life Time
Reykjavik Arts Festival
curated by Jessica Morgan
collaborators:
Anne Kockelkorn / Neulant Van Exel /
Darri Lorenzen
LONG PLACE is a 150-meter tunnel-like installation built inside Edinborg House, an edifice from the 1890´s in Ísafjörður, a village in the north of Iceland. The work consisted of a 150m tunnel-like structure that created a disorienting passage through a completely white interior illuminated by monochrome light. The structure required time to traverse: a prolonged sequence of turns, shifts, and ascents—left, right, left, up stairs, down again—before eventually leading back into the exterior space. The act of walking itself, stretched through duration and repetition, became integral to the experience, foregrounding the choreography of movement through an unknown space. A soundscape, recorded from within the tunnel, filled the surrounding void between the installation and the building through a surround sound system.
At its core, LONG PLACE is an exhibition of nothing. There are no objects on display; instead, the work directs attention to the act of passage itself, to the viewer’s own movement, anticipation of an artwork, and perceptual disorientation. The experience of the piece was also shaped by its setting: the pure, abstract whiteness of the interior stood in stark contrast to the dramatic fjord landscape of Ísafjörður outside. This tension between interior and exterior, emptiness and fullness, presence and nothingness, heightened the sense of estrangement while underlining how context frames perception.
At its core, LONG PLACE is an exhibition of nothing. There are no objects on display; instead, the work directs attention to the act of passage itself, to the viewer’s own movement, anticipation of an artwork, and perceptual disorientation. The experience of the piece was also shaped by its setting: the pure, abstract whiteness of the interior stood in stark contrast to the dramatic fjord landscape of Ísafjörður outside. This tension between interior and exterior, emptiness and fullness, presence and nothingness, heightened the sense of estrangement while underlining how context frames perception.
It would be hard to forget the otherwordly work LONG PLACE that Elín Hansdóttir made for the Reykjavík Arts Festival in 2005. An entirely unexpected space of pristine exactitude and disorienting spatial and temporal experience housed in an otherwise unassuming building in the far northwest town of Ísafjörður in Iceland. Leaving behind the dramatic natural landscape of the area, entering Hansdóttir’s work resulted in another form of sensory overload but now in the form of absence. A one metre wide perfectly white corridor took you through a turning, rising and dropping geometrically pronounced journey only to be deposited on the other side of the building back into the surrounding outdoor space of colours, noise, smell and human life.
Jessica Morgan
Director, Dia Art Foundation
Jessica Morgan
Director, Dia Art Foundation