A series containing three texts, five images and one sculpture.
Print on paper, photography mixed with CGI, radiator & bettle.
2023
Documention: David Stjernholm
1. A wooden match appears on the middle of the floor in my office, standing up with its red head pointing at the ceiling. A few hours later a baby snail finds the match and starts to climb it. When the snail reaches the top, another match appears on top of the old match, and the snail then climbs the new one. This continues until the snail reaches the ceiling, and the matches create a thin tower connecting the ceiling with the floor. A bunch of other snails become intrigued by the whole thing and decide to climb the tower as well. Every snail leaves a trail of slime on the matches, slowly seeping into the wood, making them all soggy and soft. Finally the tower collapses, leaving thirty snails stranded on the ceiling. For a couple of days they look down at me as I file my papers and answer my phone calls. But with every day that passes, I get more and more annoyed by their long eyes pointing in my direction. So one day I decide to turn up the airconditioning, making the room so hot that the snails dry up and loose their grip on the ceiling. Afterwards I pick up all the snails from the floor and put them in a big glass of water, for them to rehydrate, before I setting them free outside the building.
2. Me and my parents go on a one week holiday cruise. And on the boat there is a group of seven cockroaches who have been living there for four years. They’re all about to die from old age, but they haven’t found the perfect spot for dying yet, so they walk around the boat searching for it. As me and my parents are unpacking in our cabin, we notice the seven cockroaches entering through a crack in the wall. They walk across the floor, up the leg of my fathers bed and onto his unfolded t-shirt laying flat on the thick beige bedcover. That seems to be the perfect spot, and so they turn on their backs and take their last couple of breaths. Me and my parents stand in silence, looking at their dead eyes and thin legs pointing in all directions. I finally snap out of it, walk over to the cockroaches and lift one side of the t-shirt, making them roll over the edge off the bed into the trashcan. One cockroach bounces of the edge of the trashcan and falls onto the floor. Im not aware of this though, and as I walk back to my bed I step on the cockroach, creating a squeeky sound followed by a crunch. I go into the bathrom and grab some paper to clean it up, and when im done I throw the dirty paper into the trashcan with the other cockroaches. As I do so, my parents snap out of it, and we all go up on deck to look at the stars.
3. A small beetle spins around on its back on my dining table. Im not sure if it’s alive or dead, but it has been spinning for days. Every morning when I wake up and every evening when I come home from work, its there, spinning. One day another beetle of the same kind walks up to the spinning beetle and tries to stop it from spinning, but the spinning is so heavy that the beetle gets pushed away every time it gets to close. And then a bunch of ants arrive to the scene. They stand in a big circle, staring at the beetle continuously failing at stopping the other beetle from spinning. It’s humiliating to watch, and so I sweep the ants of the dining table using my forearm. One by one they fall over the edge of the table and bounce on the floor. In the beginning the bounces are small, but every bounce is bigger than the last, and soon the ants are bouncing all around the kitchen, hitting lamps, windows, pots and pans. They’re hitting me to, my chest, thighs, cheeks and forehead. It doesn’t hurt though, its more like a person softly tapping you with the tip of their little finger. Over and over and over again.
