Maria Bjurestam - art and projects

Dialogues. Ongoing work 2003 –

Developed from the ”To find oneself-a sculptural project”, the Dialogues using only auxiliary verbs and pronouns to form phrases explores how fragments of language might reveal power structures; f. ex. hiding from responsibility, inflicting bad conscience, or showing submission. Notably the fragments themselves do not speak of specified situations, but depends on how they will be interpreted. For instance “You should…” could speak about both “you should obey me” as well as “you should have all the luck in the world…” The auxiliary verb/pronoun phrases, their combinations and their inherent connotations/associations as; submission, domination, surrender, vague or unuttered wishes, hesitation, attempt, evasion, play out roles in the building of power structures.

”You should…Anybody would…”

2 slide projectors, slides with words, 2 plinths, space. Västerås Konstmuseum 2003

Two projectors with plinths situated in diagonal opposite corners in a passage space, projecting at the wall above the opposite one. Projection A shows “I” and “you”, the auxiliaries “should”, “would”, “had”, “could”, “might”, “were” and their negations – “you should”, hadn’t I”, “I could”, “you might” etc. Projection B shows the indefinite and demonstrative pronouns: “one”, “all”, “anyone”, “everybody”, “they”, “it” and the above auxiliaries - “if anybody”, “everybody should”, “but it couldn’t”, “hadn’t they” Visitors might catch the phrases on their bodies when passing. Shown in the exhibition “But how broad could it get” with Anna Persson, Katinka Ahlbom, Malin Lobell.

Dialogue1    Dialogue2

dialogues

“The kitchen dialogues” 2004

metal surface, movable magnets, words

Like the popular “Kitchen Poetry” magnet sets, this contains auxiliaries, pronouns and some conjunctions which may be combined freely to fragmented phrases and dialogues. Shown in a collective show at the ID:I gallery, Stockholm 2004.

the Kitchen dialogue

“Dialogues”

Insert in LARM from mouth cavity to laptop: the sound of Nordic art 2007 (Kabusa publishers) Starting with an “I would like…but I” and answered with “would you like...couldn’t you”, the text gradually changes to phrases with indefinite pronouns and ends “if it were”.

I would like