Fiction: The Function

At which scale does one notice the yarns? Our first offline meeting with Annie Åkermann and Hrefna Hörn, the two individuals behind Fiction, took place at Hrefna’s home in a hidden backyard in the Northwest of Brussels. We were greeted with a homemade meal Annie and Hrefna had cooked together. They had brewed iced coffee, which was awaiting us in the fridge. We spent the afternoon in the depths of the garden, surrounded by trees, berries and an old log which during the course of our gathering would end up being an improvised pedestal for a yet unmodified handbag. While the rather wobbly camping table around which we were sitting was not quite cleared off and leftovers of different sorts as well as half-emptied glasses of coffee were still scattered around its surface, books and another handbag quickly joined the setting. Contrasting with the scenery, this handbag bore the codes of an elegant picnic: Three ceramic plates, cups and a jar laid out on a classic red tartan blanket, a knife and a fork hooked into the seam holding together the green bamboo slices serving as the bag’s main material. Reminiscent of the installation the two artists plan to show at Lokal-int, the borders between our déjeuner and the fictions embodied by the bags and their personas grew blurry astonishingly quickly. Parallels arose between the very idea of their exhibition and our collectively lived situation. As the afternoon went by — the sun, however, in its own north European summery manner did not seem to move — the handbags’ role as linking elements between human subjects and their environment became tangible. Handbags are one’s most intimate and essential companions. As argued by Elizabeth Fisher (1979) and later revisited by Ursula K. Le Guin (1988), they are very likely to be the first human tool and might therefore have been an early and most loyal partner throughout anthropogenesis. Our gathering was not only with Annie and Hrefna, but equally with their series of newly created sculptures, or handbags. In fact, similarly to words, handbags turn out to be containers: Carriers of meaning, social status, intentions, secrets. We here use the word «handbag», but we invite you to think of a receptacle, a sack, a pouch, a clutch, a backpack, a suitcase, a sachet, a briefcase, a Ziploc, a shopping bag, a purse, a baby sling, a basket, a bucket, a duffel, a tote, a knapsack, a holdall… Handbags carry the voices of many untold stories. In Annie’s and Hrefna’s fiction, these vessels allowing us to carry the stuff of everyday life function as multiple signifiers, depending on the context into which they are put, worn, exhibited, bought, given. They can be mere works of art presented in a white cube. They can be the new favorite partner in crime of one of the artists’ friends, acquaintances, colleagues or partners. They can have charisma and personality, they can have a persona of their own or be an inanimate object in an installative context, they can be everything in between. They can be pretexts for small talk and foster passionate conversations while waiting for dessert and coffee. The very idea of the gathering and its double significance weaves the red thread that ties the various levels of Annie’s and Hrefna’s practice. Not only is it to be understood as a convivial outcome of Fiction but it is also the action of collecting which is at the very base of their process. Thus, it turns out that in their praxis the two artists adopt a behavior similar to the one of hunter-gatherers. As a starting point for each of their pieces stands a combination of regular visits to the local flea markets as well as to online reselling platforms that supply them the bags and other material necessary to their artistic production. «It is the entrance to a flea market. No charge. Admittance free. Sloppy crowds. Vulpine, larking. Why enter? What do you expect to see? I’m seeing. I’m checking on what’s in the world. What’s left. What’s discarded. What’s no longer cherished. What had to be sacrificed. What someone thought might interest someone else. But it’s rubbish. If there, here, it’s already been sifted through. But there may be something valuable, there. Not valuable, exactly. But something I would want. Want to rescue. Something that speaks to me. To my longings. Speaks to, speaks of. Ah…» — Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover, p. 1, 1992 The harvested items providing a base for the individual artworks are then being reassembled with further gathered artifacts and smaller receptacles such as wallets, purses, stuffed animals and other more decorative elements like beads, keys or ribbons, resulting in multilayered combinations of potentially containing containers. Gathering therefore turns out to be the artistic methodology that animates the project from its early stage on until the final handbags. The very context of Lokal-int as a local offspace can equally be considered as a multi semantic container itself: It is a space where languages and cultures merge2. The weekly openings act as the Thursday evening Stamm — a regular social melting pot for the city’s community — while at the same time attracting visitors from around the country. The since 2006 ongoing list of featured artists is endless, as are the possible outcomes of the encounters offered by each opening. The volume of Lokal-int is twofold: On one side a white cube with two large front windows, on the other side a self-service bar (the fridge is always filled with beers), where the S1040-B90G-colored, sticker and graffiti covered walls are reminiscent of the social, historical, artistic and curatorial importance of Lokal-int. Fiction: They Function meshes both folds of Lokal-int, occupying both the white cube and the bar. This allows to critically and bodily reconsider the social potential of the handbag and the moment of an exhibition opening. Mirroring the multiple layers of Fiction, in the back of the sunny garden, the four of us not only gathered as a group of people, but also around a collection of ideas, dishes, words and objects — such as the wobbling camping table or the log-pedestal. Annie’s and Hrefna’s work is as much focused on the gathering of items as a base to assemble their expressive inanimate3 characters-sculptures, as it is about gathering as a social practice. Be it a party, a meeting, a dinner. Be it an exhibition? The exhibition itself is a container holding a collection of reflections, interactions and relationships. This book is a gathering of texts, containers for words, intertwined out of a collection of ideas, or signifiers shaped by one’s subjectivity. Clara Chavan and Selma Meuli, August 2022 This text is based on shared reflections that the two artists and two curators conducted between February and August 2022, from which Fiction: They Function the exhibition presented at Lokal-int Biel from the 13th to the 17th of October 2022 as well as this publication resulted.