Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present Vol II

Aldea presents “Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present Vol II”. A solo exhibition by Lea Guldditte Hestelund. 

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Den Nationale Scene and will open in tandem with the world premiere of “The Employees” a theatrical play based on the novel with the same title, by Olga Ravn.

Both events are linked through a shared science fiction universe, developed together by Lea Guldditte Hestelund, and Olga Ravn. 

 

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STATEMENT 038

After a 28-day shift in the rooms I started to wonder who I actually am here. An employee, a human, a programmer, Cadet 17 of the Six Thousand Ship. My work with the objects has started to feel unreal. I’ve found myself standing there staring at them for minutes at a time without doing anything. As if the objects only existed so as to awaken particular feelings in me by way of their form and material. As if that were their actual purpose. I snap back when a coworker or another life form enters the room and commences their own work, or I might be called to a meal. Who are these employees around me? Who’s that waiting in the corridor for you to talk to them? Are they humans, like me? Or spiders in human form? Does a human being need to have come from a human body? Or can I be a living human expelled from a sac of slime, hatched out of an accumulation of roe, a clump of spawn in a pond, a cluster of sticky eggs concealed among cereal crops or wild grasses? Do I exist at the center of the world, and am I significant there? Or am I merely one of those soft eggs among a mass of many? I saw a cadet moving around the canteen with a marble in his mouth, rolling it around his tongue, making it click against his teeth. Tell me, was he one of yours?

STATMENT 046

Would it be so terrible not to be human? Would it mean not dying? I’m not sure I still feel pride in my humanity. When the crew are dead, the objects will still be here, in the rooms, unaltered by our having come and gone. So you’re asking me: Does this make the objects bad? Do we blame them for their lack of sympathy? Does the stone feel sorrow? You’re asking me because you’re unsure yourselves, I can tell by your faces. It’s a dangerous thing for an organization not to be sure which of the objects in its custody may be considered to be living. It raises questions. For example: Which of these objects in our custody are entitled to legal process? Might this object be a subject, and are we then guilty of murder? I, on the other hand, am occupied by quite different questions. For example: Why is my coworker attracted to the most exclusive fabrics? Is she trying to be fashionable in outer space? Or is it because she wants to adorn herself only with nondegradable materials? Does she think that by wearing something imperishable, clothing her skin in eternal life, she can defy death? I’m not talking about death among humans, when they lose the ones they love; but about death as it occurs in the absence of humans. She collects diamonds, marble, and hide. Before she goes to sleep in the bunk below mine, she fills her hand with polished spheres of precious metals. I know, because I find it hard to sleep, which I hope you’ll forgive me, I realize sleep is our own responsibility here on the ship, and I am actually trying to do something about it, but I lie awake, and sometimes I might happen to look down from the top bunk, and I’ll see her below me then, her arm flopped over the edge of the bed in sleep, hand slightly open, and from the darkness of her palm those metal spheres twinkle up at me like stars, like a host of small eyes.

STATEMENT 179

I believe in the future. I think you need to imagine a future and then live in it. I believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment. All of us here on board are but fleeting carrier craft of the program. We bear the program with us. I think I’m going to encounter a great love in my life. My love is waiting for me already, I’m already immersed in it. Look around you. We  are but craft, fleeting carriers. Shortly we shall be gone, to regenerate in some other form. Have you noticed how we’ve settled into new modes now? We nest-build in spaces between sleep and waking, between night and day, between human and humanoid, between object and room, between room and voice. I believe in the future. I think you need to imagine your future and then live in it. I believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment. You say I mirror back at them the missions of my coworkers. But now it’s you who are mirroring me. Mirroring back at me the person I’ve been on board the ship. Reflecting what I gave and returning it like a beam of light. Everyone on the ship is doing their utmost. I believe in the future. I think you need to imagine a future and live in it. I believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment. We are but humble carrier craft of the program. Shortly, like obsolete updates, we shall be gone. I believe I’m going to encounter a great love in my life.

Olga Ravn - excerpts from “The Employees”

 

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Lea Guldditte Hestelund is a visual artist educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 2015, DK, and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, 2012-13, DE. Hestelund often creates physical fictions unfolded in installations and interdisciplinary collaborations, where the sculptural body can be literature, scents or music.

She has been awarded by Aage and Yelva Nimbs Fond Honorary Grant, and Estate Ferlov Mancoba Honorary Grant, 2020. In 2018 Hestelund received the 3 Years working Grant given by The Danish Arts Foundation

Hestelund has recently exhibited at Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Eduardo Secci Gallery, Italy, and Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, DK, and participated in group shows at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen Contemporary, Arken Museum of Modern Art, DK, the National Museum of Stettin, Poland, Fused Space, San Francisco, US, and ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, DK.

 

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“Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present Vol II” is the second iteration of Hestelund´s previous solo show “Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present '' exhibited in 2018 at Overgaden, Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. As part of the original exhibition, Olga Ravn wrote a novel, which was presented in leather hardcover books matching a series of leather works called Carriers. These manuals served as a parallel fiction that referenced both objects and built environments within the show, adding yet another narrative, and dimension to Hestelund´s physical fiction. 

Following the exhibition, Ravn's manuals were published by Gyldendal Publishing House as a paperback titled “The Employees”. This novel was then converted into a theatrical performance with the same name by Director Miriam Prestøy Lie, and is to premiere at Den National Scene.

Aldea Center for Contemporary Art, design and Technology and Den National Scene seek to further foster the ongoing dialogue between Lea Guldditte Hestelund, and Olga Ravn by scheduling opening times between the two events so visitors may review the interplay between the two events. 

  

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May 28th 

• 16.30 - 17:30 - DNS - conversation with Olga Ravn about the "The employees" (no)

• 18.00 - 20.00 - DNS - world premiere "The employees"

• 19.00 - Aldea - exhibition opening "Consumed future spewed up as present vol II"      

May 29

• 14:00 - 14:45 - Aldea - Conversation between Lea G. Hestelund and Olga Ravn (eng)

 

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Gallery Hours:  Thursday - Sunday 1 - 4pm

Aldea, C.Sundsgate 55, 5004 Bergen

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Supported by:

Statens Kunstfond (Danmark), Bergen Kommune – Åpne Dører, the Embassy of Denmark, Den Nationale Scene and Kulturradet.