Iceland remembers influential ‘artist base’ 20 years on

Twenty years in the past, in November 2003, the Nationwide Financial institution of Iceland made contact with a brand new gallery house known as Kling & Bang, an rising modern artwork venue in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.

Kling & Bang was based earlier that 12 months when ten native artists clubbed collectively to open a small exhibition house on Laugavegur in downtown Reykjavik. “There was no platform, no alternative for younger or rising artists to exhibit,” says Erling Klingenberg, one of many founding members. “We opened the gallery in an effort to change that.”

The town’s small circle of monetary staff have been evidently impressed. The Nationwide Financial institution of Iceland needed to assist the gallery, with its title on it—however how? The artists satisfied the financial institution to transform an enormous, unused industrial constructing—a former fish-net manufacturing unit—which stood empty, a stone’s throw from the gallery. They divided the 5,000 sq. m “artist base”, as they known as it, right into a myriad of studio, exhibition and efficiency areas. In all, 137 artists, designers, film-makers and musicians labored within the constructing on a day-to-day foundation. They known as it Klink and Financial institution—“klink” being a slang phrase for poverty in Iceland. “Their solely proviso was we needed to run it responsibly,” Klingenberg says, with a wink.

“All of the artwork you’ll be able to consider”

The challenge was a petri dish for an artwork ecosystem that quickly went world, turning a tiny metropolis on some of the remoted islands within the Atlantic ocean right into a byword for multi-disciplinary artwork. “Everybody was so joyful to be part of it,” Klingenberg says. “We had experimental theatre, installations, musicians, designers, raves—all of the artwork you’ll be able to consider, every day. Everybody into artwork in Reykjavik was there. And artists simply started to collaborate, mechanically, throughout disciplines. It had a lot impact.”

“We determined early on that we didn’t wish to be underground,” says Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir, an authentic founding father of Klink and Financial institution and now a professor of positive artwork on the Iceland College of the Arts. “We needed to succeed in out.”

Ragnar Kjartansson, certainly one of Iceland’s best-known artists, lower his enamel there whereas Icelandic celebrity Björk was a daily attendee. The post-rock band Sigur Rós had their first performances within the basement of the constructing.

“Kjartansson was born on this constructing,” says Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon, a fellow founder and likewise now a professor on the Iceland College of the Arts. “Ragnar obtained his gallery in New York after a customer noticed him doing his earliest performances in Klink and Financial institution. All of us simply knew him as a scholar who was making an attempt some issues out. All of us simply thought he was a wannabe pop star.”

Jónsdóttir studied artwork on the California Institute of the Arts within the US and retained contacts there. Klink and Financial institution started, in consequence, to unfold round Californian circles. “The house grew to become a manner for us to have contact with artists from America and Europe,” she says.

Magnet

On the time Reykjavik had a inhabitants of lower than 120,000, however the nightly mash up of creativity at Klink and Financial institution unfold, quickly gaining a mythic standing within the artwork world. Overseas artists needed in; inside two years of opening, the Californian artist Paul McCarthy exhibited there, as did the German artist John Bock. The Canadian electro act Peaches carried out there. Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground was a customer.

Klink and Financial institution grew virtually too rapidly. “We have been consistently having to work out the best way to run the place, given it remained a volunteer-led initiative,” Jónsdóttir says. “It was difficult.”

It grew to become a graffiti-covered warren that always coupled as a de facto membership for the town’s ravers. “After a late night time, we frequently didn’t know who had taken the keys to the gallery,” Klingenberg says. With little hierarchy, the maintenance began to turn out to be a difficulty. Inside simply two years, the founding members started to really feel that they had misplaced management of the venue and moved on to different ventures. The constructing continued for use by different artists in a haphazard manner, however it fell more and more right into a state of disrepair and anarchy. The constructing was demolished within the autumn of 2006, by then derelict.

“It was a good time, it was enjoyable, however loads occurred,” Klingenberg says. “We grew to become exhausted by it. After which the constructing simply went.”

God bless Iceland

On 6 October 2008, on the top of the monetary disaster, Iceland’s prime minister Geir Haarde gave a speech that ended with a phrase typically referenced by Icelanders at the moment: “God Bless Iceland.” Haarde introduced that every one three of the nation’s main privately owned business banks had defaulted. Iceland’s authorities was unable to discover a technique to recapitalise, and billions of kilos’ price of property in impact disappeared.

The aftermath of the banking disaster remains to be felt in Iceland at the moment. Whereas tourism, particularly from the US, has turn out to be basic to the island’s economic system, the state nonetheless struggles to allocate its meagre sources on tradition, whereas the nation’s monetary companies now not assist artwork.

The bottom on which Klink and Financial institution as soon as existed has been transformed, unsurprisingly, into inns. Kling & Bang continues to exist, in a smaller gallery housed in a former herring manufacturing unit in Reykjavik’s still-working harbour.

Final month, the founding of Kling & Bang was marked, 20 years on, by its founders as they exhibited as a part of the eleventh version of Sequences, Reykjavik’s modern artwork biennial. Klingenberg says: “The constructing is lengthy gone, however the community and the tradition stay.” Magnússon provides: “They carried on, extending out into the world.”