LIVERÖDLANDa showcase of bits & pieces from Jonas Liveröds production

This introduction to some of my work is as much an introduction to some events, themes, images, texts that are related to the work. Uncanny, jumpy, delirious and overwhelming it is saturated with desires, wrong turns, fascination and possible clues. It just might give a better idea of a body of work where all the details are of equal importance. Like a ‘rite de passage’, the ritual that symbolically marks the transformation from one state of being to the other (the OTHER being the key word here), at times making it hard to define the borders between subject & object, fact & fiction, right & wrong - Just the way I like it.

Above: Installing the solo-show Goodbye Nausea at Skånes Konst. Below: Museum (Swarming Spaces), ink on paper.

misunderstandings, love crimes, collectors, Nikola Tesla, disturbing, Rorscach tests, holy manuscripts, Mike Kelley, the baroque, Ol dirty bastard, pagodas, Paul Thek, ran-dom noise, cults & wigs, Ed Sand-ers, avalanches, Gustave Doré, Waco & Nico, factoids & fakes, Oscar Wilde, folklorism, Mount Rushmore, Mae West, wunderkammer, William Blake, The uncanny, hypnagogia, vessels & tents, George Meliés, fragile objects, The Stooges, Kibbo-Kift, ugly things, un-controlled , borderlands, ornaments, the hidden, taxidermy, Prinzhorn, doppelgäng-er, Mata Hari, hallucinatory, Henry Darger, white paper, Jurij Gagarin, punk ritual, Udo Kier, James Ensor, perception, Nina Simone, pilgrimag-es, anomaly phenomena, the failure.

When all else has

failed we can still

become immortal by

making a gigantic

mistake

John Kenneth

Galbraith

Some people & a few things:

House of fiction #2 - ink on paper.

Studio detail from IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Details of sculptures -from the Goodbye Nausea series.

Bursts and sparkles and little fizzes of light, starlight, and sometimes high noon, tremen-dous everywhere light, like chandeliers of diamonds floating in the sky.

John Fowles - the collector

Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin.

- Frank Moore Colby, Imaginary obligations

Above: Detail of the drawing All that is solid melts into air #1 (for Sarah) - ink on paper. Right: Detail of Burn, object,burn! Left: Detail of Wrong monument at IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art.Bottom right: Overview of Burn, object,burn! Soloshow at FAK. Bottom left: Detail from studio.

“you’ve gotta burn if you wanna shine”

Right now I want to go further inside, deep inside. And I´m taking the outsides with me, I´m taking it all with me ...All the titles, all your gloves, all your mirrors, all your record collections, the lot. And when it comes back out into the real world, your world, it´ll feel familiar, but it won´t be.

Jim Lambie

And “White” appears. Ab-solute white. White beyond all whiteness. White of the coming of the White. White without compro-mise, through exclusion, through total eradication of nonwhite. Insane en-raged white, screaming with whiteness. Fanatical, furious, ridding the retina. Horrible electric white, implacable, murderous. White in bursts of white.

Henri Michaux - Miserable Miracle

Above: Bewildered - expanding foam, plaster, photocopy,metal, styrofoam

Left: Blinding light - Fur, light tubes. Above: Thuggee sculpture, ink on paper.

Detail of Meth lab vanitas - ink on paper.

Himmelsbrief

In these days of domestic disaster, of home foreclosures and lost jobs and frozen credit, what protection is avail-able to the average American? For several centuries American home-owners had insur-ance in the form of a printed document called a Himmels-brief—or Letter from Heaven. Car-ried on the person, especially in time of war, or framed and installed in the farmhouse, the letter was believed to furnish protec-tion of many sorts. The document was universal among the Pennsylvania Dutch, as well as among the Dutch Diaspora in the South, the Mid-west, and Canada.

Anomaly:An anomaly is an irregularity, a misproportion, or something

that is strange or unusual. In particular, as used in the sci-ences, it means deviation from

the common rule.

Below: I want your doppelganger damaged.Above: detail of studio at IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art

Vanitas is the Latin for vanity, in the sense of emptiness or a worthless action. A vanitas painting, while possibly contain-ing lovely objects, always included some reference to man’s mortality - most often a human skull (with or without other bones), but also by way of burning candles, soap bubbles or decaying flowers. It was meant not only to be a work of art, but also to carry an important moral message: Trivial pleasures of life are abruptly and perma-nently wiped out by death, so don’t get too carried away during your earthly time, bub.

There is a war going on, between those who

think there is a war and those who don´t.

Above: Portal, temporary public sculpture at the Malmö festival. Top right: Swinging Socialism at the Skanka-loss festival, collaboration with the landscape-architect Louise Andersson.Right: Studio detail at Irish Museum of Mod-ern Art.Below: Detail from solo-show “Some awk-ward morning at Goldin Gallery.

Above: House of fiction #1 ink on paper. Top left: Detail from A ritual misunderstanding at Alma Lövs Museum. Top right: Sorrows from the superstructure, ink on paper. Above right: Detail from Little Altars everywhere at solo-show Goodbye nausea at Skånes Konst. Right: Studio detail.

the slap delay vocals are the sirens on top of this streetcar in hot pursuit of ecstasy. It’s unclear whether Twilley is aware that he’s swimming in it, barely keeping his head above crazed water, nearly drowning in mag-ic as he asks for more. Another heaping portion, please.

Left: Detail from the solo-show “Near Morning Museum” at Växjö Kun-sthalleRight: The sculpture My little brother Brancusi. Bottom right: Detail from the solo-show “Goodbye nausea” at Skånes Konst.

Detail of Natural disorder- ink on paper.

Meth lab still-life, Ink on paper.Above:Detail of A brand new fucked-up generation.

Above: Untitled, rucksack, fake hair

Cursed StoriesAccording to historians, cursed stories originate from Eastern Europe in the 16th and 17th Century. Romani dictators could cast a curse within a story to punish their enemies. Their enemies would then have their tongues chopped off so they would not be able to tell the story. The infected story, unless passed on, would endure the victim with slow bad luck until eventu-ally the demise would mean certain death. It is believed that if the story is somehow passed on to another person, the subject would receive good luck. Certain details of the story would need to be put across to lift the curse.

Above: The Abyss - billboard version for Clara Agency.

The past is a foreign country, they do things

differently there.

LP Hartley

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even

glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is al-

ways landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing

a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

O. Wilde

“Why can’t people just do what I want them to and be gone? It’s a

worldwide conspiracy to make me be polite when I don’t want to be.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel

Far left, flag of M/S Idi-odysee, DIY boat built from found materials for the Open Art Festival and later sailed across the watersystems of Sweden.

Left: Black smoke building, Ink on paper.

Below: M/S Idiodysee anchored in Örebro. Bot-tom right, transport of M/S Idiodysee.

So much of the work we do in the studio is about consuming: I want my own “Unité” - but I can’t go and buy it, because it’s in France, and it’s a gigantic building that weighs a million tons and has people living in it. So making it is a way of having it….

Tom Sachs

Above: Wrong ghostLeft: Detail of Do nothing & make them laugh - ink on paper. Below left: Detail from the exhibition Neverlands revisited - Dice found in the Manila North Cemetary

Above: Detail from A ritual misunderstanding, solo at Alma Löv Museum.Above right: Detail of Immaculate cathedral for the last days of a Stavanger vision. Left: Detail from solo-show Goodbye Nausea at Skånes Konst. Untitled and Do nothing & make them laugh. Below: Passed out-there, ink on paper.

Pony drawing joke

Teacher: What are you drawing, Sam-my?Sammy: It’s a picture of a pony in a field eating grass. Teacher: I can’t see any grass. Where is it?Sammy: The pony ate it.Teacher: And I can’t see the pony either. Where’s he?Sammy: He went back to his stable. He didn’t want to stay in a field where there wasn’t any grass.

Keep it distant, difficult and dangerous

- Cooper -Shoedsack Productions motto

Borges Chinese classification of animals: 

Animals are divided into...- Those that belong to the Emperor,- Embalmed ones,- Those that are trained,- Suckling pigs,- Mermaids,- Fabulous ones,- Stray dogs,- Those included in the present classification,- Those that tremble as if they were mad,- Innumerable ones,- Those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,- Others,- Those that have just broken a flower vase,- Those that from a long way off look like flies.

Top right: Construction of curated meal at the Copenhagen Art-Fair. Above: sculpture Strange object. Right: Detail of solo-show House of Fiction at Ballroom Gallery. Below far left: Black sculpture, ink on paper.

The human ear is defenseless. Unable to keep sound out, it must take in all it hears.Selective hearing is common phrase, but meaningless.

David Yearsley - Music torture

Top left: Staring into mid-air, ink on paper.

Bottom right: the sculpture Drummer / Heckler.

Bottom left: Detail of Cult of the Bigtime sen-sorial at Aarhus Centre for contemporary art.

Fake synonyms

Dummy, hoax, replica, fic-tion, fantasy, virtual real-ity, dream, phony, artifi-cial, film, hallucination,

delusion, illusion, forged, mimic, bogus, sham, ersatz, imitation, copy, counterfeit, simulation, mock, pseudo.

Above: Skamfläck - ink on paper. Right: Self-portrait - expaning foam, styrofoam & hair

Sometimes you can tell a better truth by lying, basically, by tweaking the truth to get more into the anxiety of the moment.

Lauren Weinstein

Above left: Taxidermy of a monument, temporary public work in Helsingborg. Left: the drawing Hoof on top of the drawing Sacred fury. Below right: Detail of Passing seasons, returning dead & nasty young men #2. Bottom left: Detail of Passing sea-sons, returning dead & nasty young men # 1

Left: Cult of the bigtime sensorial at Alma Löv Museum.Bottom right: Detail of It’s pure anthropology, ink on paper.Bottom left, detail of the installation Idiot island at Ystad Museum of Art

Its not the tree out there, it’s the guy who’s looking at it.

Cruising altitude, the perfect hit, synesthasia, phazers on stun, a white dog in a white dog suit, a childlike cloud formation, boil the kettle mother, strange things are happening

Top right: View of solo-show Idiot island at Ystad Museum of Art. Top left: Studio detail. Above: Detail of solo-show House of fiction at Ball-room Gallery. Bottom left: Studio detail. Bottom right: Flyer for DJset

Top right: Detail of DIY fountain, temporary public sculpture n Franz Neumann platz in Berlin. Bottom right: All that is solid melts into air (for Sarah) #3. Bottom left: Detail of foun-tains at Franz Neumann in Berlin. Below: Detail of studio 2010.

Shangri-la

La La La La

La La LA LALAND

Right: Serendipity detail - ink on paper. Bottom right: detail from Solo-show House of fiction at Ballroom Gallery. Bottom left: Studio detail of textiles.

You already know that. so do i. it is not knowl-edge we lack. what is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.

Sven Lindkvist

The Malmska whale – animal or architecture?

In a section at the very back of the charmingly dusty and old-fashioned Museum of Natural history in Gothenburg, Sweden, the worlds only stuffed blue whale resides. The whale, which more resembles a wooden bus dressed in eel skin, stranded on a rock just off shore in the bay of Askim outside of Gothen-burg in 1865. Had this happened now, we might have helped the young whale back into safe waters. But this was 1865 and when the rumour of the stranded sea monster reached the citizens of Gothenburg they grabbed whatever weapon was at hand, got into their boats and set out to communaly beat the shit out of the poor mammal.

As this happened, the visionary Augusti Wilhelm Malm came up with an idea no-one else had dared to think – to drag the whale to shore and conserve it. With the assitance of three steam ships the colossus was brought into the harbour of Gothenburg. Malm had a head for buisness as well as an eye for animals and charged the 20 000 Gothenburgers who wanted to have a peek at the giant whale. The incomes was spent on the complex and com-pletely revolutionary form for taxidermy that Malm and the conservator A J Malmgren invented in order to give the whale eternal life. Cunningly, they preserved the whale in three parts so it would be easier to move. Malm was ahead of his time in many ways and decided (similar to todays interactive trends) that the whale was not only to be viewed from the outside, but to be entered as well. Inside the wall he built a bar with benches and beautiful hand-printed textile wallpaper. The entrance was through the mouth of the whale and with the metal hinges on top, you tilted its head open and walked across a little bridge right into the animal.In its belly you could not only hear the fascinating stories of the largest mammal on earth, you could also enjoy a cup of tea and a fine cigar. The cigar smoke worked well in covering the smell of the conserved animal as well. The whale was equipped with wheels and rolled on the railways from Berlin to Stockholm, a triumphatorial trip inspiring thousands of astonished spectators.Like Jonah and his whale, the Gothenburg leviathan literally embodied all the desires, megalomanias, wishes and lusts of the visitors. However, His mouth was closed for good in the beginning of the 20th century when a young couple were caught having sex deep in his belly. Today, he is only open on christmas when Santa recieves children and their wishes among the furniture of his insides, the former sea monster is dusty and repaired with rusty screws and bolts. No longer a whale nor a bar nor a hall of lecture the great mammal has ended in a twilight zone between life and death, object and being.  

Left: Detail of Animal as architecture board at the exhibition Neverlands Revisited. Bottom left: Stuffed horse, ink on paper.

Above: Dirty white - detail of solo-show Goodbye Nausea at Skånes Konst. Below : detail of sculpture Goodbye nausea #2, in the background House of fic-tion #2. Left: sculpture The ballad of the goofy object, in the background: Dont trust the yaa-ba grin

The sea of trees

“The perfect place to die.” That’s how Aokigahara was described in Wataru Tsurumui’s bestselling book The Complete Manual of Suicide. A dense, dark forest bordering Mt. Fuji, Aokigahara is infamous throughout Japan as a popular spot for those taking their final journey. In 2002, 78 bodies were found within it, replacing the previous record of 73 in 1998. By May of 2006, at least 16 new suicides had already been found. More than a few of them were even carrying copies of Tsurumui’s book. No one knows how many bodies go undiscovered.Signs emblazoned with messages such as “Please reconsider” and “Please consult the police before you decide to die!” are nailed to trees throughout the forest. However, the woods have such a reputation that these minor deterrents do little to stop the determined. Local residents say they can always tell who is going into the forest for its stunning natural beauty, who is hunting after the macabre and who is planning never to return. “We’ve got everything here that points to us being a death spot. Perhaps we should just promote ourselves as ‘Suicide City’ and encourage people to come here,” the exasperated mayor of Aokigahara has been quoted as saying.Part of the appeal is dying at the foot of the sacred Mt. Fuji. Part of it is the foreboding nature of Aokigahara, so dense and thick that from just a few kilometers inside it no sounds can be heard other than those produced by the forest itself. Legends surround the place; for instance, there are said to be massive underground iron deposits that cause compasses to go haywire, trapping innocents along with the purposely suicidal. Japan’s Self Defence Force regularly runs training exercises throughout Aokigahara, and claims to have had no trouble with their military-grade lensatic compasses. They admit, though, that commercially available equipment would be pretty much useless.

Right: Tattooing a fur tree for the site-specific work This is what it sounds like when thugs cry at Botnik Studios.

Bottom right: Detail of A weird light, ink on paper.

Bottom left: Detail from This is what it sounds like when thugs cry.

Above: Detail from solo-show Near Morning Mu-seum at Växjö Kunsthalle. Left: Ruined smiley - ink on paper. Below: Detail of Some Awkward morning, solo-show at Goldin Gallery. Bottom: View of exhibi-tion at Thomas Wallner Gallery

Top left: Dark bender - ink on paper.

Top right: Detail of Dont trust the yaa-ba grin - mask, socks, mounted deer horns .

Left: The dark stuff - mirrorballs, black waste bag, styrofoam, burned pine wood.

The malaise took the form of gruesome nightmares (for Hergé) where every-thing became enveloped in overpowering, screaming white. “At the time I was going through a real crisis and my dreams where nearly always white dreams. And they where extremely distressing. I took note of them and remember one where I was in a kind of tower made up of a series of ramps. Dead leaves were falling and covering everything,” Hergé later related to Numa Sadoul. “At a particular moment, in an immaculately white alcove, a white skeleton appeared and tried to catch me. And then instantly everything around me became white” Hergé was shattered.

Michael Farr telling the background for Hergés crisis which led him to begin work on Tintin in Tibet

Above: Detail of Near morning, near the mountain - ink on paper. Below: Oviloläge, ceramics & glue.Below left. Detail of installation at Kristinehamns Museum of Art.

“Life would never settle comfortably on his shoulders , Jasper knew, but he would make the good fight of it, and the bout would be a long and grand one and there would never be a verdict.”- David Fisher, The War Magician

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