At dawn the light arrives swiftly, pulling open the day. The birds hardly sleep and fill the air with song and chatter. Midsummer in the north she imagined as long, long days of endless dusk. However the morning is doused in white light and she blinks at its brightness. Her thoughts are naked and exposed.

Land’s end. She did not come here all that long ago, but already she’s lost track of time. This island is like a boat – noiselessly she can sail through an ocean of hours, days, weeks. Gaining distance is sometimes the only way to get close to what matters.

___________________________

Slowly memories surface from time spent on another island. Strolling barefoot down the beach with Zero, the dog, and showing the boys hermit crabs in rock pools. Sleeping naked under mosquito nets. Lazing on the pleasant side of boredom.

The gardener greets her (and practices his English):

“Good morning, ma’am. How are you? Are you alright?

Where are you from? Is it cold there or hot?”

___________________________

As if dozing off while watching, she remembers the scenes only vaguely. It had a lost, timeless feeling. Disconsolate, desolate and weighted with unspeakable melancholy. It was a film like a dream; too heavy and slipping away, something her memory could not hold onto.

___________________________

Dreams are supposed to be in black and white. Indeed hers look monochrome. Why is it, she wonders, that dreams so often have a film-like quality. Or is it the other way round?

She once heard of a theory that dreams are not dreamt, but are created upon the very instant of recall. There is some truth in this notion, she thinks: we do not remember dreams, we reconstruct them.

___________________________

At first the idea of coming here alone amused her, calmed her.
She is well beyond that now. This island is like a prison. Each path, each view, each thought she knows by heart. She can walk and walk but she cannot escape.

___________________________

Today she can find no peace of mind. Despair puckers at the smooth surface of her days. Feeling very small, feeling very useless. She paces in circles. She will not wait any longer. This place cannot contain her. This place cannot contain her unease. If she walks fast enough, perhaps she can overtake herself. She feels restlessness swelling up relentlessly, leaving her defenseless.

The outside world comes crashing in, sweeping through the place like a tornado. A recurrent nightmare usually called reality. For the most part suffering, death and destruction feature in tragedies too far away for her to really care about. Her tangle is not with imaginary demons but with the sort more ordinary. The big question is how to hope and what to hope for. With luck she will trip herself up and leave the trains of thought which have been trodden bare.

___________________________

Now the air feels cooler and she thinks: Perhaps this place is becoming my home.

This island is like a magnifying glass: No matter how far she retreats the world at large feels tangibly close. She did not come here to get away.

When she leaves she will fold up this place and put it in her pocket for safekeeping.

September 2008

Magdalena Malm: Island is a film installation where the footage is shot on the Swedish island of Gotland. The film is recorded on the same location as Andrei Tarkovsky’s last film The Sacrifice. How did the work come about?

Fiona Tan: Once a year I make a trip to Gotland to film for a long term project. This is a five year production which I am lucky to be able to do thanks to the Baltic Art Center in Visby. Last year I drove around to various places on Gotland in my spare time and found myself repeatedly going back to Narshölmen to film and photograph the natural landscape there. I didn’t know at that stage how and what this piece would develop into, but back home in my studio I could steadily write, edit and develop this work further.

MM: You describe Island as a symbolic retreat. Could you develop that?

FT: Trees, grasses, and water suggest a feeling of being away from the world. The piece is filmed in black and white with beautiful camera work. The voice-over, a text which I worked on for a long time and which forms a crucial part of the film, deals with an imaginary retreat. The way I see it Island attempts to address this idea of retreat, of withdrawal from the normal hassles and hectic of daily life and also the installation itself attempts to function as a temporary retreat, a place out of time and removed from normal everyday life. Not as a place to turn one’s back on the world but as a place to rethink one’s relation to and position within it.

MM: Film is a recurring media in your work. And in this piece the narrative from the sound is at the same time connected and disconnected from the image. What is it that interests you with the possibilities of film? And how did you think about it specifically in this work?

FT: I was interested in the function of the voice-over. How the reading of a text can charge, imbibe the images with meaning and gravity. Writing and written or spoken word has regularly played a role in my work, but recently with works like The Changeling (2006) the role of the voice-over and of the voice has been quite central to the work. I am also interested in working with the time aspect in film. I worked this piece to have a certain timelessness and to operate within a very subjective experience of time. But much of the film could almost be called anti-cinematic, it is as if the images are not moving but are still images but not actual film stills. This paradox is also something which continues to intrigue me.

MM: There is a passage in Island where the voice-over talks about sleeping naked under a mosquito net. Thinking of the climate of Gotland, again there is a gap, a feeling of being there and yet being somewhere else. I feel it is as an image of memory, a sort of double projection, where two places at a certain moment can exist simultaneously in our mind. The relationship between memory and film is also touched on in this piece itself. How do you think about this?

FT: Memory and its connection to images in our minds is something I wanted to re-examine in this work.  Cinema seems to enjoy a special place in this relationship. Recently I have become increasingly aware of how incorrect memory can be. My memories, so I am learning – of films and of books – can be surprisingly inaccurate. This has led me to become interested in looking at the strange creations my memory then comes up with. Both film and memories can transport you to a different place, a different time. The experience is then like a double projection, of being in two places at once.

MM: Re-seeing The Sacrifice almost 20 years after it was made is a strong experience. It feels perhaps even more acute today. What is your relationship to Tarkovsky? In what way does Island relate to his work?

FT: I guess the fact that The Sacrifice was filmed at Narshölmen functioned like a trigger. It was the reason I initially went there, but when I got there I realised that I hardly remembered any exact scenes or story from the film. I remembered a very particular and gloomy mood and a twilight-like sort of light. When I got home I took the opportunity to review and look more carefully at all of Tarkovsky’s films. Undertaking this personal little film study was something I enjoyed doing. The Sacrifice is a wonderful film but it is also a flawed one, the scenario is unresolved in some areas and I feel it is not Tarkovsky’s best work.

When making Island I moved away from Tarkovsky and concentrated more on my own preoccupations. In terms of contents there is some connection but not very directly. The premise of Sacrifice is that due to atomic warfare the world will end in 24 hours, an apocalyptic feeling that was very prevalent when the film was made in 1984-86. At the moment the predominant feeling appears to also be that we are living in a time of crisis and of great threat even if the idea of what that threat is has shifted. I did want to react to this in Island without being overtly, blatantly political.

Island has a certain physical presence and this can help create a space for reflection.

The installation of Island, just upstairs from the busy street of Birger Jarlsgatan in the centre of Stockholm, will hopefully in itself become an island, a possibility of meeting oneself however briefly.

Im Morgengrauen zieht das Licht schnell herauf und eröffnet den Tag. Die Vögel schlafen kaum mehr und erfüllen die Luft mit Gesang und Geschwätz. Den Mittsommer des Nordens stellte sie sich wie lange, lange Tage endloser Dämmerung vor. Doch der Morgen wird mit weißem Licht überflutet und so blinzelt sie in sein Strahlen. Ihre Gedanken sind nackt und offen.

Am Rande der Welt. Es ist noch nicht so lang seitdem sie hierhin gekommen ist, doch schon hat sie die Zeit aus dem Blick verloren. Diese Insel ist wie ein Boot – lautlos kann sie durch ein Meer von Stunden, Tagen, Wochen segeln. Abstand zu gewinnen ist manchmal der einzige Weg, um dem Wesentlichen näher zu kommen.

Langsam tauchen Erinnerungen aus jener Zeit auf, die sie auf einer anderen Insel verbracht hat. Barfuß den Strand hinunter schlendern mit Zero, dem Hund, und den Jungen Einsiedlerkrebse in Felsbecken zeigen. Nackt unter Moskitonetzen schlafen. Faulenzen auf der angenehmen Seite der Langeweile.

Der Gärtner begrüßt sie (und übt sein Englisch): “Guten Morgen, Ma’am. Wie geht’s? Geht es Ihnen gut? Woher kommen Sie? Ist es dort kalt oder heiß?”

Als wenn sie beim Zuschauen einnicken würde, erinnert sie sich nur vage an die Szenen. Es war ein verlorenes, ein zeitloses Gefühl. Niedergeschlagen, enttäuscht und mit unaussprechlicher Melancholie belastet. Es war ein Film wie ein Traum; zu schwer und entschwindend, etwas, woran ihre Erinnerung sich nicht festhalten konnte.

Man geht davon aus, dass Träume Schwarz-Weiß sein sollen. Ihre sind tatsächlich monochrom. Warum, fragt sie sich, haben Träume so oft eine filmische Qualität? Oder ist es umgekehrt?

Sie hörte einmal von einer Theorie, dass Träume gar nicht geträumt, sondern im Moment der Erinnerung erschaffen werden. An diesem Begriff ist etwas Wahres dran, denkt sie: Wir erinnern uns nicht an Träume, wir rekonstruieren sie.

Zunächst war sie von der Idee, allein hierher zu kommen, amüsiert, beruhigt. Nun ist sie weit davon entfernt. Diese Insel ist wie ein Gefängnis. Jeden Weg, jeden Ausblick, jeden Gedanken kennt sie schon auswendig. Sie kann gehen und gehen, aber sie kann nicht entkommen.

Heute kann sie keine Ruhe finden. Verzweiflung kräuselt sich an der glatten Oberfläche ihrer Tage. Sie fühlt sich sehr klein, sehr nutzlos. Sie geht im Kreis. Sie wird nicht länger warten. Dieser Ort kann sie nicht fassen. Dieser Ort kann ihr Unbehagen nicht fassen. Wenn sie schnell genug geht, kann sie sich vielleicht selbst überholen. Sie fühlt, wie die Unruhe unerbittlich anschwillt und sie wehrlos macht.

Die Außenwelt bricht herein und fegt wie ein Wirbelsturm durch den Ort. Ein immer wiederkehrender Alptraum, den man für gewöhnlich Realität nennt. Meistens sind Leid, Tod und Zerstörung in Tragödien zu weit weg, als dass sie davon wirklich betroffen wäre. Ihr Durcheinander resultiert nicht aus der Vorstellung böser Geister, sondern aus etwas viel Gewöhnlicheren. Die große Frage ist, wie man hofft und worauf man hofft. Mit etwas Glück wird sie sich selbst zum Stolpern bringen und die lähmenden Gedankengänge verlassen.

Jetzt fühlt sich die Luft kühler an und sie denkt nach: Vielleicht wird dieser Ort zu meiner Heimat.

Diese Insel ist wie ein Vergrößerungsglas: Egal wie weit sie sich auch zurückzieht, die Welt erscheint als Ganze spürbar nahe. Sie kam nicht hierher, um zu entkommen.

Wenn sie geht, wird sie diesen Ort zusammenfalten und in ihrer Tasche aufbewahren.