Bøger om Strukturalisme

In 1964 Asger Jorn (1914-1973), along with two photographers (the Frenchman Gérard Franceschi and the Dane Ulrik Ross) and his Dutch partner Jacqueline de Jong, travels around the island of Gotland in order to capture its archaeological riches: stone figures and carvings, churches, frescos, mazes. The island comes to figure centrally in the Danish artist’s conception of a specifically Nordic tradition going back to pre-Christian times and significantly influencing European culture tout court. Reflecting Jorn’s enduring interest in popular art forms, the project was not only retrospective in character, but also connected to contemporary political and artistic concerns, such as the artist’s opposition against what would later become the European Union and his recurring need to redefine his own position vis-à-vis the international art scene. The Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism was founded by Asger Jorn shortly after leaving the Situationist International in 1961. Operative for a brief period (1961-1965), the institute’s output was photographic and paginated: for Jorn the printed book was a site for the analysis, sequencing and presentation of large quantities of heterogeneous visual materials. Through his “continuous collages” (the phrase belongs to Jorn’s friend and collaborator, the archaeologist P.V. Glob) of photographs, Jorn wanted to trace image migrations across space and time. Most ambitiously, he planned the production of 32 voluminous books devoted to 10,000 years of Nordic folk art. One of the books was planned to be titled “Sten och ben” (Stone and Bone), focused exclusively on Gotland, but only a pilot volume on 12th century Scanian stone sculpture was ever published. Fifty years later, in the summer of 2014, director at the Baltic Art Center (Gotland) Lívia Páldi and Swedish artist Henrik Andersson invited writer, researcher, and curator Ellef Prestsæter, artist Jakob Jakobsen, publisher Mathias Kokholm (both Danish) and, most notably, Jacqueline de Jong to participate in what was called The Scandinavian Mutant Summer Camp. During a few glorious summer days the campers drove around the island, using the 1964 contact sheets as a navigational tool and an interface to the past, retracing the movements of the vandals fifty years earlier while looking out for new revelations. Stone and Bone – A Trip to Gotland 1964/2014 includes visual and textual materials from the SISV archive and the books and magazines where Asger Jorn presents the material and performs the most complex and pataphysical version of his comparative vandalist method. Jacqueline de Jong is probably the most insistent user of the SISV archive with her heretic Situationist Times, one of the most remarkable artists’ magazines of the 1960s, with a range from wild archaeology to contemporary cultural topology. Situationist Times has a strong resonance today as precursors to the idea of “artistic research”, which gives her a central role in this book. Besides de Jong and Jorn a new generation of vandals present their different approaches to an artistic research or a contemporary vandalist method in the archive: Henrik Andersson, Ellef Prestsæter & Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism, Jakob Jakobsen and Mathias Kokholm.

Kristian sætter alt ind på at leve op til den krævende stilling som universitetslærer og kaster sig over studiet af nyere amerikansk litteratur, fransk strukturalisme og narratologi, men døjer med ensomheden. Det samme gør Ingrid, der lige er begyndt på engelskstudiet og som mistede sin mor som lille. De flytter sammen og gifter sig, trods faderens misbilligelse. Kristian lærer Ingrids far, bornholmske plejefamilie samt moster og kusiner at kende, men ikke Ingrid, trods udfrittende, franske frokoster. Richard, en amerikansk slumstormer, medicinstuderende og freudiansk anarkist, dukker en dag op på Kristians beatpoesihold og bliver en nær ven. Kristians undervisning ligger på et for højt plan, lyder en kvindelig studerendes klage til Studienævnet, mens Kristian savner et større engagement fra de studerendes side. Da tidsskriftgruppen Kristian startede, afsætter ham som redaktør og de tilbagevendende forberedelser til næste semester begynder at føles som en endeløs trædemølle, tager Kristian en drastisk beslutning. Uddrag af bogen Hvad Ingrid efterlyser er mindre ego og mere indføling. Sådan formulerer hun det ikke, og det er også først noget Kristian indser langt senere. Selvfølgelig har hun – eller den veninde hun traf på hospitalet – fat i noget af det rigtige. Problemet er bare at det kræver meget ego og meget lidt indføling at klare sig i det samfund der nu én gang findes. Kristian har fra barnsben af været vænnet til knivskarp konkurrence og nådesløs selvhævdelse. For ham er det at leve en konstant udfordring. Han har lært at klare sig med den udrustning han nu én gang er i besiddelse af. Hvis han forekommer hård og utilnærmelig (hvad han sikkert godt kan gøre), er det fordi de bløde sider ikke har været meget efterspurgt. Om forfatteren Bjarne Gertz, cand.mag. i engelsk og latin, tidligere amanuensis, kandidatstipendiat, gymnasielærer, bibliotekar, jazzmusiker, m.m., oversætter af Shakespeare og andre elizabethanske sonetdigtere, forfatter til romaner, skuespil, noveller, samt en romanserie om arbejdersønnen Kristian, der bliver akademiker, en personligt fortalt historie om Danmark og danskerne fra besættelsestiden til halvfemserne.