JOHANNA ADEBÄCK
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REYKJAVIK KAMIKAZE
Exhibition: Friday 6 December 2013
Reception: Friday 6 December, 15:00-17:00
Location: Icelandic Ocean Cluster
Grandagardi 16,
101 Reykjavík
Iceland



PØST Los Angeles Kamikaze Series was born out of the concept of impermanence in abandonment and sacrifice, putting all you have in something of the utmost value, but of no value to hold upon other than the gesture, the experience, and the memory of giving. Iceland attracts artists working with the ephemerality of place and being, and appropriately PØST Kamikaze Series connects Reykjavík with Los Angeles through the excitement and beauty of impermanence and its irony.

There is an impermanence associated with Iceland, of a vast nowhere rich in terrain and heimat under an unpredictable forecast of a season of day then night.

There is an impermanence (dis)associated with Los Angeles, of a vast monoculture of fickle relationships under a steady forecast of a permanent summer of 72 and sunny.

In that spirit, PØST Los Angeles introduces Reykjavík Kamikaze: For one evening the spaces of the Icelandic Ocean Cluster will be transformed for PØST Reykjavík.

Reykjavík Kamikaze has been organized by Xárene Eskandar. The participating artists are Johanna Adebäck, Taryn Cassella, Renata De Bonis, Xárene Eskandar, Burke Jam, Darr Tah Lei, Esther Mathis, John Rogers. The exhibit will take place on Friday, December 6, 2013, 15:00-17:00 at the Icelandic Ocean Cluster Grandagardi 16, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland.

For more information contact Xárene Eskandar at xarene@gmail.com or HK Zamani at new@post-la.com

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I don't remember if she was strong enough to take her morning baths the last summer. I don't even remember if she could stay at the cottage at all.

 

My mum kept me updated during the last part, called me from the hospital. I was in Helsinki at the time. But just the week before she passed away I went home, to Sweden. I went home to sell things at my school's christmas market. The business was good and I earned quite a lot of money, and when the weekend was over I returned to Finland.

I didn't change my plans, even though I understood that this would be my last chance to see her, to say goodbye in person. I kept my focus on all the good times we had spent together, all those hours we spoke on the phone. I treasured them, felt gratitude for them, and felt in a way content. I think I had started to say goodbye long before it was actually time.

But I forgot to look at the situation from her perspective. It didn't even occur to me that maybe she needed to say goodbye, that she might have wanted to see me one last time. That it would have meant something to her. That it would have meant something if I had changed my plans just to give her one more hug and to tell her that I loved her.

 

I worked late the night she died. I remember going to the toilet and when sitting there thinking that now, just now, might be the time when she falls into her eternal sleep.

My mom called me one hour later to tell me she was gone. She died in the hospital. Two of her children were with her in the room. The only thing I could feel was pain.

 

The insight that I had been blind to her perspective, only having eyes for what I thought was best for me, came much later.

It's one of the things I will always regret and wish I would have done different.

 

SVÄRDSJÖN
Sound, print. Dimensions variable.
2013

Svärdsjön was made for the Reykjavik Kamikaze exhibition, taking on the theme of impermanence as the theme of life/death. It consists of a framed print of a jetty leading out to the lake Svärdsjön in Sweden, and a looped sound of a wispering voice reading a text, played in headphones.