Thanks for watching, I'm totally of the opinion that everybody can be an artist.
You when you make the decision, like, hey, I am an artist.
It's that just happens, and you just like decide to do it.
At the same time, I would never really feel like I'm a real artist.
And it's not, I'm not talking about imposter syndrome or anything like it's just like, you're just like, I'm making art.
It's a fun hobby and I kind of still have that attitude towards it,
not to become too precious, I guess, because think my mind cannot take it to start feeling precious about myself.
You like to full My name is Aragmar Cantonson, and I am a visual artist.
All my work is a lot of it based on performance.
performance and painting I would say, yeah.
And then it goes to video and all kinds of stuff.
I grew up in the theatre and art became a part of my life,
very much also through my grandfather, who was a So, I was just being exposed to visual art.
It felt like it was so free and cool somehow.
This is my studio here in Karanten, in Reykjavik.
It's like a of buildings which were built as, what do you call it?
modernist bolt shacks.
That's why it's like it's like this thick concrete to take on just like the North Atlantic Ocean just against the building.
That's why it's designed for the wave to come over it.
Here on the floor It's a watercolor painting I'm working on called the series of paintings I just continue to do.
It just makes me happy.
It's just like night skies called the Denachter Hochtzeit, the night of the wedding.
It's like some It's good in German.
It's one of the best tricks I learned in the painting department in the art school,
from painter Seguller-Artnie, and I asked Seguller-Artnie, like, how do you do a night sky?
I was just like, oh, I don't know, oh, the classic trick is to do.
on purple and ever since like I've just loved this track because you always get
like this very poetic night sky from this trick of the trade.
I when I decided to apply for art school.
There was a lot of, I remember my mother was basically like, you okay, now you have to apply for theatre school.
And because I was always doing theatre and I loved it, but I always sensed that I was not a good actor.
I act or kind of lacked the...
this, you know, you just feel it when you're like, you know, you don't have that fire.
And, but I was always an exhibitionist, I think.
And I remember just thinking when I applied for Visual Art, I remember thinking like, yeah, maybe it's good to be an exhibitionistic visual artist.
There are not so many exhibitionistic visual artists in Iceland.
So, you maybe I'm special, I remember that thought.
I chose visual art because I was like very much into, I was in bands and really loved making music and as kind of.
and that you'd kind of learn from pop history like all kind of mainly like European pop
stars have always like started to come from art school.
So I was just like okay art school is the way to learn to be a pop musician.
Here are three guitars and this one is a Stratocaster.
that was used a lot when in the band I was in called Trabant.
It kind of an electro-clash glam rock band.
And this is a Swedish band.
or German like kind of folk guitar.
It's almost ancient.
I I actually kind of fell in love with the idea of video art through the works of Gillian Waring and Arnold Meek.
And kind of was just there.
like I was in love with the form through them and I just wanted to do works like that and
then I just remember back then it was just like the editing part it was just so
complicated like to add the don't look
that I was just like kind of dumped it by and that's why I started making videos that were just you know
that you didn't have to edit.
The peace colonization is from 2003 and that is a piece where I am playing like an
Icelandic peasant and my friend Bindi Darlingson Lachter is playing a Danish merchant and the Danish merchant is just torturing the ice cream.
It's almost like in a kind of a,
you know,
almost a Benny Hill setting, sort of, and then in between there are shots of Copenhagen with like blood dripping over postcards with Copenhagen.
It was, it was made for which Stark Gallery was doing out in the countryside and the show was called Eastland Edanmark.
Before that, I had the experience that I was partying in Copenhagen visiting the front.
And you know, I was just totally drunk, and I'm totally asshole.
And I was like, we were going to vehicle, and the bouncers didn't want to let me in.
So I was just like, oh f*ck you!
And I kicked the door, and then the glass broke in the door.
And instead of, you know, feeling...
Something clicked in me when probably one shame hit like then I just started being like oh
The one day like took me like what are you doing and took me to the earth?
I like I was like this how you treat me?
Are you gonna treat me like you treated my forefathers?
and I and suddenly instead of
You know I became I certainly had this kind of post-colonial thinking that I was some kind of a victim.
They like, because I was Icelandic and they were Danish bouncers, but the Danish police put me into a prison cell for one night.
Do snare!
Do snare!
Do snare!
And remember, it was interesting that this kind of...
You know,
nation myth-making makes like the idea,
like Icelanders,
you know,
the reason for Icelandic kind of nationality, there's so much the myth-making that we will kind of, you know, colonial victims of Denmark.
But maybe this story is more complicated than that also and colonization is a piece which is Yeah,
I Yeah, I don't really know, you know, it's like it takes a very weird stand That's why I like it also still it.
I think it ages well Because it it's just like Because it's about,
I mean,
there was pain,
there was pain,
but also there's like,
has been this myth made about how horrible it was, which maybe it wasn't really sad to give it a voice read.
This is a piece I made in the 20th century.
It's actually rock my car from 1999 and it's my friends Gunhilter Serra and Ellen Helena And all awesome artists and they are,
this is like kind of posing as the three muses of alcohol, tobacco, and don't know.
I got very bad grades for this painting.
It's just like this is a very stupid painting.
And here is a piece by Johannes Atle Henrickson.
He just became sort of a big thing in New York, like, you know, 20 years ago.
And was just like, in New York, and had two calories, and was just like making these like, wow, wow, wow, pieces.
like, ah, this is weird, I'm just leaving.
And just went home to Iceland and started worrying as a sailor.
It's a man being totally smashed and f*cked up by this monkey.
And here he just explaining to me.
He's like, you the use a lot about this, the monkey on the shoulder.
Like, you know, you have to have your fix.
or the monkey will like eat your face and
but I kind of look at society as the monkey on my shoulder
like you know if I don't pay my bills and
and kind of check on my bank every month and pay taxes like so so eat in my face like the monkey on the shoulder.
Oh, why do I keep on hurting you?
Mercy was a piece which was originally made for a show in Belgium.
I recorded this video there and it was like this.
just this red velvet curtain in the background.
And so I, and this just had been a riff.
I'd been kind of playing again and again, this like this sort of some kind of ultimate country line.
Like, why do I keep on hurting?
Why do I keep on hearting you?
Why I keep on hearting you?
Just from the early start of my work, I...
I think in awe with country music I have this kind of complicated character of like the country singer who's like kind of always some kind
he kind of burns everything around him but he's always some kind of a victim.
And all these characters in the videos like in the video like Mercy like I often put on clothes and some kind of thing But,
as I said, I didn't go to acting school because I couldn't act.
I'm never a character in the videos.
Although I dress up as the cliche of something.
I always just like myself singing that song.
Why do I keep on hurting you?
Because also it's personal.
It's also about the asshole I am.
It's not just about assholes in country music.
And just...
self-reflectionary.
Also I remember as you know as like when I was trying to be a musician and I slowly became an artist from being a musician was that
And it was also like,
around the turn of the century,
and being here in Reike, we like you know, say what else was becoming so big, and it was all about being authentic.
And me from a theatrical family, like didn't feel this authenticity, like I still don't feel authentic, I'm just not an authentic.
And I guess that is authentic about me,
you know,
and there's always been this kind of pessoa feeling in me that I have no idea who I am,
and this was sort of a way to make music us kind of, you know, like, you know, I'm just going to...
of going to the cliche of this music and you know dress like it but not like I'm dressing as this carat.
And here's a lot of records actually,
and I mean I listen to music on all kinds of formats of course,
like any modern person would do, and when it's new music it's mostly of course just, you know, spotify or...
soundcloud or iTunes but then I listen to a lot of records also like you know it's
kind of all over the place this is like JD and AKJ Dilla welcome to Detroit
I learned so much about the approach to what artists,
through and through my godmother, Anga Lund, who was a singer of folk songs and leaders.
She lived in our basem*nt.
And she just had this really profound relationship with music.
And she was always talking about that a song is a song, it's not the performer performing the song.
And you can never...
And you should never...
put your personality into the song, you have to be the song.
And that's just a profound effect on me about kind of the essence of art as song.
And I kind of slowly discovered that there was more freedom in making music as performers.
making music as music,
because when you made the music as performance art then you were just totally free to do what you want and the form could be how any,
you and you know it's just not like,
okay I have to make a good song which will go on a record and maybe be performed in
It's just like the song can become a sculpture.
And de Delos Rios is like this kind of easy listening king But he's like very unlike Jim's last,
because Jim's last is the other reason listening came, but Jim's last put out 3,000 titles.
But Baldo de Rosrí has put out very few, and he was from Argentina, and it seems so much more sophisticated than his German.
James last.
It's good to kind of add them, like and Brack.
The masters of the symphonic Schmaltz music form.
But de Rogios, he just killed himself pretty young.
the kind of the pressure of the pressure of life gives the listening to the lot
one of a teenager I was like haha very ironically this is funny but it just
grows for me I don't stop listening to it it's just awesome awesome versions of classical music.
And this auto-joy, it just is better than, than Beethoven's version.
Because Beethoven doesn't have a 12 string acoustic guitar and drums.
It's pretty awesome.
We have to wait a while for the drums to come in, but they will come.
When me and Polly were in Venice, like drinking and smoking and doing the answer, paintings, we listened so much to this.
To become half-trunk and golden venetian light and just blasting it.
Awesome.
You So,
the piece at the end, which a fugue of paintings, they are basically a documentation of a I did it with a popular good person.
My collaborator and friend,
I did the Icelandic pavilion in Venice in 2009 and the piece was just that you,
because the pavilion was then in this palazzo by the Grand Canal and was just so gorgeous.
that the piece was just this kind of situational piece that you walked into this artist studio,
where the artist was constantly painting the model and smoking and drinking beer.
And that piece was also sort of like,
you know, living the cliche, this artist I wanted to be, like to be constantly drunk, constantly smoking, doing oil paintings.
And so we were there for half a year and it was one painting a day of Palle in his swim trunk.
And it was very much a piece,
very much kind of based on ideas from a feminist art from like Karolishnemon and Marnabramu, which was kind of about identity.
And was really like we were playing with the identity of just being dudes, being like men in that space.
And also being the objectified.
made.
It became very melancholic at the same time, like, know, and this feeling of like constantly drinking and smoking.
It was really awesome for the first week.
And then it became kind of disgusting.
And but we just, you know, we were following the rules from the, from the art goddess about what we had to do.
was very important for the bass and this ridiculous suffering and there was a lot of play on this kind of the macho painter.
The piece was kind of,
I remember because it was just after the crash and
It was sort of a hopeful thing that I was like hope I remember like and thinking
that There was kind of the end of masculinity was coming and this was sort of like a this was a portrait of like some
Pathetic masculinity in this kind of golden finish and light But sadly, it wasn't the end, you know, for the f*cking masculinity sh*t.
This is probably one of my favorite records,
like it's Billy Holiday's last album, Lady and Sutton, and Billy wanted to do like a fancy record.
And it's sort of,
I with all those kind of big band records that, like, you know, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra were doing at the time.
And went like full on with Rayles, and they created this.
crazy gorgeous one song of her like you know just close to her that like
singing in a in an heroine gaze with like sugary strings as just so gorgeous it's one of
these things like you know Always when it's like,
it's funny when always when it's like oh best to regret this records of all times It's always just like the Beach Boys or the Beatles,
but like this kind of stuff Always gets left behind, but these are like like a record like this.
It's just nuts I fall into my founding ways.
Once again, I fall into you.
Give me you.
My we're here.
I wanted to shoot a video in a place called the Rokbe Farm where I had stayed a few years earlier.
My Marc Ustor Anderson,
who is a curator now at the Rekev We were very much kind of together in art, and then he decided to become a curator.
He had befriended the people who own rugby.
It's one of the villas of the Gilded Age.
It built by the generals fighting with Washington, John Armstrong.
And think was started to be built in 1811, I think.
And it kind of the place a state intact how it was when it was built in 1870s.
The who own it, Ricky and Anya, they are just like characters from a novel or an adventure.
Like totally largest in life, brilliant characters.
And I just was always fantasizing about bringing a lot of friends there and living there like, you know, you wouldn't check off play.
And then this game is very banal idea,
like wouldn't be cool to make a video piece there with like musician friends of mine from the Reykjavík music scene.
And we would just be up in rugby for a week.
And and sort of create a piece which would be based on stuff I had been working on with Davy Thorionson,
a collaborator of mine,
we did a piece called The End,
which was like a piece which was a sister piece to The End paintings,
which was a piece we did in the Rocky Mountains where,
like, us and the visitors were playing a lot with the idea of music being spatial and this kind of...
that, like, that you would mix the music with walking in this space.
Like, every...
there would be video screens where...
the music was coming from and like you know if you go closer to the drums it's
more drums and if you go closer to the cello it's more cello it's sort of like
that the the viewer is sort of like you walk around the screens like you know
like how you lift knobs on a mixing desk And the orange red fire The music was a collaboration,
very much with Davy Toreonson,
who smokes,
is smoking a cigar and playing piano in the piece,
and then we based the music on on like a song we had made when we were in a residency with
Austis Siv Gunnarstötter and who was a really great performance artist.
She made many, many performances which were always this kind of mysterious emotional, this mysterious emotional sentences.
And this song was just like, I made a collage of like loads of sentences from her work.
It's like, some sentences are from this, from one video work, another sentence is from performance he did, and another from a text he wrote.
So like, it was just like me, like I had written.
And then I was just thinking of all of words from her work that just kind of came together as a collage.
So the piece is really, it's like loaded with collaboration with a lot of people.
When we showed it here in Reykjavik, a critic I really admire very much called Dr.
Gunny.
He it that he was like, he was not, he was just like, I don't care, I don't get the fuss about this piece.
It's just like, you know, Rocky and, you know, some musician friends being very drunk playing pretty sloppy country.
And that's basically what it was, but something happened when we were doing it, which kind of unexplainable.
And it became, it became this mega popular piece.
It's like, it's a piece, you like as a visual artist.
Like you don't never intend to make pieces that become like just popular popular with people like with people like everybody likes it
it's like and It's it's really fun to have done one piece like that But you know in my works,
I'm not aiming for to to be a It's really awesome to have done one,
I This is actually a collage that Masha Alokhina of puss* Riot made when she was here in the
studio working on a show with me and Ingeberg and Tor de Kirch,
which was the first overview of puss* Riot's work in Russia,
called development terrorism, and this is just a collage of like the power in Russia, how they reacted to their insanely gorgeous performance.
you know,
Sugalov, the head of the Communist Party, saying national symbols are not to be joked with, I'd take a good belt and whip them.
Mende Diof saying, I am sick of what they have done and their looks.
the hysteria that accompanies everything that has happened and put in saying like
oh we gave them two years I have nothing to do with it yeah so the the walls here
are all from basically it's the it's from when I made the work terrible terrible and they were it's like Like,
it's a replica of like how the tragic of gallery in Moscow where I want the terrible kills his son,
has been shown for a hundred and forty years.
And this is like how it looked in 1913.
It's like about the color that was in 1913.
And it's just still this weird.
Orange from 1913.
So this painting by Iliaripin of Ivan the Terrible killing his son,
I remember when my parents went to the Soviet Union On a trip,
like when I was a kid, they were like away for a month, like going on a cultural visit to the Soviet Union.
And I came back and my mom was just,
you know, in Moscow there is a painting that is the most powerful painting in the world.
somebody tried to kill it,
and she's describing the painting of the horror and agony of Ivan the Terrible in the moment after he has killed his son.
And I think that description of that painting, it really, you know, we were talking earlier about like why I went into visual art.
I that was really something that went a lot in me.
And painting has always stayed with me as this kind of...
Ultimate, kind of almost like artwork that has this kind of mystical powers.
And it's also to look at it today because it's made by Ilya Repin, who's Ukrainian, and it's about the essence of the Russian Empire.
that it just kills the young, and this constantly kills the future.
And it has twice been attacked by Russian nationalists.
Yeah, I was always blown away by this fact that a man
attacked it in 1913 with a knife crying, blood, too much blood, too much blood.
And then, it was attacked again.
And then another kind of nationalist took our museum pole and just like threw it onto
the painting and managed to break the glass and damage the painting again.
But in both instances, they did not manage to damage like the insanely painful eyes of Ivan Terrible.
But these two attacks are, there is something very sinister about them.
And it's like this kind of...
I often think about this line, which is kind of sweet from Dean Martin's song, what's it called?
Nobody else loves you.
And this line where he thinks like, the world still is the same.
You'll never change it.
It's just like...
And it's something about this, like, it's still the f*cking same.
It's just, you know, and we always go down to this, like, kind of dark nationalistic paths.
Here's the oil colors, the heart of the artist's studio.
and the fine turpentine and like it's just like I think this is just the best
thing of being an artist the smell of turpentine And this is a painting in a strange stage,
it's a self-portrait with George Jones kind of,
and it's me trying to kind of get closer to the white,
that is George Jones, and And he's sort of the kind of king of kind of the self-inflicted male sacrificial lump.
He's drinking beer, and here's the text to...
to his beginning of a song, which called Take Me.
And it's just like here, Take Me, Take Me To Your Darkest Room, Close Every Window, and Bolt Every Door.
hardcore So no tomorrow is a piece I made with the market partner daughter and Bryce Tessner.
And it was originally made for the Icelandic dance company here.
And by Artna Omerstowter.
And she's the director of the dance company and she's really a brilliant dancer and choreographer and an old friend of mine.
And asked if I was interested in doing a dance piece.
And then just this idea of doing a ballet.
I found it very appealing,
and so I contacted Margaret Biernadot, who is a brilliant choreographer and a very good friend, and a writer and visual artist, and then...
Bryce Dessner,
who I worked with on many other occasions,
and first worked with him when we did the piece A Lot of Sorrow with his band,
The And so the idea was that to make a kind of ballet opus.
which were like, kind of taking the Stockhausen's idea of spatial music into the rhythm of dance.
And we worked on it.
intensely with the ensemble of the Icelandic dance company and to and Bryce
wrote music that that basically can only be played by dancers because it has
these insane counting things and every movement the dancers do is musical so So it's basically movement is not only movement,
movement is musical,
so like we do like this,
it changes the sound of the guitar and there was always this sense that,
you know,
we made it for the theatre,
first in the States and to have, but I always had this urge to turn it into a film and to basically because...
to almost kind of capture better this spatial aspect of the instruments and the dancers.
And we managed to record it last year.
And it's almost like...
What it was all it was supposed to be.
It's a strange piece.
It's just like...
It's kind of, it deals so much with like this kind of idea of like, of nothingness almost.
It's just like,
they are just moving in this kind of ideal song and dance space and the space is very much kind of like in the old song and dance movies and they are in the kind
classic rock-and-roll and performance outfit of jeans and t-shirts, and it's a pretty mysterious piece.
And I'm very collaborative piece,
because it's very much about,
you know,
Maca's art and Bryce and myself,
and then also about, you know, the collaboration with the dancers, because they basically worked on this piece for years before we filmed it.
So it's very...
It's a very, very kind of, yeah, there's a lot of heart in it.
There's a huge melancholy in trying to do a piece that addresses nothing in a time where everything is so loaded and tense.
It's just, you know, like everything is war and then us in times of war, like it's just time for song and dance.
And here I've got quite a few records by Latte and Latte is kind of the Iceland's favorite
comedian and a total childhood hero of mine.
And like,
you know,
like this cover,
this record is called Plunkur-Arta,
which means Plunkur-Arta is lump,
yeah, like a huge lump, it's like, yeah, it's sort of, but it's also like, it can also be, it can also be conceptual, you know, like...
This idea is quite a long course, you to to realize, you know, to think about the breadth of transphobia and the message.
Poland is quite a longer, you know, it's like So here you hear latte B I think an artist role in society is completely ambiguous.
Art is good.
for people, and it's also really bad for people.
I artists, like the stuff that dreams are made of, and it's also the stuff that, like, the Nazis were romantic artists.
So it's just...
It's art is the most glorious thing, and also the most scariest thing that humans are.
create.
