Il 17 agosto Magne ha rilasciato una lunga intervista (47 minuti) al canale online Viking TV.
L’intervista è stata condotta dal fotografo britannico Alistair Miller.
Gli argomenti toccati sono stati molti: dall’arte alla registrazione di nuovi pezzi che, non è escluso, ma neppure confermato, potrebbero essere con gli a-ha. Nei progetti anche una collaborazione con il programma REV Ocean, una grossa nave per lo studio oceanografico con a bordo 60 scienziati. Magne, insieme ad altri artisti, curerà l'arte di bordo.
Un sunto con i punti salienti è disponibile su a.ha Live (in inglese)
L'intervista completa è disponibile su YouTube.
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Di seguito abbiamo brutalmente estratto i sottotitoli del video:
hi everyone and thank you for joining me
for another in conversation now it's
always been my
belief that each and every one of us has
a talent for something
and the purpose of life is to find that
talent
and to work out what it is and then
express it as best we can
but there are some lucky people who for
some reason seem to get an extra
sprinkling of talent and that's
definitely the case with my guest
tonight
not only is he an international rock
star a brilliant keyboard player
but he also paints draws makes woodcuts
and ceramic sculptures
and writes poetry he is Magne
furuhomen Magne welcome to in
conversation
thank you very much it's great to see
you
um Magne we invited you here today
really to talk about
yourself as a visual artist
but as i said in my introduction um
you're also a very
successful musician and that has to be
the
massive understatement of the year
because in the 1980s you
uh co-wrote one of the best-selling
singles
of all time with the band aha
it was called take on me and it sold
over
seven million copies uh was a number one
hit around the world
and topped the billboard 100 in the
united states in 1985.
but just in case there's anyone watching
who doesn't remember it
here's a little excerpt as a reminder
[Music]
today is
[Music]
me
[Music]
is
great and even the video which took six
months to make
uh and was revolutionary in the way
mixed film and graphics
won uh six mtb awards
you and did you would you have an
involvement in the making of the video
Magne very little um
we were a young man at the time of
course so um when we were given the
opportunity to work
we were shown the animation and asked if
we thought this would be interesting to
to use um for a video and
you know to be honest at the outset we
would have
okayed pretty much anything but it was a
really lucky break there was a
great mix of talents with with steve
barron i mean you know as a young man
you walk into a
a record executive's office and he says
you know i've got this
director who's done uh madonna videos
michael jackson videos and
would you like to work with him and we
were like yeah
and and then we saw the animation stuff
and i think you know there was a feeling
that there was something special in the
uh
uh in the making because this was the uh
the glory days of mtv wasn't that i mean
it's a really exciting time in terms of
uh
of pop videos i mean looking at it now
the girl's hair and even it kind of it
looks a little you know it looks dated
but at the time this was really uh
pretty adventurous stuff
yeah i mean everything has its uh has
this period but i mean that video seems
to have taken on
um and the song has taken on a life of
its own with with new generations as
well and
you know i think not only that but on
the 17th of february this year it
clocked up that video clocked up an
incredible one billion views on
youtube one billion view that's about a
fifth of the world's population
uh either that understandable did you
maybe celebrate
that day one did you have a bit of a
celebration that day
on the 17th of february uh
i can't remember if we did i mean it's
very possible that my mother has watched
it
four million or for 400
whatever billions
it's incredible really so here's my big
question
uh Magne that incredibly successful song
how do you feel about it today i mean is
it is it like an old friend that you
like to
to see from time to time or are you just
sick of hearing it and playing it
it's it's one of those things you just
make your piece with i mean it's
sort of the biggest um statement when
you mention
aha to people who are not hardcore fans
that's the calling card isn't it so
it's um it's like a soldier is just out
there working for us
uh on a daily basis so i i'll definitely
make my
uh my piece i mean you know there have
been times when
when you felt that other songs uh
warranted um more um
attention but i think that's every
artist's um
situation that you um you take you know
take a little bit of the success for
granted and you always want
other other things to be um to be
noticed as much
but the world decides and i suppose in
some ways
it's um uh the success of that
particular song
then gave you the possibilities to go on
and do all kinds of other things which
is
you know which is pretty useful yeah
absolutely i mean it's
it's uh you know i mean i was always as
a young kid
interested in in three things you know
it was making music
it was um painting and drawing
and and writing poetry and and i'm still
doing that
and uh obviously the test with the music
um in many ways created a situation
for me where i i had a difficult time
breaking through in the art world
um you know i kind of knew that going in
i mean i was pretty skeptical myself to
uh to anyone you know from from sort of
the coming from pop culture into sort of
fine culture um you know i i knew there
would be
skepticism but i i think you know i've
been lucky in that regard i've just
you know um kept on kept at it and um
and had the opportunity to to do it on a
professional level from
from day one without you know being
discovered i see where i was kind of
already too discovered you know
well i'm not going to ask you about that
because i don't know what you notice
there was a time
a long time ago when uh chinese
artists in china who when they would
become
famous and well-known in their community
or in their village
and they would they would then move to
another town
and change their names and start all
over again uh
as a way of avoiding the fame and the
problems that
come with fame and i was just wondering
do you think it's possible
for someone to become a prisoner of
their own success have you have you ever
have you ever felt that well i i tried
changing my name
um i was a little bit i almost
went for a sort of uh anonymous
um in the direction when i started
exhibiting my
my visual work but i think at the end of
the day
embracing it and and trying to use my
particular history in in
the most effective way has actually been
the embracing of it is what has given me
the most you know i've been able to to
sort of
skip between uh the two um
you know cultures as it were and and
also mediums and and sometimes even in
the middle you can find some really
interesting things a few of my
music slash art projects have involved
people from the music world and the art
world and i think
um you know even even in involving the
audience in a much more direct way than
than we do as musicians there's this
contract that you know people
uh buy records they listen to them they
they buy cost of tickets and then you
come and perform but
in the art world you can do a lot more
interesting things that that
that sort of highlights the spotlight's
fame
as a phenomena and i think for me that
has been
the kind of it took me a few years
of trying not to sort of separate too
much i remember in the interviews in the
early days when i was
showing my my paintings and stuff that
i tried to separate very much i
was you know very adamant about not
talking about the music
and i'm not talking about that side of
my career
but i think it's i think for me it's
worked
once i embraced the situation i'm i'm in
and
and tried to use it for something then
then it became much more interesting
right but um but you're still the band
is still
playing i mean weren't you supposed to
be on a world tour right now
was that the plan am i right yeah i
think we cancelled
60 shows this year due to the covet
situation and it was going to be a big
worldwide tour with sellout concerts in
l.a
um we were in asia the time touring when
when the lockdown happened so
you know everyone's affected by this in
different ways we are fortunate in that
we can
push our concerts to whenever
the situation allows so um you know i
feel very privileged in that sense
but yeah it was it's it's become a very
different year than i had uh
that we had planned well i think i could
say
i could say the same magnet yeah for
sure often but i think for most of us
it's been very different
but no i'm what i'm interested in was
just that it wasn't as if you didn't say
one day okay
i've had a huge success as a musician
and with a very successful band i'm
going to stop that now
and concentrate on a different kind of
art form
you've kept the music going you're still
enjoying i'm surprised you actually
still enjoy
like something like a world tour which
takes you away from your family and your
home for long staying in hotels
i mean all you still find that as
something that you want to be doing
well there are worse situ work
situations than going in front of um you
know
10 20 000 um adoring plants
i think yeah i think there was a there
was a
shift i mean i i moved back to norway in
um
in 92 and and i i kind of left
uh i did my national service as a
conscientious objector
um you know um and refused the military
service so i i did a year and a half of
social service uh when we got our first
trial and moved back to norway
and that's really the time where i'd
already started exhibiting
but but i focused pretty much
well i was doing musical projects i was
writing for film
eventually released some solo albums but
i think you know the art
was my my main focus at that point
um but then you know i tried to stop a
heart a couple of times but you know
every time you sort of
hit it with the head it's a hammer it
comes back and drags you in
but are you writing new material for
with the band or is it
are you just playing the the ones that
people want to hear the old hits
i mean we've we've released you know i
can't remember now how many albums but
it's
it's in uh it's like in the heights
and uh so yeah a lot of the a lot of the
concerts that we've done over the last
years have been variations of of
our catalogue which is huge at this
point
we have you know um funnily enough just
these days i'm back in the studio to
to see what it feels like to to write
for something for a house so
you know i wouldn't hold my breath for
it but you know it's something that that
may or may not happen
by the way i thought the uh the the uh
the mtv unplugged
was just great i thought that was
beautiful i think it's just such a great
idea that
those series of unplugged concerts did
you enjoy doing that
we kind of came very late to it i mean
it's one of those things that um
you know i remember the sort of really
great and to the unplugged things coming
up in the 90s and we weren't really
actually
as a band at that point uh and then
there were some
some attempts at doing it didn't work
out and then finally
just you know stars aligned and we um
decided it was enough this there was
enough distance to our um
80s catalog to re-examine the songs and
and make them ours again somehow you
know they sort of belong to the public
so we
we sort of felt that way when we
did some really radical changes to the
arrangements and decided to do them
in the mtv unplugged format was a really
really nice experience for all of us
i think it works really well it looks it
sounds great looks great sounds great
sounds like a sad ballad all of a sudden
well yeah which is why i think it's
really interesting yeah yeah absolutely
it works very well in that in that
format i think
um so Magne how the the visual arts was
that always something that was going on
for you that was it was it running in
parallel when you were
with the band or when you were you still
are with the band but was that something
that you've always done or did it
kick you yeah i i i always did it but i
didn't do it
with any view to a professional career
uh but i think out of the whole
you know sort of uh situation that that
success created for us it i needed more
and more to go into a creative space
that was my own and and wasn't a
collaboration and wasn't
to do with music and pressures of fame
and all that so i
i established a little painting studio
in
in london in the late 80s and
um by coincidence or not
one one of the gallerists who had seen
my
early work from from my teens really
made contact and asked if i i would be
willing to
to exhibit and he came to london
and went through all my work chose
everything that i didn't like
and none of the stuff i liked
i forced him to put in some of my
favorite paintings which of course
were the shittiest ones uh but it took
me three years to realize that he was
completely right in
in any selection and uh and i haven't
looked back since i mean i must have had
more than a hundred shows in in norway
alone over the years and
uh you know london germany
america um so it's been a
it just feels it for me it's a bit like
farming
i treat it a little bit like crop
rotation you know i i keep
keep fertile by by skipping from one
one day we'll i'll be in the recording
studio the next day i'll be in my
painting studio and i
i have a set up now with with assistants
and people who
you know deal with logistics for me so i
i can sort of
go straight into almost like a
performative
uh action on both fronts and and that
that's given me a lot of um
it's nurtured me that's an interesting
one i mean one
i've noticed one common uh thread that
runs through
uh pretty much all of your artwork uh it
seems to me
is an obvious love of words
and letters which you use in a very
graphic way
i think we can pull up a still of one of
your works that shows this
so where does this come from this this
uh this
love of the of graphics of of of letters
and numbers
uh well i always tried you know i like
to refer to myself
as a cunning linguist
[Laughter]
i
i think i i have my mother was a was a
language teacher and that's i grew up
with a fondness for the english language
and you know our career has taken us
around the world so
i i consider myself a sort of a polite
guest in the english language
and and from films i see in books i read
i'm always looking for
grammatical idiosyncrasies or
you know sort of interesting words used
in ways i
i haven't noticed before and and pretty
much that will
you know i think i think for me letting
go the figurative painting that i
started with letting go
the sort of stock use
of landscape or figure as a
as a starting point for abstraction
and using words and language and
statements and
more in sort of tune with uh eastern
calligraphy and and um working with
language i'm
that that was a real breakthrough for me
that was
when things started to um
to open up and i found my own way and so
to speak
beautiful yeah i know i mean i i love it
a lot and
you remind me uh you just now you just
reminded me of um
i'm sure you've seen this in china uh
the uh
if you go to the park early in the
morning and the at dawn and there's the
old men
with uh with buckets of water and they
dip their
brushes into the water and just do
calligraphy and the sun
dries it out and it disappears there's
something very beautiful about that
okay absolutely yeah so can i ask you a
question that's been
sent in Magne it kind of relates to what
we're talking about it's from
a guy called bill in seattle it says
uh hi Magne you work in several artistic
mediums
music of course but also in visual art
with paint sculpture
fine arts and graphic design does your
inspiration
direct you to the best medium of that
concept
or does the medium precede the idea
which is quite a
nice question so do you do you think
today i'm going to do something in clay
or in glass or
or does to you start with the idea and
then think this would work
best in in a different certain in a
particular medium
i think to a certain degree the medium
is is very
uh informative in in in the end result
i i typically choose processes that
that have no turning back to them like
if you make a ceramic sculpture
you're dealing with with wet clay that
eventually hardens and
and and then it's fired and then reset
the result you just
accept the way it is when you deal with
um it's the same with with print making
you know
i'm i'm first and foremost the
printmaker and
and i i even paint using the tools of
printmaking
um for monotypes and things that are
unique
and as of so for me there's something
again this sort of performative thing
that
i get really confused if i if i paint on
the canvas because i can always
you know paint over mistakes and and and
i
second guess myself and i i sort of come
back to
zero and i don't really like that i like
having to respond to what the media
is is offering having said that the way
i i
work uh is sort of
akin to how i imagine
lars von trio the danish director
felt about setting up a dogma of rules
so for each project i will limit my
palette or i will limit my concepts
i will sort of um choose a lot of things
that i'm not gonna do
and and that actually releases a lot of
creative juice for me that that
gives me you know i'm trying to
i'm trying to extract enormous
consequences from
from little inventions from from from
starting in a very precise space
uh yeah it could be something like uh
making um
you know i've been asked to make
portraits of people
and you know naturally then i would say
okay but it's not gonna look like you
it's gonna be almost like an abstract
poem but what i can do is i can
rinse the alphabet of all the the
letters that are not in your name
and see if i can come up with something
interesting based on
your alphabet so yeah so this is you
know like
applying applying limitation and
applying
frame work that i stay within i i break
my own rules from time to time but
it i find it really disciplining it's a
bit like
my first museum shows in the early 90s
was
large scale colorful wood cuts
up to three meters in in in size
and you know that sort of almost became
like a hit and it almost became it's
like with music it's like
i don't want to do that again then i
want to do what i cannot do or what i
haven't done so
the natural thing for me was just like
to say no more woodcuts for 10 years no
more colors just
one one color and then just work with
tonality and atmosphere and and see how
it
see how i go so i i set up these sort of
stumbling blocks for myself i
i sometimes sometimes say it's
that the way my artistic concentration
revs up is if i'm i i sometimes use the
image of
of uh you know going home from a drunken
party and then planting landmines all
over the garden on my way in so when i
wake up in the morning i don't remember
where they are and i have to
apparently find my way out again
but it's something that's it sounds very
for another in conversation now it's
always been my
belief that each and every one of us has
a talent for something
and the purpose of life is to find that
talent
and to work out what it is and then
express it as best we can
but there are some lucky people who for
some reason seem to get an extra
sprinkling of talent and that's
definitely the case with my guest
tonight
not only is he an international rock
star a brilliant keyboard player
but he also paints draws makes woodcuts
and ceramic sculptures
and writes poetry he is Magne
furuhomen Magne welcome to in
conversation
thank you very much it's great to see
you
um Magne we invited you here today
really to talk about
yourself as a visual artist
but as i said in my introduction um
you're also a very
successful musician and that has to be
the
massive understatement of the year
because in the 1980s you
uh co-wrote one of the best-selling
singles
of all time with the band aha
it was called take on me and it sold
over
seven million copies uh was a number one
hit around the world
and topped the billboard 100 in the
united states in 1985.
but just in case there's anyone watching
who doesn't remember it
here's a little excerpt as a reminder
[Music]
today is
[Music]
me
[Music]
is
great and even the video which took six
months to make
uh and was revolutionary in the way
mixed film and graphics
won uh six mtb awards
you and did you would you have an
involvement in the making of the video
Magne very little um
we were a young man at the time of
course so um when we were given the
opportunity to work
we were shown the animation and asked if
we thought this would be interesting to
to use um for a video and
you know to be honest at the outset we
would have
okayed pretty much anything but it was a
really lucky break there was a
great mix of talents with with steve
barron i mean you know as a young man
you walk into a
a record executive's office and he says
you know i've got this
director who's done uh madonna videos
michael jackson videos and
would you like to work with him and we
were like yeah
and and then we saw the animation stuff
and i think you know there was a feeling
that there was something special in the
uh
uh in the making because this was the uh
the glory days of mtv wasn't that i mean
it's a really exciting time in terms of
uh
of pop videos i mean looking at it now
the girl's hair and even it kind of it
looks a little you know it looks dated
but at the time this was really uh
pretty adventurous stuff
yeah i mean everything has its uh has
this period but i mean that video seems
to have taken on
um and the song has taken on a life of
its own with with new generations as
well and
you know i think not only that but on
the 17th of february this year it
clocked up that video clocked up an
incredible one billion views on
youtube one billion view that's about a
fifth of the world's population
uh either that understandable did you
maybe celebrate
that day one did you have a bit of a
celebration that day
on the 17th of february uh
i can't remember if we did i mean it's
very possible that my mother has watched
it
four million or for 400
whatever billions
it's incredible really so here's my big
question
uh Magne that incredibly successful song
how do you feel about it today i mean is
it is it like an old friend that you
like to
to see from time to time or are you just
sick of hearing it and playing it
it's it's one of those things you just
make your piece with i mean it's
sort of the biggest um statement when
you mention
aha to people who are not hardcore fans
that's the calling card isn't it so
it's um it's like a soldier is just out
there working for us
uh on a daily basis so i i'll definitely
make my
uh my piece i mean you know there have
been times when
when you felt that other songs uh
warranted um more um
attention but i think that's every
artist's um
situation that you um you take you know
take a little bit of the success for
granted and you always want
other other things to be um to be
noticed as much
but the world decides and i suppose in
some ways
it's um uh the success of that
particular song
then gave you the possibilities to go on
and do all kinds of other things which
is
you know which is pretty useful yeah
absolutely i mean it's
it's uh you know i mean i was always as
a young kid
interested in in three things you know
it was making music
it was um painting and drawing
and and writing poetry and and i'm still
doing that
and uh obviously the test with the music
um in many ways created a situation
for me where i i had a difficult time
breaking through in the art world
um you know i kind of knew that going in
i mean i was pretty skeptical myself to
uh to anyone you know from from sort of
the coming from pop culture into sort of
fine culture um you know i i knew there
would be
skepticism but i i think you know i've
been lucky in that regard i've just
you know um kept on kept at it and um
and had the opportunity to to do it on a
professional level from
from day one without you know being
discovered i see where i was kind of
already too discovered you know
well i'm not going to ask you about that
because i don't know what you notice
there was a time
a long time ago when uh chinese
artists in china who when they would
become
famous and well-known in their community
or in their village
and they would they would then move to
another town
and change their names and start all
over again uh
as a way of avoiding the fame and the
problems that
come with fame and i was just wondering
do you think it's possible
for someone to become a prisoner of
their own success have you have you ever
have you ever felt that well i i tried
changing my name
um i was a little bit i almost
went for a sort of uh anonymous
um in the direction when i started
exhibiting my
my visual work but i think at the end of
the day
embracing it and and trying to use my
particular history in in
the most effective way has actually been
the embracing of it is what has given me
the most you know i've been able to to
sort of
skip between uh the two um
you know cultures as it were and and
also mediums and and sometimes even in
the middle you can find some really
interesting things a few of my
music slash art projects have involved
people from the music world and the art
world and i think
um you know even even in involving the
audience in a much more direct way than
than we do as musicians there's this
contract that you know people
uh buy records they listen to them they
they buy cost of tickets and then you
come and perform but
in the art world you can do a lot more
interesting things that that
that sort of highlights the spotlight's
fame
as a phenomena and i think for me that
has been
the kind of it took me a few years
of trying not to sort of separate too
much i remember in the interviews in the
early days when i was
showing my my paintings and stuff that
i tried to separate very much i
was you know very adamant about not
talking about the music
and i'm not talking about that side of
my career
but i think it's i think for me it's
worked
once i embraced the situation i'm i'm in
and
and tried to use it for something then
then it became much more interesting
right but um but you're still the band
is still
playing i mean weren't you supposed to
be on a world tour right now
was that the plan am i right yeah i
think we cancelled
60 shows this year due to the covet
situation and it was going to be a big
worldwide tour with sellout concerts in
l.a
um we were in asia the time touring when
when the lockdown happened so
you know everyone's affected by this in
different ways we are fortunate in that
we can
push our concerts to whenever
the situation allows so um you know i
feel very privileged in that sense
but yeah it was it's it's become a very
different year than i had uh
that we had planned well i think i could
say
i could say the same magnet yeah for
sure often but i think for most of us
it's been very different
but no i'm what i'm interested in was
just that it wasn't as if you didn't say
one day okay
i've had a huge success as a musician
and with a very successful band i'm
going to stop that now
and concentrate on a different kind of
art form
you've kept the music going you're still
enjoying i'm surprised you actually
still enjoy
like something like a world tour which
takes you away from your family and your
home for long staying in hotels
i mean all you still find that as
something that you want to be doing
well there are worse situ work
situations than going in front of um you
know
10 20 000 um adoring plants
i think yeah i think there was a there
was a
shift i mean i i moved back to norway in
um
in 92 and and i i kind of left
uh i did my national service as a
conscientious objector
um you know um and refused the military
service so i i did a year and a half of
social service uh when we got our first
trial and moved back to norway
and that's really the time where i'd
already started exhibiting
but but i focused pretty much
well i was doing musical projects i was
writing for film
eventually released some solo albums but
i think you know the art
was my my main focus at that point
um but then you know i tried to stop a
heart a couple of times but you know
every time you sort of
hit it with the head it's a hammer it
comes back and drags you in
but are you writing new material for
with the band or is it
are you just playing the the ones that
people want to hear the old hits
i mean we've we've released you know i
can't remember now how many albums but
it's
it's in uh it's like in the heights
and uh so yeah a lot of the a lot of the
concerts that we've done over the last
years have been variations of of
our catalogue which is huge at this
point
we have you know um funnily enough just
these days i'm back in the studio to
to see what it feels like to to write
for something for a house so
you know i wouldn't hold my breath for
it but you know it's something that that
may or may not happen
by the way i thought the uh the the uh
the mtv unplugged
was just great i thought that was
beautiful i think it's just such a great
idea that
those series of unplugged concerts did
you enjoy doing that
we kind of came very late to it i mean
it's one of those things that um
you know i remember the sort of really
great and to the unplugged things coming
up in the 90s and we weren't really
actually
as a band at that point uh and then
there were some
some attempts at doing it didn't work
out and then finally
just you know stars aligned and we um
decided it was enough this there was
enough distance to our um
80s catalog to re-examine the songs and
and make them ours again somehow you
know they sort of belong to the public
so we
we sort of felt that way when we
did some really radical changes to the
arrangements and decided to do them
in the mtv unplugged format was a really
really nice experience for all of us
i think it works really well it looks it
sounds great looks great sounds great
sounds like a sad ballad all of a sudden
well yeah which is why i think it's
really interesting yeah yeah absolutely
it works very well in that in that
format i think
um so Magne how the the visual arts was
that always something that was going on
for you that was it was it running in
parallel when you were
with the band or when you were you still
are with the band but was that something
that you've always done or did it
kick you yeah i i i always did it but i
didn't do it
with any view to a professional career
uh but i think out of the whole
you know sort of uh situation that that
success created for us it i needed more
and more to go into a creative space
that was my own and and wasn't a
collaboration and wasn't
to do with music and pressures of fame
and all that so i
i established a little painting studio
in
in london in the late 80s and
um by coincidence or not
one one of the gallerists who had seen
my
early work from from my teens really
made contact and asked if i i would be
willing to
to exhibit and he came to london
and went through all my work chose
everything that i didn't like
and none of the stuff i liked
i forced him to put in some of my
favorite paintings which of course
were the shittiest ones uh but it took
me three years to realize that he was
completely right in
in any selection and uh and i haven't
looked back since i mean i must have had
more than a hundred shows in in norway
alone over the years and
uh you know london germany
america um so it's been a
it just feels it for me it's a bit like
farming
i treat it a little bit like crop
rotation you know i i keep
keep fertile by by skipping from one
one day we'll i'll be in the recording
studio the next day i'll be in my
painting studio and i
i have a set up now with with assistants
and people who
you know deal with logistics for me so i
i can sort of
go straight into almost like a
performative
uh action on both fronts and and that
that's given me a lot of um
it's nurtured me that's an interesting
one i mean one
i've noticed one common uh thread that
runs through
uh pretty much all of your artwork uh it
seems to me
is an obvious love of words
and letters which you use in a very
graphic way
i think we can pull up a still of one of
your works that shows this
so where does this come from this this
uh this
love of the of graphics of of of letters
and numbers
uh well i always tried you know i like
to refer to myself
as a cunning linguist
[Laughter]
i
i think i i have my mother was a was a
language teacher and that's i grew up
with a fondness for the english language
and you know our career has taken us
around the world so
i i consider myself a sort of a polite
guest in the english language
and and from films i see in books i read
i'm always looking for
grammatical idiosyncrasies or
you know sort of interesting words used
in ways i
i haven't noticed before and and pretty
much that will
you know i think i think for me letting
go the figurative painting that i
started with letting go
the sort of stock use
of landscape or figure as a
as a starting point for abstraction
and using words and language and
statements and
more in sort of tune with uh eastern
calligraphy and and um working with
language i'm
that that was a real breakthrough for me
that was
when things started to um
to open up and i found my own way and so
to speak
beautiful yeah i know i mean i i love it
a lot and
you remind me uh you just now you just
reminded me of um
i'm sure you've seen this in china uh
the uh
if you go to the park early in the
morning and the at dawn and there's the
old men
with uh with buckets of water and they
dip their
brushes into the water and just do
calligraphy and the sun
dries it out and it disappears there's
something very beautiful about that
okay absolutely yeah so can i ask you a
question that's been
sent in Magne it kind of relates to what
we're talking about it's from
a guy called bill in seattle it says
uh hi Magne you work in several artistic
mediums
music of course but also in visual art
with paint sculpture
fine arts and graphic design does your
inspiration
direct you to the best medium of that
concept
or does the medium precede the idea
which is quite a
nice question so do you do you think
today i'm going to do something in clay
or in glass or
or does to you start with the idea and
then think this would work
best in in a different certain in a
particular medium
i think to a certain degree the medium
is is very
uh informative in in in the end result
i i typically choose processes that
that have no turning back to them like
if you make a ceramic sculpture
you're dealing with with wet clay that
eventually hardens and
and and then it's fired and then reset
the result you just
accept the way it is when you deal with
um it's the same with with print making
you know
i'm i'm first and foremost the
printmaker and
and i i even paint using the tools of
printmaking
um for monotypes and things that are
unique
and as of so for me there's something
again this sort of performative thing
that
i get really confused if i if i paint on
the canvas because i can always
you know paint over mistakes and and and
i
second guess myself and i i sort of come
back to
zero and i don't really like that i like
having to respond to what the media
is is offering having said that the way
i i
work uh is sort of
akin to how i imagine
lars von trio the danish director
felt about setting up a dogma of rules
so for each project i will limit my
palette or i will limit my concepts
i will sort of um choose a lot of things
that i'm not gonna do
and and that actually releases a lot of
creative juice for me that that
gives me you know i'm trying to
i'm trying to extract enormous
consequences from
from little inventions from from from
starting in a very precise space
uh yeah it could be something like uh
making um
you know i've been asked to make
portraits of people
and you know naturally then i would say
okay but it's not gonna look like you
it's gonna be almost like an abstract
poem but what i can do is i can
rinse the alphabet of all the the
letters that are not in your name
and see if i can come up with something
interesting based on
your alphabet so yeah so this is you
know like
applying applying limitation and
applying
frame work that i stay within i i break
my own rules from time to time but
it i find it really disciplining it's a
bit like
my first museum shows in the early 90s
was
large scale colorful wood cuts
up to three meters in in in size
and you know that sort of almost became
like a hit and it almost became it's
like with music it's like
i don't want to do that again then i
want to do what i cannot do or what i
haven't done so
the natural thing for me was just like
to say no more woodcuts for 10 years no
more colors just
one one color and then just work with
tonality and atmosphere and and see how
it
see how i go so i i set up these sort of
stumbling blocks for myself i
i sometimes sometimes say it's
that the way my artistic concentration
revs up is if i'm i i sometimes use the
image of
of uh you know going home from a drunken
party and then planting landmines all
over the garden on my way in so when i
wake up in the morning i don't remember
where they are and i have to
apparently find my way out again
but it's something that's it sounds very
uh overly
dramatic but but i think there's
something that happens for me when when
i'm
limiting myself to um uh
you know i think i think the worst thing
an artist can do is
start the day in in in the louvre or any
sort of
modern museum and and think about look
at all the work and then
think okay i'm going to go home now and
push the envelope of
art history one notch further i i i
would like
a lot more of a humble approach like
okay
today is yellow day let me just see what
i can do i hate yellow let let me just
work with that
so there's it's a bit of a childishness
to that of course but you know i i i
engage my inner child from time to time
it was picasso who said that he was just
basically spent his whole life trying to
paint like a child
and uh i think that makes a lot of sense
to to create parameters
you know around oneself i don't
know if he succeeded in the end i mean
he uh
he certainly made some very beautiful
simple
drawings and i think simplicity is is
what he was aiming for
you know this sort of meaningful
simplicity and you mentioned
the chinese calligraphy person it's all
in that elegant natural flow
that you create and once you have
knowledge you cannot
undo the knowledge but you can trip
yourself up and you can
find new ways of using that knowledge
without letting it become a sort of a
vanity point of showing how good you are
at something
sure yeah yeah i mean i think that's the
part of what because i was talking about
when painting like a child was that you
know children when they first pick up a
paintbrush
do it's very there's no
self-consciousness about it it's just a
very natural process and what tends to mess
things up i think is that is when we get
self-conscious about what we're doing
um um but um i i don't know if you'd
agree with that but
i think that's what i think it
introduces fear
and you know fear locks down your mind
and stops you from
yeah it prevents the flow basically yeah
absolutely um another question for you
from valerie
in los angeles who says uh manga
you were born in oslo and lived in
norway most of your life
how does your norwegian heritage present
in your work i don't know what it does
maybe it doesn't
is there any i think i think i think it
does i mean
our music as a band and also my my
solo work is i think firmly rooted in a
sort of
scandinavian melancholic um
tradition when when i work
as a visual artist i tend to
metacriticize
my own uh my own uh
lyrics i mean i didn't start using my
own lyrics until quite late in the game
around
2003 when i was releasing my first solo
album
and i was writing a lot of personal uh
personal lyrics right but i i think
you know i think there's there's sort of
historical figures both in
in the music world from the from
classical music norwegian classical
music that was hugely inspirational
in a in a you know
related to the atmosphere the overall
use of
minor chords and and making minor chords
happy and major chords
brooding you know this sort of up this
sort of
paradoxical uh ways of thinking
and uh you know even though my my uh
my visual work tends to engage a lot
more of the intellect for me as well
i think there's i'm still i'm trying to
make
my visual work in the same way i write a
song i would like it to have an in
you know sort of immediate impact to be
um engaging immediately without
you know have knowing all the references
in the lyrics without knowing any of the
sort of
hidden codes and i find i like work that
has this too this sort of
immediacy and then there's more there if
you want it but it's you don't need a
manual to go
to my exhibitions and and see the work
you know you can sort of
live with that first impression
pretty much like you know the magic of
pop music is
to me is that you can hear a song
you know sort of off your radar but know
about it without
even liking it for many years and then
something happens in your life
the time you hear it it's forever
connected to that moment and that
feeling and it becomes important and
it resonates in you because you're ready
for it there and then
and i i like to think of my artwork in
the same
space in fact probably the best
um the the most thrilling comments for
me
is when people come you know years down
the road and say oh i really miss the
atmosphere in that room you created in
this and this museum and
i miss i miss it being in that room and
that has something to do with atmosphere
it has something to do with
charging the room and this is what you
do when you write music you charge the
room for the recipient
you know yeah that's great yeah have you
ever
just occurred to me to ask you this have
you ever um
been asked to do any work for the
theater for for for backdrops or
set design because i can see your work
working you know looking or even opera
you know
in the opera world could be fantastic we
have had an opera production
in the running for the last 10 years
almost and trying to get traction on it
and it's
almost happened a few times and it isn't
quite
buried yet but for me it's all
i'm curious about all the ways i can use
my um my eyes and my
my hands and my my artistic
viewpoints uh in in areas that i haven't
done before so
future i mean i've done some things
you know some sort of of things for
theater i've done theatrical
performances
uh in my own right um so i've dabbled in
in a lot of different mediums and and
again it's something that i find
nutritional
you know yeah yeah well as you know some
of your
uh ceramic pieces are part of uh
viking's
art collection and um we have several of
your pieces on various ships
um we have a still one showing just now
which i think is on the viking
sky um my question
first question is what is the
significance
of the uh the shape of the vessel
or the va i don't know what you would
call it a bars or a vessel to me it
makes you think of something
the egyptians or the romans might have
used to store grain in or something it's
uh
it has a rather sort of classical shape
to it
yeah i i don't like the the word vast
but i like vessel and i like jar
this is a vanity point only but and but
all the history of a container for
something
uh precious or important is part of the
allure i think of making objects like
that
i've stayed with that shape since i
started making these
in hmm what was it
96 97
i think um and it's it's like a
three-dimensional
uh painting and and what i found when i
started introducing
my lyrics and poetry and words to it was
that it would produce
new unintended uh poetic
images so like from one side because i
walk around it
yeah and i and i immediately get drawn
to
certain words that wasn't necessarily
coupled
creating a new statement and and i can
exaggerate that
or you know or um illuminate that or i
can sort of
skip by and do something else but the
finished product
is is something that that is mysterious
in the way that
you don't see at all at one point you
have to move around and it gives you
only a little bit of itself
right and that also from a painting
point of view it worked i mean the early
jars were very sort of
painterly and non-verbal but
introducing the the the written word to
them
added for me it was like rediscovering
this
the shape and what it could and in in
some instances i've
brought back sentences and put it back
down on paper as poetry
even into songs actually um from
combinations that was not intended by me
in the first place but happened because
of the size and the
sort of logistic of how i work with the
object
right right i mean my first reaction
when i saw those on the on the ship was
that
what i what i uh and i like them very
much i should say what i really liked at
the beginning
was the um the the the contrast between
the
rather the smooth classical shape of the
of the vessel and the kind of untidy
chaotic
abstract paints and and words and
letters
just up and down the sides i think that
contrast works really well
i'm just wondering how those are your
those are your words are they or they
are they from
yeah they're your words okay some of
them come from songs
some of them come from poetry uh some
are triggered by as i said
i know uh for uh on a couple of the
things i have
uh on one of the ships it was i think it
was orion
i actually wrote the piece of poetry
just doing research on orion and into
the greek
lovely uh and then we founded the
sort of wordplay that i uh that i
ended up using for the um to the uh
for the jar but you mentioned the shape
actually what i was trying to go
for was something very simple and
something that
wasn't the classic sort of you know
greek or roman versus but but a very
timeless shape and and the way i
achieved it was
i actually just hammered a nail into the
floor took a piece of string
and and and left the circle
circumference
tried different few few different
lengths so
conference would be either you know more
um rounded or flatter and then i
then you end up with this elliptical
shape and if you cut it right in the
middle it looks like a stubbed cigar
but if you if you then move it down and
up you you change the shape into
something
much more uh elegant and
and in my view and and at a certain
point almost like it floats like it's an
object that's heavy but at the same time
has a lightness to it
you see i didn't know any of that that's
what's lovely about having conversations
like this next time i'm on the orion
i'll look at it differently
that's gorgeous i know for a fact though
that every time i see
uh your ceramics on board there's always
something new to discover
there's always a new as you said you can
walk around them and
and find new there's new little you know
things to pop out that you haven't seen
before and that's part of the pleasure i
think
maybe we can put up one that's on the
viking jupiter now james the
um another one of the ceramic vessels
yeah this is um a lot of people love
this one i think the colors are just
great for a start
um and uh also some of your
pieces are not this particular one but
some of the things you
produce Magne are just enormous um
this totemic sculpture james can we show
that
uh i mean this is just
i mean i mean what is it like working on
a p i mean
i'd be so nervous of just thinking uh i
don't really like it
i mean you know
what was it for where was it going how
do you know uh
i i did a
a an extensive ceramic sculpture park
in in just outside oslo as a
as a commission and the two main pieces
are uh this jar shape that is
and they're six meters tall and uh when
they go into the kiln they weigh about
ten tons so i think they weigh about
eight when they come out they spend
about a month being fired
and then then you have to lift it up
everything's done by crane so yeah you
actually
you can't move the jar you know it has
to
first it's built then it's decorated or
you know artistically treated then he
has to drive for a month
you know in controlled circumstances
right
then it's fired and at that point when
you you actually
lift you actually build the kiln around
the object
and then you you lower it down in pieces
over um
you know take the roof off the building
and and use cranes to
wow and then when it's done you take off
one piece at a time and
and it's um it's a scary moment because
you don't know
you don't know if it's a 10-ton blob of
concrete
that's kind of collapsed on itself
within a month
so uh and it's also a bit of acceptance
in the fact that when you
when it comes out that's how it is you
know you can't change it and
uh yeah i mean i must admit the first
one i did was for um
the norwegian city of bergen in 98
around the
the millennium change i think right um
may have been a bit later it's a bit
fuzzy but i remember being very nervous
about that one in fact i made
two i made one wasn't completely happy
with it scrapped it and made another and
that's a very very expensive way of
working when you're working with
you know tons and tons of clay yeah but
for the
um sculpture park that i mentioned
there was a total of 70 tons of clay
involved
in the sculptures that are there and
they have various shapes and some are
even in the ground
just you know just like flush with the
ground so there's a great variety and
that's what i love about i've been going
to denmark
and i have i have a studio there that
i've been making ceramics in since 1990
like in 1991 so
uh it's become like a second home to me
and and it's
um you know i constantly just have to
strive to
to not repeat myself and introduce
something new
what an exciting commission of course it
must be a wonderful day when that
commission came in
i would just yeah and really that's
something
the the wonderful moment and also the
terrible moment
was when it opened because then nothing
could be changed nothing could be
yeah or improved um
but i for me it's like when i get a
commission like that i get
a surge of excitement but it's almost
like an irritation that
doesn't go away until it's done uh
and i i guess that sort of that that
laser focus that just
doesn't let you off out of its grip is
something that
helps if you're an artist or a musician
or whatever it's just
you know it's just something that irks
me until it's done
i can't sleep well i can't think of much
else so obviously my family has a very
ancient uh group of people
yeah well let's um uh we have a little
video clip that we can show
oh there's this uh still yeah is that
where where is that was that
that is that is the part of the
sculpture park there's one
all right there's one behind it too one
behind it and there's
quite a few uh standing sculptures and
and also around these buildings there's
a there's a whole sort of
air and a newly built uh complex that
was
established and i i was asked if i could
do something
with it and i i felt that the
the modern harsh sort of well
not harsh but very stringent lines and
very sort of
non-human um you know um
squares of of of the facade yeah
dictated to me that i needed some some
sort of
pliable organic matter that that would
give
a sense of timeless to nest to it almost
like a
part excavation site part storage space
for for the future
but having uh just a thought that
occurred to me you have ceramics like
that
outside permanently i mean winters are
pretty tough in norway with the ice and
the snow and the sub-zero temperatures
they don't get too damaged by the the
the weather or too much uh made they're
fired up to uh
um um high enough temperatures so that
they become
frost proof so they're quite happy but
one of the
sort of complicating elements in in the
sculpture park is that i'm using water
in the summer and steam in the winter
so so the steam coming out of various
places
uh by from the base of one and from the
top of another
and again it's a bit like an atmospheric
marker it's like when you see
it's almost like walking downtown
in new york on the winter night you know
you get this sort of steam coming out
from
up on the ground and something hugely
atmospheric about it and also makes you
see the wind
it makes you read the wind so i wanted
water i wanted this sort of
uh so in in the summer they're sort of
bubbling or running water over the edges
and
and i i really that can
can produce um you know sort of build up
of
ice and and things like that but you
know there are technical ways i mean we
put men on the moon you know
some making uh some jars um
live for a lifetime it shouldn't be too
hard
you're quite right let's um we have a
little clip uh that i
i i really enjoyed watching uh showing
you
showing just how physical uh ceramics uh
are when you get right down to it um
let's have a little look at that
[Music]
ridiculously
uh
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
so
[Music]
that's incredible uh who needs to go to
the gym when you can
when you can work with clay wonderful it
looks very looks hard like hard work
though
um and that's probably a good place to
bring our
conversation to a close uh Magne with
you getting your hands dirty working
with clay
um one last question though before you
go could you just
what are the plans for what's coming up
uh musically
or artistically that you can tell us
about
uh well plans have changed uh as we
talked about earlier
this is a a unique time uh
which is you know a time of reflection
in many ways if
if you're in a position to uh to
to do so so for me it's been a quite a
fertile
time i'm i'm i'm doing music projects
i'm doing uh some some of them obviously
concerts and stuff
had to be canceled but
i have exhibitions coming up there's a
big retrospective coming up in a in a
couple of years that we're preparing now
uh and i'm also curating other artists
uh
working on a on a very exciting
project called revolution which is a
huge
research ship where 60 um
60 scientists will be uh focusing on
oceanography
and there's artists involved this art on
board and i've
uh um you know worked with
someone a lady who's employed by me and
when we're curating all the art on board
and
we're using young norwegian artists on
board uh
so i fall elegantly out of that category
of course
and and and then there's an ongoing um
dialogue with scientists and artists in
residence on board the ship and
and possible exhibitions and and
networking into international art world
so
so there's a lot of stuff going on on
both fronts that are
hugely exciting at this point in time
and
you know other than that i um i potter
into my painting studio
my recording studio and i tried to make
something beautiful
that's great magnet thank you so much
for giving up your time and
sharing part of your world and what a
world it is gosh there's a lot going on
and sharing that with us i really
appreciate it thank you so much
thank you good luck thank you thank you
and thanks to all of you uh our guests
for watching
and i hope to see you again next tuesday
for another
in conversation until then from me and
the viking team
thank you and goodbye
dramatic but but i think there's
something that happens for me when when
i'm
limiting myself to um uh
you know i think i think the worst thing
an artist can do is
start the day in in in the louvre or any
sort of
modern museum and and think about look
at all the work and then
think okay i'm going to go home now and
push the envelope of
art history one notch further i i i
would like
a lot more of a humble approach like
okay
today is yellow day let me just see what
i can do i hate yellow let let me just
work with that
so there's it's a bit of a childishness
to that of course but you know i i i
engage my inner child from time to time
it was picasso who said that he was just
basically spent his whole life trying to
paint like a child
and uh i think that makes a lot of sense
to to create parameters
you know around oneself i don't
know if he succeeded in the end i mean
he uh
he certainly made some very beautiful
simple
drawings and i think simplicity is is
what he was aiming for
you know this sort of meaningful
simplicity and you mentioned
the chinese calligraphy person it's all
in that elegant natural flow
that you create and once you have
knowledge you cannot
undo the knowledge but you can trip
yourself up and you can
find new ways of using that knowledge
without letting it become a sort of a
vanity point of showing how good you are
at something
sure yeah yeah i mean i think that's the
part of what because i was talking about
when painting like a child was that you
know children when they first pick up a
paintbrush
do it's very there's no
self-consciousness about it it's just a
very natural process and what tends to mess
things up i think is that is when we get
self-conscious about what we're doing
um um but um i i don't know if you'd
agree with that but
i think that's what i think it
introduces fear
and you know fear locks down your mind
and stops you from
yeah it prevents the flow basically yeah
absolutely um another question for you
from valerie
in los angeles who says uh manga
you were born in oslo and lived in
norway most of your life
how does your norwegian heritage present
in your work i don't know what it does
maybe it doesn't
is there any i think i think i think it
does i mean
our music as a band and also my my
solo work is i think firmly rooted in a
sort of
scandinavian melancholic um
tradition when when i work
as a visual artist i tend to
metacriticize
my own uh my own uh
lyrics i mean i didn't start using my
own lyrics until quite late in the game
around
2003 when i was releasing my first solo
album
and i was writing a lot of personal uh
personal lyrics right but i i think
you know i think there's there's sort of
historical figures both in
in the music world from the from
classical music norwegian classical
music that was hugely inspirational
in a in a you know
related to the atmosphere the overall
use of
minor chords and and making minor chords
happy and major chords
brooding you know this sort of up this
sort of
paradoxical uh ways of thinking
and uh you know even though my my uh
my visual work tends to engage a lot
more of the intellect for me as well
i think there's i'm still i'm trying to
make
my visual work in the same way i write a
song i would like it to have an in
you know sort of immediate impact to be
um engaging immediately without
you know have knowing all the references
in the lyrics without knowing any of the
sort of
hidden codes and i find i like work that
has this too this sort of
immediacy and then there's more there if
you want it but it's you don't need a
manual to go
to my exhibitions and and see the work
you know you can sort of
live with that first impression
pretty much like you know the magic of
pop music is
to me is that you can hear a song
you know sort of off your radar but know
about it without
even liking it for many years and then
something happens in your life
the time you hear it it's forever
connected to that moment and that
feeling and it becomes important and
it resonates in you because you're ready
for it there and then
and i i like to think of my artwork in
the same
space in fact probably the best
um the the most thrilling comments for
me
is when people come you know years down
the road and say oh i really miss the
atmosphere in that room you created in
this and this museum and
i miss i miss it being in that room and
that has something to do with atmosphere
it has something to do with
charging the room and this is what you
do when you write music you charge the
room for the recipient
you know yeah that's great yeah have you
ever
just occurred to me to ask you this have
you ever um
been asked to do any work for the
theater for for for backdrops or
set design because i can see your work
working you know looking or even opera
you know
in the opera world could be fantastic we
have had an opera production
in the running for the last 10 years
almost and trying to get traction on it
and it's
almost happened a few times and it isn't
quite
buried yet but for me it's all
i'm curious about all the ways i can use
my um my eyes and my
my hands and my my artistic
viewpoints uh in in areas that i haven't
done before so
future i mean i've done some things
you know some sort of of things for
theater i've done theatrical
performances
uh in my own right um so i've dabbled in
in a lot of different mediums and and
again it's something that i find
nutritional
you know yeah yeah well as you know some
of your
uh ceramic pieces are part of uh
viking's
art collection and um we have several of
your pieces on various ships
um we have a still one showing just now
which i think is on the viking
sky um my question
first question is what is the
significance
of the uh the shape of the vessel
or the va i don't know what you would
call it a bars or a vessel to me it
makes you think of something
the egyptians or the romans might have
used to store grain in or something it's
uh
it has a rather sort of classical shape
to it
yeah i i don't like the the word vast
but i like vessel and i like jar
this is a vanity point only but and but
all the history of a container for
something
uh precious or important is part of the
allure i think of making objects like
that
i've stayed with that shape since i
started making these
in hmm what was it
96 97
i think um and it's it's like a
three-dimensional
uh painting and and what i found when i
started introducing
my lyrics and poetry and words to it was
that it would produce
new unintended uh poetic
images so like from one side because i
walk around it
yeah and i and i immediately get drawn
to
certain words that wasn't necessarily
coupled
creating a new statement and and i can
exaggerate that
or you know or um illuminate that or i
can sort of
skip by and do something else but the
finished product
is is something that that is mysterious
in the way that
you don't see at all at one point you
have to move around and it gives you
only a little bit of itself
right and that also from a painting
point of view it worked i mean the early
jars were very sort of
painterly and non-verbal but
introducing the the the written word to
them
added for me it was like rediscovering
this
the shape and what it could and in in
some instances i've
brought back sentences and put it back
down on paper as poetry
even into songs actually um from
combinations that was not intended by me
in the first place but happened because
of the size and the
sort of logistic of how i work with the
object
right right i mean my first reaction
when i saw those on the on the ship was
that
what i what i uh and i like them very
much i should say what i really liked at
the beginning
was the um the the the contrast between
the
rather the smooth classical shape of the
of the vessel and the kind of untidy
chaotic
abstract paints and and words and
letters
just up and down the sides i think that
contrast works really well
i'm just wondering how those are your
those are your words are they or they
are they from
yeah they're your words okay some of
them come from songs
some of them come from poetry uh some
are triggered by as i said
i know uh for uh on a couple of the
things i have
uh on one of the ships it was i think it
was orion
i actually wrote the piece of poetry
just doing research on orion and into
the greek
lovely uh and then we founded the
sort of wordplay that i uh that i
ended up using for the um to the uh
for the jar but you mentioned the shape
actually what i was trying to go
for was something very simple and
something that
wasn't the classic sort of you know
greek or roman versus but but a very
timeless shape and and the way i
achieved it was
i actually just hammered a nail into the
floor took a piece of string
and and and left the circle
circumference
tried different few few different
lengths so
conference would be either you know more
um rounded or flatter and then i
then you end up with this elliptical
shape and if you cut it right in the
middle it looks like a stubbed cigar
but if you if you then move it down and
up you you change the shape into
something
much more uh elegant and
and in my view and and at a certain
point almost like it floats like it's an
object that's heavy but at the same time
has a lightness to it
you see i didn't know any of that that's
what's lovely about having conversations
like this next time i'm on the orion
i'll look at it differently
that's gorgeous i know for a fact though
that every time i see
uh your ceramics on board there's always
something new to discover
there's always a new as you said you can
walk around them and
and find new there's new little you know
things to pop out that you haven't seen
before and that's part of the pleasure i
think
maybe we can put up one that's on the
viking jupiter now james the
um another one of the ceramic vessels
yeah this is um a lot of people love
this one i think the colors are just
great for a start
um and uh also some of your
pieces are not this particular one but
some of the things you
produce Magne are just enormous um
this totemic sculpture james can we show
that
uh i mean this is just
i mean i mean what is it like working on
a p i mean
i'd be so nervous of just thinking uh i
don't really like it
i mean you know
what was it for where was it going how
do you know uh
i i did a
a an extensive ceramic sculpture park
in in just outside oslo as a
as a commission and the two main pieces
are uh this jar shape that is
and they're six meters tall and uh when
they go into the kiln they weigh about
ten tons so i think they weigh about
eight when they come out they spend
about a month being fired
and then then you have to lift it up
everything's done by crane so yeah you
actually
you can't move the jar you know it has
to
first it's built then it's decorated or
you know artistically treated then he
has to drive for a month
you know in controlled circumstances
right
then it's fired and at that point when
you you actually
lift you actually build the kiln around
the object
and then you you lower it down in pieces
over um
you know take the roof off the building
and and use cranes to
wow and then when it's done you take off
one piece at a time and
and it's um it's a scary moment because
you don't know
you don't know if it's a 10-ton blob of
concrete
that's kind of collapsed on itself
within a month
so uh and it's also a bit of acceptance
in the fact that when you
when it comes out that's how it is you
know you can't change it and
uh yeah i mean i must admit the first
one i did was for um
the norwegian city of bergen in 98
around the
the millennium change i think right um
may have been a bit later it's a bit
fuzzy but i remember being very nervous
about that one in fact i made
two i made one wasn't completely happy
with it scrapped it and made another and
that's a very very expensive way of
working when you're working with
you know tons and tons of clay yeah but
for the
um sculpture park that i mentioned
there was a total of 70 tons of clay
involved
in the sculptures that are there and
they have various shapes and some are
even in the ground
just you know just like flush with the
ground so there's a great variety and
that's what i love about i've been going
to denmark
and i have i have a studio there that
i've been making ceramics in since 1990
like in 1991 so
uh it's become like a second home to me
and and it's
um you know i constantly just have to
strive to
to not repeat myself and introduce
something new
what an exciting commission of course it
must be a wonderful day when that
commission came in
i would just yeah and really that's
something
the the wonderful moment and also the
terrible moment
was when it opened because then nothing
could be changed nothing could be
yeah or improved um
but i for me it's like when i get a
commission like that i get
a surge of excitement but it's almost
like an irritation that
doesn't go away until it's done uh
and i i guess that sort of that that
laser focus that just
doesn't let you off out of its grip is
something that
helps if you're an artist or a musician
or whatever it's just
you know it's just something that irks
me until it's done
i can't sleep well i can't think of much
else so obviously my family has a very
ancient uh group of people
yeah well let's um uh we have a little
video clip that we can show
oh there's this uh still yeah is that
where where is that was that
that is that is the part of the
sculpture park there's one
all right there's one behind it too one
behind it and there's
quite a few uh standing sculptures and
and also around these buildings there's
a there's a whole sort of
air and a newly built uh complex that
was
established and i i was asked if i could
do something
with it and i i felt that the
the modern harsh sort of well
not harsh but very stringent lines and
very sort of
non-human um you know um
squares of of of the facade yeah
dictated to me that i needed some some
sort of
pliable organic matter that that would
give
a sense of timeless to nest to it almost
like a
part excavation site part storage space
for for the future
but having uh just a thought that
occurred to me you have ceramics like
that
outside permanently i mean winters are
pretty tough in norway with the ice and
the snow and the sub-zero temperatures
they don't get too damaged by the the
the weather or too much uh made they're
fired up to uh
um um high enough temperatures so that
they become
frost proof so they're quite happy but
one of the
sort of complicating elements in in the
sculpture park is that i'm using water
in the summer and steam in the winter
so so the steam coming out of various
places
uh by from the base of one and from the
top of another
and again it's a bit like an atmospheric
marker it's like when you see
it's almost like walking downtown
in new york on the winter night you know
you get this sort of steam coming out
from
up on the ground and something hugely
atmospheric about it and also makes you
see the wind
it makes you read the wind so i wanted
water i wanted this sort of
uh so in in the summer they're sort of
bubbling or running water over the edges
and
and i i really that can
can produce um you know sort of build up
of
ice and and things like that but you
know there are technical ways i mean we
put men on the moon you know
some making uh some jars um
live for a lifetime it shouldn't be too
hard
you're quite right let's um we have a
little clip uh that i
i i really enjoyed watching uh showing
you
showing just how physical uh ceramics uh
are when you get right down to it um
let's have a little look at that
[Music]
ridiculously
uh
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
so
[Music]
that's incredible uh who needs to go to
the gym when you can
when you can work with clay wonderful it
looks very looks hard like hard work
though
um and that's probably a good place to
bring our
conversation to a close uh Magne with
you getting your hands dirty working
with clay
um one last question though before you
go could you just
what are the plans for what's coming up
uh musically
or artistically that you can tell us
about
uh well plans have changed uh as we
talked about earlier
this is a a unique time uh
which is you know a time of reflection
in many ways if
if you're in a position to uh to
to do so so for me it's been a quite a
fertile
time i'm i'm i'm doing music projects
i'm doing uh some some of them obviously
concerts and stuff
had to be canceled but
i have exhibitions coming up there's a
big retrospective coming up in a in a
couple of years that we're preparing now
uh and i'm also curating other artists
uh
working on a on a very exciting
project called revolution which is a
huge
research ship where 60 um
60 scientists will be uh focusing on
oceanography
and there's artists involved this art on
board and i've
uh um you know worked with
someone a lady who's employed by me and
when we're curating all the art on board
and
we're using young norwegian artists on
board uh
so i fall elegantly out of that category
of course
and and and then there's an ongoing um
dialogue with scientists and artists in
residence on board the ship and
and possible exhibitions and and
networking into international art world
so
so there's a lot of stuff going on on
both fronts that are
hugely exciting at this point in time
and
you know other than that i um i potter
into my painting studio
my recording studio and i tried to make
something beautiful
that's great magnet thank you so much
for giving up your time and
sharing part of your world and what a
world it is gosh there's a lot going on
and sharing that with us i really
appreciate it thank you so much
thank you good luck thank you thank you
and thanks to all of you uh our guests
for watching
and i hope to see you again next tuesday
for another
in conversation until then from me and
the viking team
thank you and goodbye
