A TORTOISE AND A TRAVELER

stills from "A TORTOISE AND A TRAVELER"
by Lisa Jeannin & Rolf Schuurmans
video 5 min, 2009

HOBO AND HARP

Skulpturen är en offentlig utsmyckning för Beckombergaskolan på uppdrag från Stockholms Konstråd. Det finns en skulptur till , ett munspel som spindeln har glömt i skogen som hör till dagiset som ligger jämte Beckombergaskolan. Spindeln själv ligger på låg och mellanstadiets skolgård under ett träd. Skulpturen är gjuten på Maiale Konstgjuteri i Malmö.

"Jag vill att människor ska få en glad, rolig och överraskande förnimmelse av att världen vi lever i är magisk och att saga och myt bor granne med oss – att det finns en förankring i det oändliga i nuet."

Så beskrev Lisa Jeannin (f. 1972) vad hon ville uppnå med sin konst, då hon som en av tre inbjudna konstnärer lämnade sitt förslag till konstnärlig gestaltning av Beckombergaskolan.

I dag har hennes nomadiska Luffarspindel lagt sig till rätta på skolgården, där den krupit ned i en 3,5 meter lång och 800 kilo tung sovsäck av patinerad brons. En bit upp i skogen, utanför förskolan, ligger Luffarspindelns drömda, kanske glömda, munspel. Vill man, kan man se verket som en hyllning till allemansrätten och det underbara i att kunna ligga i en sovsäck under bar himmel.

"Men verket handlar framför allt om känslan när man håller på att somna in. När man inte vet hur stort eller litet något är längre, för man är redan halvvägs in i drömmens värld. Där hittar man ofta svar på borttappade frågor", konstaterar konstnären.

Beckombergaskolan har i dag knappt 300 elever, från förskolan upp till årskurs fem. Dess arkitektur är resultatet av ett omfattande ny- och ombyggnadsprojekt, i ett parkområde som tidigare tillhört Beckomberga sjukhus. Sjukhuset tillkom under Carl Westmans tid som Medicinalstyrelsens arkitekt och en del av skolhusen bär efter ansvariga Cedervall arkitekters ombyggnadsarbete fortfarande dennes spår från mitten av 1930-talet.

Lärarna tillvaratar områdets hela kulturhistoria i undervisningen. Förutom det tidigare sjukhuset finns till exempel vikingagravar alldeles intill. Med andra ord finns här mycket att fantisera, drömma och hitta på saker kring. Viktiga förmågor, som enligt Lisa Jeannin verkligen "förtjänar ett monument!", vilket hon nu också har gett dem.

SMALL HOBO

HOBO Tegenaria agrestis, 2009
350 x 150 x 120 cm, bronze

BREAKING THE LAW

catalogue text "Mörkrets Hjärta" , Göteborgs Konsthall




"BREAKING THE LAW"
2-channel videoinstallation 3 min X 2
installationview Göteborgs Konsthall 2004-2005.
A wall of 4 meter X 5 meter was standing diagonally in the room and on each side there was a projection.

It is an alchemical gangsterdrama where it is unclear who is the good or bad guy.

UBÅT / SUBMARINE

In 1996 I built this submarine. It does not travel by water neither by land but via drawings. The visitor was driven around in a dark room viewing 100 drawings through the periscope that had a light on it. The trip somewhat resembeld a primitive animated film.
foto: Sören Gérard

GGG & G

installationview at Museum Felix de Boeck, Drogenbos (BE), 2007

GGG & G is a 3-channel videoinstallation by
Lisa Jeannin & Rolf Schuurmans
6 min 30 sec X 3
2007

GORILLA GODDESS GANGSTER AND THE GOBLINS

A video myth by Lisa Jeannin and Rolf Schuurmans

G G G & G is a story with multiple space and time facets, in which the fragments are so charged and communicative that the interlaced entity paradoxically becomes natural and self-evident.

G G G & G is about mental spaces, models of projection for questions with regard to reality’s chaos and the complicated obviousnesses of life. From time to time a hall of mirrors is described in which identity is questioned and the monument of reality collapses. Here an inquisitive gorilla can discover herself in thousands versions with the aid of her filming camera eye; or it is also possible that a frustrated and lonely gangster shoots the mirrors into pieces, maybe to keep his enigmatic nature intact. But soon the looping restores this hall of mirrors.

G G G & G is about the coming into existence from magical rituals performed by small colourful trolls, about the loneliness of the gangster in a world revealing its built-in fiction, about the green goddess’s lust for creation and destruction in front of a sterile civilization, about positive identity solutions as a strategy to welcome and form a larger reality, about the return to nature and the green and about the spider’s fantasy and the public’s fantasy and fantasy as a subversive force aimed against order and reason who threaten humour and human dignity with death.

Leif Holmstrand

stills from GGG & G

preview:

THE CROSSING

installationview at Moderna Museet , "Moderna utställningen" , Stockholm 2006
2-channel video installation and a sign made from mdf, lighttube and lightbulbs



preview "the crossing"
.





"black master red master blue master"
the film within "the crossing"
when it is showed alone it has a different soundtrack

NO HOME LIKE SPACE

installationview Sint-Lukas galerij, Brussels "Digital Poetics" , 2008



THE SPIDER AND HER WEB

No home like space. That is the message with a hidden meaning from Lisa Jeannin’s video with the same name which is also the title. A spider moves through her self woven web while doing household activities such as cooking, grating cheese, watering a plant, watching television, making music and typing texts. Pendulous objects are being moved and manipulated. We recognize among other things a guitar and an amplifier, a watering pot, a cooking pot, a rasp, pieces of cheese and a compass. The use of animation techniques makes these activities seem fairy-like simple but with Jeannin each and every one of them is a metaphor for a broader reference framework in time and space. The second message with a hidden meaning that has been typed in reads after all “Lately I have been travelling in time”. There is more going on here than just the story of a sympathetic spider.

The painting, the guitar, the typewriter and the musicians on television refer to the artist’s position as does the web that the insect itself is weaving. The cobweb can be spun out endlessly; all the same it is a territory. The fanciful walking pattern of the animal is no stranger to the web architecture. The spider draws inspiration from other spaces and times. The stratification of the threads is put consciously on the screen. The cobweb has a nomadic structure that can be moved to other places and can take up other positions. Its female inhabitant contemplates the world from a pendulous position. That other dimension produces a profoundly different look on the same reality, of which a normal two-footer has little understanding. Because of this experiencing time and space happens in a completely different way. At the same time, the spider is caught in her own web and she is part of the events she herself disentangles. This temporary lodging shows itself as a very vulnerable structure constantly subject to changes.

The medium animation not only maintains a distance from the activities but also draws the maker (and the viewer) into the narrative structure. The graphic style strongly resembles the naïve atmosphere of the early movies. Clownish musicians from days long gone parade on the television screen, the typewriter seems just as archaic. The spider herself watches her stories on television and provides them with philosophic comments on the typewriter. In between she plunks the guitar with the soundtrack for the movie while the pendulous painting reflects the environment. The animation brings into vision the daily life of a spider/artist, her need for food and a shelter. No home like space is an emblematic work representing Jeannin’s position as an artist. In her video installations she usually wields different levels of observation both on and of screen which makes the steady position of not only viewer and artist but also of the subjects waver. The different themes and media, the production process and the observer’s position are all interwoven as in one big cobweb.

Filip Luyckx

ENTER THE WILD

stills from "ENTER THE WILD"

by Lisa Jeannin & Rolf Schuurmans, 2009
videoinstallation