Love on Ice: Icelandic Love Corporation’s Melting Art
By Glenna Gordon
An announcement is made that the girls will be there shortly and thereafter a mass exodus begins: they have arrived. In white divafied communion gowns that lost half their skirts to a naughty pair of scissors, bubble coated high heels, and enough eye makeup to paint an iceberg, the artifice begins. Like the Pied Piper’s vermin and children, or perhaps a group of lemmings, the crowd follows them three blocks to a nearby park. The paparazzi-ed procession was complete with men running along the sidelines holding expensive photography equipment, flashes periodically indicating documentation.
The gray sky lit up when the stars collided: the famous kiss is more than a friend’s and less than a lover’s. The kiss is more than performance art and less than exhibitionism. Or is the other way around? The Icelandic Love Corporation never really answers this question. Sigr�n says, "kissing is the most simple and the most universal way of intimacy and friendliness." J�n� adds, "and it’s the most private thing too." Their work strives to promote love and intimacy, connection and communication, in a world often too cynical to recognize these things on its own. While their work is not without cynicism, in many ways they hold onto a prelapsarian attempt to connect to each other and their audience.
Intimacy Circus, the piece performed on March 28, began with a kiss but soon moved in a different direction. They, in turn, cut off each other’s small white wings that all of the girls wore and blood capsules burst, dripping down their white dresses. Blood delineates and bookmarks the different phases of womanhood: menstruation, losing virginity, and menopause. The stark contrast between their pristine white fabric and the dripping blood evoked (among other things) the myth of Icarus who flew high and fell just as far. They mark the occasion with another of their trademark motifs: champagne. This bittersweet celebration mourns the loss of happy innocence of winged kissing days. "You can have a bad experience but then you realize it’s good. Maybe the best thing that can happen. We don’t want to stop anything or keep being little girls forever."
And the circus antics begin! They fill glasses with champagne and put them on one end of a teeter-totter and jump on the other, sending the glasses flying and crashing, scattering champagne and shards of glass everywhere.
While much can be made of the symbolic tendencies of their actions, the girls resist any specific interpretations. Sigr�n says, "we want to make art for everyone – old people, men in the fishing industry. You don’t have to read a lot of books to understand it. But that doesn’t mean the art is any less complex." J�n� adds, "we want to give people credit that they aren’t stupid. Even if they haven’t read about art, they have heard of other things." And, "the artwork should stand for itself. With a lot of things we do, people understand it even if they think they don’t."
And their art does stand on its own. And while at first I thought I didn’t understand it, the more I let the sequence of actions and images stew in my own head, the more I did understand it. While during the performance itself I thought about the watering down of performance art (or in this case, adding champagne does the same diluting trick), my thoughts were interrupted by the loud pop of the champagne cork, the shattering of glasses and the even louder audience cheers. And after all, a gallery opening with plenty of liquor and three kissing girls – how could anyone dislike that? Afterwards, during out interview, J�n� told me, "people need positive things and we want to give them positive things without being a self-help book." While this performance undoubtedly gave the audience positive things (love, friendship, happiness, liquor), was this enough? The performance itself seemed more of a spectacle than a thought out or meditative piece of work.
"We want to shake things up without being negative or deconstructive," Sigr�n said. These are lofty – and very worthwhile – ambitions in a world where postmodern art has deconstructed meaning, ambitions, worth, negativity, positivity… But afterwards I was left feeling that they hadn’t shaken anything except their bottle of champagne. The performance piece did promote love and friendship, the primary goals of the ILC, but this is a far cry from questioning gender roles, sexual stereotypes, or being anything more than an opportunity for celebration.
The strongest aspect of this interdisciplinary work is the mounted photographic images in the gallery that also includes a few sculptural objects and a video of their performance Thank You. Thank You (2002) shows the three girls in the same confirmation style dresses made Icelandic Go-Go style cutting up a cod. The fishing industry, a mainstay of the Icelandic economy, is dissected in this pseduo-scientific presentation – complete with a quiet music in the background. The sequins on their skin match the light shinning off the fish and the reflective fabric of their dresses. Strange NASA-style headphones complete their ensembles. They carry a suitcase that looks like it should house fake Rolodexes or perhaps small unmarked bills. Instead it contains their fishy subject displayed like watches for sale. Dancing on the edges of the grotesque, they open up the fish and expose its innards unperturbed.
The photographs imply an eerie narrative awaiting construction by the viewer’s imagination. In this photo by Aslaug Snorradottier, two of the girls happily look forward, watching an unseen spectacle, while dark volumes of hair hide the third girl’s face. Is she laughing or crying? The scattered caviar and shattered glasses can be used as evidence for either interpretation. Their strange white shoes seem like burgeoning bleached versions of the delicate fish eggs discarded under mysterious circumstances. The teal tones give the photograph a curiously ethereal undercurrent.
Upon inquiry, however, I found out that the photos are not stills from videos of their performances or shot during the performances themselves. Instead, they were made in a studio by Snorradottier, in a choreographed and controlled photo session. While the photograph long ago lost any connection to established truth, I nonetheless felt disappointed that these enchanting images were little more than edgy fashion shoots. How different are these from anything in the latest issue of Vogue? Gallery director Don Carol also told me that their photo choices are informed by whether or not the photos flatter the girls – making decisions difficult for the three divas.
Photographs of performance art are often used as documents to preserve an act otherwise lost on all those busy on that given Sunday night. But these photographs are a series of images with thematic elements and motifs similar to the ILC’s performance pieces. This incongruity just solidified by suspicions that the ILC, while noble in intention, are lacking in execution. The ILC are current media darlings, complete with stamp of approval by Icelandic Pop Princess Bjork. This opinion surely places me in a minority but I can’t help but wonder how much of the praise is directly proportional to girl on girl kissing and lots of liquor.
If only the photos weren’t so enchanting…
