Text in progress for the unknown cities project. these writing is partly from my lecture Copenhagen
A little history where it starts and the idea came from

Who am I? What is my relation to my own environment and the so called outside world? What do I see and what do I do with it? I am a human being far away from home. Like Lucky Luck (the cowboy). He is always on the road and his home is a place we do not know. But he is always too busy to go home after he finishes his job. At the same time, when Lucky Luck has an opportunity to stay, he refuses. He is afraid to stay because he feels that he will loose his independence. Lucky Luck is a very romantic figure. He does not exist. He is famous because someone wrote about him. He was discovered in someone's head. He was just walking around there and was picked up. Now is he is living in our minds. His character reminds us of "the other side". The other side is always somewhere else and hard to reach. When we are there, or when we think we are there it suddenly disappears. It is somewhere else. It is a difficult situation. Often I feel like Lucky Luck. In a way I am romantic too. I also have the desire to go to other places and when I am there, I wanne go. But that is not bad. To have the desire to the other side, the side where you want to go and what you want to experience means that you are open minded. And that is good. To have an open mind. That means freedom. Trying to imagine how the other side is. Connecting myself with others, other cultures etc. So romantic is not only dreaming away for me. It means connecting to the world. Back to one of my favourite issues: To walk through urban landscapes, the aimless roaming through the city and the translation of these walks into concepts where I presents my photos and film - not in a series, but in tableauÕs, that form just such labyrinths like the cities through which I walked. Driven through my curiosity for that strange system of streets, alleys, passages, remains of the past and the banality of present day architecture. To walk means that I go from one place to another and stay there, or go back to where I started. It is about Connectivity. I think this word does not exist. But it is here now. So it does exist. For me it means connection and activity. The willing to connect. The MirrorÕs Edge exhibition is also a connector. With all the questions related to it. What happens with the work when it travels? How do people look at it in the several venues? Is it still fresh after 5 venues? Can you show the same work over and over again in the same travelling show? Or does the work(s) need changes? And I choose, because of the aspect of travelling and going to other places, to make a work in progress during the time this exhibition is travelling and even after it ~I will continue working on this project. I call this project ÔUnknown CitiesÕ. The MirrorÕs Edge show brings me to 5 different for me unknown cities and that brought me up to make a new work about that. I show the work Williamsburgbridge slide 31 Williamsburgbridge in this MirrorÕs Edge show and that bridge is a well known place for me. But the tour of the exhibition MirrorÕs Edge brings me to cities I donÕt know. I never went to these places. Other people decide for me where to go. In my latest work ÔWhere the bus takes usÕ We used this idea again in a different way. To follow a bus route. An existing route, but what is a new adventure and a lay out for new discoveries and possibilities. But later about this Sonsbeek9 contribution. My idea is to make a work which extend the video presentation of Williamsburgbridge. This film was my first contribution to this MirrorÕs Edge exhibition. I mean by that that I make a work that include the cities where the different presentations of MirrorÕs edge are on display. A work with the Williamsburgbridge, Umea, Vancouver, Turin, Glasgow and Copenhagen walk videoÕs . The sound is loud and also playing at the same time. The sound will change in loudness, so that for example screen 1 is the loudest, the other less etc. The attraction of the sound will change all the time, from screen to screen. The images are still playing, in depending of the changes in the loudness of the sound of each screen. Like I told you ÔMirrorÕs EdgeÕ started with the video ÔWilliamsburgbridgeÕ. This work is about my walk I made over the Williamsburgbridge at the end of the afternoon, beginning of the evening. The duration of the walk is about 50 minutes. In real time, no cuts. People are leaving Manhattan by train, car, bus, no one by foot, Only myself and my camera man. At the end of the walk, on the bridge in Brooklyn, we had to pass two man. I donÕt know what they did. In the beginning during the walk in Manhattan it was light, and during the walk, crossing the water of the East River, it began to be dark. The evening started. A lot of noise of the trains and cars riding over the iron bridge. Why did I make this film? What was the reason at that moment to organise a camera, a cameraman? Why that bridge. Honestly I donÕt know. I just walked that bridge at that moment, full of joy and expectations (of what?). I just wanted to cross the river, using this fine and beautiful bridge, this adventure of iron, of the past. An example of modernity; of what people can make. A highlight of peopleÕs capacity. And at that moment I was asked to make a film. I photographed, but did not make films, some exceptions of course, but photography was my main goal. But it made me think about photography. What was not there? What is photography? What is film? What is happening when I use a video camera instead of a photo camera? What is so different? And then I discovered the movement of my body. The knowledge, the feeling of walking. The reason to walk. It has to do with my body. Filming has the capacity to inform me and others about body talk, about body language (moving, the experience of time, shaking, going) Although filming is nothing more then photo stills behind each other in time; when used it is made in ourselves to a moving reality. A kind of fake. We can not produce at this moment real moving images. It is always about how to fake the situation in such a way that we believe that it is moving, that is is real, that the time is in it. And that makes it so important in a way. Filming reflects methods in ourselves that has to do with our ability to put reality in a believable form into our state of being. And I realised that this bridge pointed me to this because a bridge connects two sides. The possibility to cross, to see, to know. The bridge was a stand alone work on exhibit in the MirrorÕs Edge show in Umea, Vancouver and Turin. But already in Umea I developed the idea to make a multi video work. So I started to film in all the cities where MirrorÕs Edge was on exhibit and finally in Glasgow I was able to show 4 films together, next to each other, the films Williamsburgbridge, Umea, Vancouver and Turin. And here in Copenhagen there will be added one more film.



All my work is in a sense related to each other. A cinematic framework; a series of images that refer to urban planning and complexity. My work can best be seen as a large work in progress. Each and every image is part of a single continuous report. My work including in the MirrorÕs Edge show is also connecting. Connecting places. Turin , Glasgow , San Diego , Manhattan , East Orange , all strange places (for me). I donÕt live there. They are far away. No? You say NO? Is it perhaps your country, your city, your neighbourhood, your street, is it even your house on that picture? So that means it is not far away! My house is far away for you! You are right. It is not far. It is the same. We are equal Far away is in our head. For everybody the place where they are and live is the middle of the earth. And the rest of the world is far away. For me Europe and especially Amsterdam is the middle of the world and other place are (far) away. And that is not correct. In Umea, Sweden, they say we are the middle and they are not right either. Everybody is sitting in the middle of their own universe. Geographically speaking, the middle is what the atlas tells us. And of course, the atlas represents an agreement made by officials and world leaders. Such agreements allow us to have common standards. For example, we all agree on international time zones. These notions of agreement exist outside of ourselves, and they influence us and we are shaped by them. We don't have control over such things. Should the government decide to make a major change, for example to change Tuesday into Wednesday, we would have to follow that. If we did not we would have some problems. We are dependent upon these decisions to give shape and structure to our lives.We obey rules and agreements that form the complex structure of society. Even when you have a free mind you still have to follow those rules in one way or another But one thing belongs to ourselves: the middle. We are just the middle of the world, the universe. I went to Sweden in November 1999 and felt that was a kind of far away: almost the arctic circle! But for the people living there Amsterdam is far away. What a big deal. The world is one big network of middle points of unknown places.
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