Path

Paths.  Photos from train travels, using a Nikon F2 camera. The pictures show the passing landscape in motion blur,  primarily from travels between Stockholm and Västergötland/Dalsland visiting my mothers sickbed during her many years in hospital. After both parents’ death, the trips around Sweden involved the search of a half-brother in Jämtland, in the the north of Sweden aswell as travels in Skåne, Denmark, England, Japan.

Later these travel pictures became the filmtripdyk Paths. All in all the photographs of eight years were followed by processing the material: scanned and joined in animations. The material was put together into three short films of varying length, each about five minutes long. The three films were compiled into a tripdyk to be shown side by side, either in monitors or projected in large scale.

The films varying lengths make the visualisation of the work to be always new – combined in new ways in every presentation. The pictures form varying abstract color fields silent movements side by side, up and down, back and forth. Because of the video loops, the movements become rolling, gentle breaths never reaching any goal. Paths have neither beginning nor end. It is a silent ongoing.

The theme is ‘the search for the original home ‘, which can and should be understood in the broad sense as a possibilty, as long as the emphasis lies on that of the search. A persons original home would in this case be the unique location of the constitution of her identity, and to return there would confront her with the truth about her character. One can imagine quite specific versions of such a return – to take the train to the parents’ home village in Jämtland or in Dalsland, genealogical research in the archives, or to look for a half-brother whome the parents during their days of life never talked about … But I am convinced that those who are seriously looking for their origin, their conditions, will not find its hidden nature in a safe shimmering ‘Heimat’. The origin is instead dissolved in the search,’heimat’ is spreading out along the paths. And at the road’s beginning is just another crossroads. We are not necessarily anchored to a particular location, we are nomads who are territorialised. For this reason, the project Paths is focused on the process of searching rather than any goal.

Path at Ahlbergshallen, Östersund 2001

Path at Liljevalchs Konsthall Stockholm 2003

Path at Chiang Mai University Art Museum, Thailand 2003