Can you speak silence?

Jean (Hans) Arp sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist, once said: “Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation."

Mister Arp, or may I call you Jean, I would call you Hans, but I don't speak German. I just dived into your world of art today, you made some cool shit, you made some sense and you made me curious and inspired today.

"Soon silence will have passed into legend,” Arp believed.

I'm happy I don't agree with that. I guess I'm more of a dreamer and an optimist to doom the silent days. However it's become exceptional in our western society. In your daily life, when is it silent? I find it hard allowing silence. I'm aware of my need for it. Then society has this special gift of replacing one need for the other. The need to feel, or the need for shopping, eating and entertainment. Trying to fit silence into a schedule, well, if I'm not half asleep with a bit of time on my hands on either ends of the day I find it almost impossible these days. Too much is going on right now. I’m one of those who find it hard to set aside an hour to be creative, to write, to work with a brief or meditate. It's one of those things that usually just happen. They force their way in when you already have opened the window. If you’re lucky you'll have a piece of paper within your radius or even some time to collect, which again is usually sleeping time, but that I can work with. I feel pretty chocked now. In need of silence. I've always believed that things happen for a reason. That's why I'm sitting here now, why I'm not out drinking on a Friday night or at some friend’s holiday house. Maybe tomorrow morning I will have my silence.

What's your identity?

I just finished an interesting assignment in our contextual design class called identity. We were to create a piece that illustrates what identity is, with our own identity as a reference.

What I’ve tried to express with my work is that identity is an always growing result of absorbing life. By absorbing experiences and impressions our identity evolves and becomes richer and deeper. Working with this idea I’ve tried to illustrate my identity absorbed with the most important impacts on my life.

Throughout my research I’ve been reading articles, spiritual texts, talked to friends and thinking a lot about my background and how I’ve ended up here. Observing how different siblings and neighbours can be I’ve been drawn to the idea that identity doesn’t come from one place, but is a result of all the emotions, places and people you have ever met. I’ve been curious of the difference between personality and identity, and come to the conclusion that personality can change. It is fixed and can easily be communicated. Identity however doesn’t change, it’s abstract and an ongoing evolving process, that started before you were born.

The result is a metaphor of identity as a sponge. A sponge, like identity, absorbs outer impressions it’s been exposed to. The different shapes and colours of the experiences affect the total concept of the sponge. The different states of the sponge I’ve illustrated, symbolises different experiences of my life.

The thoughts behind the frames
Born in a snowstorm in Norway. Growing up with passion for colours and music. Fishes represent my love for water and animals growing up on the countryside. Moving from house to house has influenced me a lot and maybe kept me on this path of moving. Painting and creating a new space every time. Pink is my mother’s fashion sense mirroring me as a princess, green is my dad being in the special force military and the monster is my amazing brother. Flying carpet is my imagination and disappearing in the books and films I absorbed. Cheque pattern is school, friends and the slow game figuring out who I am. Red is love, black is lost and shut down, dusty and fall is moving back to my roots, moving in with my brother and coming back to life. Bubbles are freedom, support from family and good friends, and a choice to move far away. Blue is Australia. Donkey is a life-changing friend. Olive oil is living in Italy. Black/yellow is a deeper feeling of inspiration that led to another big step. Red, chillies and incense means travelling and especially India. The sum of it all is now, my identity.