No Soul For Sale

By Alex Gartenfeld

Why sell anything when the economy's not buying? From July 24–28, the X Initiative hosts "No Soul for Sale," a gathering of 38 not-for-profit centers, alternative institutions, artists' collectives and independent enterprises who get free, undivided space to devise an installation of their choosing. The spaces come from as far and in as many forms as Trinidad's Studio Film Club, Peter Doig and Che Lovelace's blog and Caribbean film screening series, and Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund, an art production organization based between New York and Tel Aviv. In Interview's commitment to No Soul For Sale, we've focused on three spaces of decresing distance form our fair city—Kling&Bang, an artist space in Reyjavik; Vox Populi, an elected board of artists; and Dispatch, a commercial space run out of a small artist storefront on the Lower East Side. It's an anthropological survey of spaces with different conditions and mindsets, but all of whom have managed to preserve their souls.

Jason Rhoades, Paul McCarthy & Kling & Bang, 2004. Photo courtesy Kling & Bang Gallery and the artists.

Kling&Bang isn't afraid to share over-sized sheep-soap butt plugs with little girls, in its installation of work by Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy called Sheep Plug. They've reconstructed a broken-down bohemin bar in the middle of Frieze; at the X Initiative they're rigging their space like VJs. They do it all in a constantly changing space (by rent, not choice) and in an infamous economic climate, but with a rising reputation, including a show at the Pompidou. Mixing up the role of artist and curator is a point of both national and international heritage; as participant—and both artist and curator herself—Hekla Dogg Jonsdottir explains, "There's no rules to be Icelandic."

ALEX GARTENFELD: How many artists do you have involved in the installation at X Initiative?

HEKLA DOGG JONSDOTTIR: It must be at least 30.

AG: Are they all Icelandic?

HDJ: They are mostly Icelandic but there are also people who may have worked with the gallery at some point. There's no rules to be Icelandic.

AG: How did you pick who was going to be involved?

HDJ: Mostly some people that have either showed at the gallery—the gallery has been open six years so there have been a lot people. It's mostly the younger generation but not only those.

AG: How did you become involved with the X Initiative?

HDJ: They invited us. They actually invited us after our crazy project for Frieze.

AG: Your bar reconstruction project?

HDJ: Yes. We were offered to take part in Frieze we got some money from them, although not an awful lot. But we are used to have bigger ideas than budget. We took a bar that was being torn down while we were trying to figure out what to do. At the same time, we took the bar and made it into a platform for artists. People came to London and had performances and concerts and things like that.

AG: The bar doesn't exist anymore, does it?

HDJ: Well it does exist, although it's not bar now. They tore it down and we cleaned up everything. The bar was the signifier of us in some way. It was a bar that a lot of the cultural people, the underground and art-culture attended.

AG: Why were they going to tear it down?

HDJ: Because they were wanted to build some shopping something-very typical. Before the crisis basically when everything was being ripped down.

AG: So after the economic change in Iceland there's probably no shopping at all...

HDJ: No, now there's not shopping at all. It's ugly. It was kind of interesting, because we had been middling ourselves. We had been going from one place to another as a gallery; we never have an actual place and we can only go to cheaper places that somebody is supposed to tear down in two years or three years.

AG: Have you noticed that the economy has affected the way your space runs?

HDJ: I can't say that, because we have been running it so low budget the whole time.

AG: You fly under the radar.

Sirra Sigrun Sigurdardottir, From the exhibition: Uncertainty Principle, 2008. Photo courtesy Kling & Bang and the artist

HDJ: We are used to the troubles. They were not throwing a lot of money at this gallery when everything was flying high here.

AG: Iceland was reputed to have a big state-sponsored art infrastructure.

HDJ: Not that big, no. Some people talk of it as being big, but I wouldn't say that. We get a small amount of sponsorship, but even with that we can't pay our rent. It hasn't been easy to get sponsors for the gallery.

AG: Are you going to be installing another kind of bar or an adaptation of the bar at the X Initiative?

HDJ: No, we are not going to do it. It was too expensive to do, and short notice. It's quite elaborate to run a functioning bar, with a sink and beer. It's really functioning when it's up and in London it was like you had walked into Iceland. And people would wait in line outside Frieze at 11 in the morning; they would come to the bar and stay there for four hours. I couldn't believe it, drinking beer! It was so interesting. People didn't even get in sometimes.

AG: London loves beer.

HDJ: Yes, the bar was really popular. It was crazy. But this time, we have collected video works by artists.

AG: Why video?

HDJ: It's for transportation. It's also interesting, because a lot of the people we work with, work with video.

AG: How are you organizing it?

HDJ: We are going to do it like if you were DJing the videos.

AG: So you get to control it, or the participants in the space control it?

HDJ: We control it ourselves. We have a full list of songs and maybe you remix two together. Or the sound might get remixed.

AG: So how did you start in the space six years ago?

HDJ: We were ten people and we all paid from our own pocket, the rent. We were interested in working closely with the artists, to make it easier for them to install. It became kind of a project base. Later on we had artist like Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy. They were showing in Iceland and I was working on that show and I was their mediator for that show. Then they wanted to do something forhte gallery too. We ended up producing "Three Tons." There were like 200 big soap things. Big ones, like two-foot-high butt plugs.

AG: Oh so like the Paul McCarthy chocolate plugs, but in soap.

HDJ: Exactly. We started producing that with them, it probably took three months. I had some volunteers, some students, volunteering in a sheep soap factory. After that, when you have famous people like that and are working closely with them on the projects, we had more opportunities. We ended up going to Paris to the Pompidou.

AG: How many people was it when you started?

HDJ: Ten.

AG: How did you all meet or come together?

HDJ: It was all through Erling T.V. Klingenberg. He found the space and called people up, who where willing to be involved.

AG: How is the space now?

HDJ: We moved from that space and moved downstairs. That was a really nice space on a shopping street. But we lost that space and it's a quite big space that we're in now.

AG: Is there anything you're looking forward to when you come to New York? Anything seeing or in terms of the project?

HDJ: I'm curious how it's going to be. I don't know how it's organized the whole thing and what we have to work with.

AG: Are there any other spaces in Reykjavik that compare to yours or you have a relationship with?

HDJ: There are often quite many artist-run spaces that open up, but often on a different level. They might be more of a space and we are more of a project space—we work on so many projects but at the same time we also host shows in the gallery. I don't think there is anything that compares completely.