Interview with Tone Aaness — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

La Casa Mila / La Casa Pedrera. The International Velazquez and Goya Prize. Barcelona. Spain. 2024.
The prize was granted as an aknowledgement of outstanding work over Time.

Tone, considering your visual and performing arts background, how do you synthesize interdisciplinary approaches within your work? Could you discuss how philosophical concepts or theories from outside the traditional realm of visual arts have informed your artistic methodology and thematic choices?

Thank you for a very advanced and thorough question that also challenges my conceptions of art, ideas and performance. I always liked a good mix of people, that often means a good mix of opinions that reflect people in variations and different environments. When I think of myself as an artist I started young to perform, because I liked the idea of an audience. The certainty of a vulnerable position reflected in the exactness of a live theater always thought me to stumble, not to walk. That is often what is reflected in my art as well. I wonder where to go, because the direction is not fixed and the road is not driven before me. We are all drivers in an unknown landscape. That makes us fragile. Aristotle, the philosopher, wrote his thesis upon the play as a form of learning without doing, understanding the lesson of empathy as emerging through different characters on a scene, most often this play was set to be a tragedy. To emphasise this in the eyes of a broader more intellectual audience, he called the act of the protagonist a timeline that led to khatarsis. The audience was also supposed to leave with a feeling of relief. For me a timeline is often presented through years of work and repetition with smaller variations that reflect time and thematic concepts. I find that there are good and bad forces that influence you, and as an artist one have to be really careful not to ruin good works. Looking back at a rather long career I find that complexity is really hard to find, and that the simplicity one uses to make things more modern, flatter, cooler etcetera, often ruins the complexity of perspectives, landscapes, backgrounds and ideas. It does not mean that a lot of modern art, is great. Walking into something with a piece of art to install it, is a performative way of placement, that I like. Alongside a rather traditional realm of visuals, that I use, showcasing a synthesis of interdisciplinary approaches. The idea is making it new, but build upon your tradition and history.

Photo: Private. The wonderful Audience with the Installation “The Awakening” from Florence Biennale of Art and Design 2023. Firenze, Italia. Curated by Giovanni Cordoni.

Your work incorporates historical techniques and themes from various eras. How do you conceptualize and represent time and memory in your paintings? Do you employ specific artistic or philosophical frameworks to navigate these complex themes?

Time and memory are complex forces. The human condition is not based on happiness alone. Anxiety was the basic feeling explained in the philosophy of the Danish Philosopher Kierkegaard. Schopenhauer was a pessimist that explained his idea of the world quite similarly. Even if we go to existentialism, capturing Sartre and the idea of the world as a scene and our life as a piece of acting, it may help us with the perception, but the question will still be is the world a safe or a dangerous place. Why would for instance the Algerian born Camus, also considered an existentialist, write novels as “The plague” or “The Stranger” or even “The myth of Sisyphus” if life did not have certain limitations, obligations or complications in itself? Would we, limitless, not ruin the life of others or even ruin our own lives? When Nietzsche writes a work such as “Beyond Good and Evil” is the idea something like breaking our conception of the world to build something else, but why. Is it as an uproar towards monumentalism, fundamentalism and religion as concepts in themselves? He uses his way to say that most things has an outside that contradict the inside. Even the breakdown of a language as in “Also Sprach Zarathustra” tells us that what we do not control, lives and creates itself, just for the sake of the beauty of a word or a sentence, or a moment of joy.

The suitcase that I have carried around in different formats on shows and biennales, is part of what I understand as framing. I think it is a new type of framing. The idea is to ask what is a painting, what is a drawing, what is a frame? How do we mount the thing? When do we place it, where do we place it and what does it mean? How does it interact with the audience? Is the audience part of the art? There are a lot of questions concerning the way we present, mount and place things. Often the loneliness of something placed, can overwhelm us. It is because the motif, even though only a concept of an idea is on it` s own, I think. It is lonely. It is waiting for company, or is it?

Technically I provide for a drawing or a painting that normally has a two dimensional form and sculpt it three dimensional through the way I build it out and place it. I am classically trained and have maintained a lot of figurative measurements in the meeting with abstraction. I find it easier to speak when I relate to a common language, I think I feel that the world is a place for understandings and misunderstandings. I would like us to have some common possibilities to succeed, however individual that perception might be.

The Audience. Installation: “Sorrow`s House”, “In Love”, and “Baby Bird”. Bodø Cultural Capital. 2024. Bodø. Norway.

You've described a shift from a more intuitive early practice to a considered approach in your current works. How do you manage the dichotomy between intuition and deliberation in your creative process? Does this tension influence the thematic depth or stylistic decisions in your projects?

I have a lot of early ideas, for instance my first historical paintings took me ten years to build out. That is a great deal of time. The intuition appears in the blink of an eye, when you see the motif and write it down. That is what we call inspiration. After that the work begins, you have a great deal of time to change it, build it or ruin it according to how you feel about the work and yourself. The thematic depth is hard to analyse. Does it come through the work or the context? Does the context need an explanation or does it already exist in the mind of the viewer, is it personal or referential, cultural or basic? Could we misunderstand the work, or understand it in every way, or could that even be dangerous? Many totalitarian leaders brought on a lot of beauty, they banned art that was complicated and true. They took away the platforms to showcase these works. Sometimes I remind myself that Socrates in the Old Athens was killed for asking too many questions, but where would we be if we did not ask any?

In light of ecological, political, or social global crises, how has your art adapted or responded to these challenges? Can you elaborate on a particular piece or series directly addressing such a crisis, detailing the research, emotion, and artistic techniques involved?

I find it particularly complicated to be a refugee in the modern world. We have a lot of materialistic values that we build and praise, having nothing is kind of the ultimate challenge. I´ve been involved directly in several cases concerning Afghan refugees during the war years before Taliban took over. I found the results from the interaction made by NATO and UN quite shocking really, in that country. It more or less increased the suicide bombers too, the amount of poverty and the drug trade. It also caused a great deal of problems for women and children, on natural safety, such as going out. Now there is a challenge concerning schools and education for girls, that makes me sad. Even the boys in many rural eras have restrictions due to work at home and obligations towards their families. I worked with a family with two girls born in Norway. They were only fluent in Norwegian. They were sent out and lost their father, had to depend on a single mother without any work or family when they returned. For me this was true horror. Soon I received pictures of the girls, shaved on their heads, as if they were boys. I tried to make a giant suitcase to emphasise the contrast between an Afghan and a Norwegian life. The father was sent back, even though he claimed to be threaten by Taliban for his work as an interpreter between Afghans and Americans in Kabul. He was in the building business. Later I learnt that it is quite complicated to be a soldier in those places too, because their missions are redefined according to political changes on governmental levels in their different home countries. Many soldiers also become confused by this. I made the Popeye dress to cherish the Afghan fields, with so much complexity and beauty. Flowers often surprise us, but they live for such a short amount of time. The horror does not.

When I cut the long army green pieces of the poppy stilks and drew the poppy balls I felt like making a change. I mounted it on a kitchen cloth and a layered silk dress that I sewed together. Later I modelled for a photographer and had it published in a Magazine. All these fields were planted with food and natural farming, it took masses of working hours from hard working farmers to make that food come by. The poppy plant grows fast and the income of the poison is immeasurable, the horror it causes both in Afghanistan and were it is imported, is beyond belief. The money easy to like.

As an artist deeply engaged with political and mythological narratives, what ethical considerations do you consider when representing culturally sensitive or politically charged subjects? How do you balance artistic freedom with the responsibilities of representation?

To represent an idea is complicated. I come from Norway, we are supposed to value freedom of speech and democratic discussions. Contrary to China for example! Still, I find it more of a political consent, a correctness that is easy to cross and provoke. I think it is sad for the sake of the discussion. Different meanings bring about variations of questions as well, often solutions too. This is how we mature and grow, how we think and argue, how we learn and change. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has a lot of really big works where he does a lot of research and build monuments to loss in China or in the sea of immigration as two examples. That is how we learn that buildings do fall, boats do go down. There is a really complex reality going on between facade and truth. This is going on everywhere. The immigration wave shows us that opposing a government or changing a community is really hard and dangerous work, it is often easier to leave.

Most of the time I get involved with the audience, that is the best way to interact anyway. The audience is often very polite, easy to talk to, and moved by my works. I often feel embraced. I am very grateful for this position.

When I go into a room carrying a suitcase, everyone knows that I am going to place it somewhere and most often we have decided for the position beforehand. In Florence Biennale, the curator took away the podium, and inspired me to place the suitcase on the floor. This made an unbelievable impact on the audience, and many started to cry. The baby was alone in the suitcase on the concrete floor and they wondered why. I could not tell why, we all came lonely to this planet, we were all babies and children. Everyone in the audience had their own personal story. Some may have lost a child, some divorced, others remember their early father or motherhood, their first or second child. Others felt like protecting it. Protection is something I as an artist would like to awake. We all need it sometimes. I had a lot of memories from that show, and a lot of photographs of the wonderful audience in collaboration with the installation. These photos are in my public instagram as a path of memory. You may see them there.

Installations and boxes. The Bird. Bodø 2024.

You’ve touched upon the influence of the subconscious in your artistic creation. Can you elaborate on how subconscious elements surface in your work? Do you employ specific practices or rituals to tap into or interpret these subconscious elements?

Subconscious elements are often added as words or smaller ideas in my works. They may be applied as transfers of reality. Elements may complement or contradict an image. Most people have a Freudian depth in themselves, some like the Titanic ice berg to appear as one common mind. The Freudian sea is most often individual. Libido is differently inspired, and Thanatos reigned by different perceptions of grief. What is common, is our ability to be suggested and played. How people feel in title to play others without responsibility, is really a complicated issue! This is often surprising and even naiv. Objectivity is often underestimated as a feeling. To ask questions is often argued as a problem. To make people aware is often to be dramatic or hysteric. To oppose is often called provocation. If we make a reality where traumas and passive wishes are not reckoned, how will we impose ourselves to others? How would we manipulate to get to these hidden destinations, and what danger may we cause by doing so? This is often claimed a philosophical problem. Hannah Arendt called it “The banality of Evil”. How much pain could one human being cause not to be good, but to be good at something, in the eye of society. Freud uses archetypes to describe common symbols with similar meanings as a subconscious language, Jung, his student used others. This does not mean that one was right and the other wrong, but that the two of them had different experiences and references. They read different literature, psychology, philosophy and religion. Many symbols change over the years, adapting to an applied reality. The semiotic basis that created the first symbols in the Sumeric written language, are profound examples of signs and relations and how these can be build together to create meaning that can be transported and valid over time, even without the person performing them.

Language overcome death, become superior to the shortness of our lives and may exist as a basis for others to depend on, learn from or even refer to or expand.

“Suitcase Painting: Love is the Devil.” Manhattan. New York. 2023.

How do you view the impact of digital technology and new media on traditional painting techniques and the overall perception of art? Do you incorporate modern technologies in your creation process, and how do they complement or challenge traditional training?

There are a lot of programs that simplify printing as a technique or challenge the amount of artworks overflowing the market. Original works in the renaissance period, were left with fingerprints from Leonardo da Vinci, he hardly signed his paintings. It would be a bit old fashioned to say that a digital reality is less imaginable or value based, but the time base is different. A lot of movie makers uses an adapted reality that is beyond belief to make panoramas of significance or wild optic perspectives. This is ART on a high level. The catalogues of films and directors, by the way should be completed and stored for the aftermath. Film and music are very fluid concepts, they need a proper validation. It is easy to critique a modern world, but I cherish it. I think it is fantastic. The human ability to perform and make things is beyond belief. I often use modern technology when I create performances myself, it is the base of a lot of poetic compositions that I create. I like the concept of an anti musical build up with melodies subverged and combined into symposiums of noise and narrowness with the beauty of figurativity. I think measurments of oblivion is significant to emerge as an artist. Later I will throw back a line to the beginning, often I see it is not that different. I still speak about the same. Performance as an art form is a way of building and breaking communication. I think that we need a certain distance from participation to averge to a higher level of humanity. For me in person modern technology in general is challenged by weather conditions. To think of a day without rain when performing, makes me happy. On the other hand, I perform in Museums, Showrooms, Exhibitions, Concerts and Conferences too. It is not always snowing.

Photo: Kirsti Svenning. Oslo Central Station. Perfomance: “Corona”. 2021. Oslo. Norway.

How do you reconcile your intentions for your art with its reception and interpretation by audiences and critics? Are there instances where this divergence has been particularly pronounced, and how have you addressed it?

I think peace work is really challenging. Most people feel provoked by it. The concept of emphasising our problems with violence and corruption, is touching on something profoundly human. In reality it connects us. Sanity is part of a construction that society inflicts on us. Would Luther for instance be considered sane in our modern world, he changed a whole brand in the Catholic religion, told us that our relation to God is personal, that we ourselves could read the scripture, not depending on a priest to interpret it. He recognised the reader in a state of contribution and trust. He maintained the idea of a common ability to think, reflect and feel. Maybe he underestimated the value of performance and the quick fix of easy commands, but in the long run his ideas settled and grew. The danger of pietism will still be exploitation and ruins of goodness, for the sake of personal wins and build ups. The matter of God is wide and great, one should walk with awareness into those ruins of religion. The way we contradict ourselves by pushing humanism against belief systems are often influenced by personal gains, not by sanctuary itself. We close down a lot of meetings by the way we dis corrupt the world and build down the era of others. Somewhat we feel more profound in the meeting with something authentic, when it is unspoken and sad, and that is also what defines us. Still, what we embrace is the reason to maintain in order without interruption. A piece of art cannot throw you to the lions, it can only be done by personal movements. We might not like the means of a complex modernity, applied for instance as breakdown of rules, but should we embrace it and dissolve it or should we oppose. We may ruin the holy-ness of others, the whole ness of truth. I only read reality as coming from me, that is what sets my limits and do my break ups. I cannot change the world, I can only change one single perception, or can I. Jesus went into the Synagogue to ruin the sales, but who was he that young? Had he himself read about hundreds of years of deception and slavery? Muhammed is called a prophet of war by many, but could he himself defend the caravans of his father´ s trade without using weapons against robbers, pirates and thieves? To live a life in the dessert, to grow a three on a stone ground, to plant in sand, is the hardest fundament one can build for a nation. Let us embrace what is possible, and not what is not. That is for me the highest concept of peace.

Can you discuss how specific philosophical constructs—such as existentialism, phenomenology, or post-structuralism—have influenced the conceptual underpinnings of your work? How do these philosophical viewpoints manifest in the techniques and materials you choose?

Post-traumatism is not much used as a construct, but I guess that many of the post war directions of belief systems, philosophical ideas, constructions and deconstructions are formed through synthesis and antithesis in a rather Hegelian ambush. Modernism for instance was not primarily build upon the manifest by Ezra Pound “make it new”. It is kind of late. Early modernism as every influential direction started at least with Cervantes and the opposing idea of a hero, the anti hero presented to the reader in the character of Don Quixote, on a skinny horse, leaving for his life adventure fighting windmills with a barber bowl on his head, composed the idea of a modern reality. In certain aspects one could really call that crazy ageing guy, with the chubby farmer on a donkey by his side for a modern pacifist using creative means in an old fashioned reality consisting of sword drawing knights, honour and battles on bloody fields. Post modernism in itself grew according to Lyotard as a deconstruction of fundamentalism. The question after WW2 was put forward as what to trust when the idea itself creates so many deaths and victims, terrors and wars? Through exposure of a broken conglomerated reality a new modernism took part in architecture, philosophy, lingustics, literary theory and even the understanding of history. This broken reality emphasised through a mix of stylistic variations, has it `s own voice today. Many would say that naivism and primitivism came as off springs, but these are much earlier constructions. Often a simplicity grows forward in the meeting with something new, typical examples would be movements in painting such as pointilism, impressionism and expressionism leading to cubism, dadaism and surrealism. Today, I would definitely call myself a post-traumalist. I use the traumas of a past knowledge, to create visions that I still think sanctify observations of a greater future through observing errors of the past. Many of my paintings are rather naiv, but I would not amplify my stills of creativity on forced walls. I rather have the dots of what we do not know connecting us than my works for the basis of museums. I think we all know what beauty means, still I carry a suitcase when I can just so we all know that moving out of something is always a possibility not to be forgotten.

I like a mix of materials. The line of a childlike unperformed work of a hand with oil pastels shivering on an acrylic background still makes me surprised. I think we grow into measurements of untold combinations. We have to see them to believe that they can be done. I would like to place a piece of cloth on a painting, and I often used to. Today that it is not the issue, I may place a drawing into a woodwork, but I will wonder about the value of it myself. The fragility is under explained. The vulnerability is uncomforted and unfixed, often the deal of an artistic reality is for better or for worse. It is like a marriage you have with yourself. Sculptures or the tutorial reality is different, it combines armature and plaster, painted in a romanesque style. I go back to where I came from with sadness of reliance. I will have to form and perform never knowing the next move. It is easy to think like that, but harder to do. You awaken and asleep, as if you do not know what is what and when to proceed. That is the ultimate challenge of a creative life. It still costs to fulfil the ambitions of sub conglomerated ideas in a most wanted world of competition. It emerges and sets in auctions. A work by the Norwegian artist Kittelsen sold for 38 million Norwegian kroner some weeks ago. It was a surprise that adventure and romance had captured the marked again. It kind of made me happy. Still Munch `s Scream shows the authentic feeling of shivering anxiety to a collected value of four to five times more, even 10 years ago. That makes me humble to the truth of emotions. All kinds of realities are possible to pronounce, but not always wanted. It may still be a work of greater importance. Time will tell like an old forgotten Shakespeare.

Building an installation in 2014 to enlighten the crisis in the refugee policy. Photo from the news.

Given the increasing awareness of environmental sustainability, how has this impacted your choice of materials and processes? Are there sustainable practices you have adopted or plan to adopt in your studio to minimize the ecological footprint of your art-making process?

I like to recycle materials and reuse objects of interest, but to say that any human life form submerge from an environmental sustainability would be an exaggeration. I often admire an existence that cherish and examine nature as a place of learning. That is why I with sadness observe a society of consumption undermining the ethos of nature people and natives. I find it ignorant. To grow an apple takes time, to grow hundred take experience. To grow and depend on nature itself takes patience. That is what we have lost.

The need of a conceptual timeline is deconstructing us all, if not we will return to obedience. That is the loss of memory. Moments will happen whatever story we proceed. Democracy will not. A whale has a life of his own. Connected or disconnected. I cannot, by any chance now when it is at the best, but I do recognise that quality of water and consumption of energy to survive, makes life a battle of movements and pride in the shape that we are born in during our time.

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