A SAILING SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION IN CONCRETE
BY SCULPTOR MARIT BENTHE NORHEIM
THE PROJECT / MY SHIP IS LOADED WITH
My ship is loaded with ......
Each sculpture has its own idendity and narrative, each LIfe-boats character and its interior will relate to this. The audience in the towns that the boats will be docking, will be able to go on board and experience the installations within the sculptures
Life-boats overriding theme will be woman in the three phases of life. The titles are:
My ship is loades with Longing
- the young one, about to go out into the world
She lies on her side with the hip as cabin and with a treasure chest inside the body.
The treasure chest, which is decorated with beads and prisms, has an opening at the top, so that the people we encounter on the journey get the opportunity of putting personal letters about dreams, hopes and longings in the chest. These could be texts that they write during their encounter with the sculpture, or which they have already written.
The chest is sealed and will never be opened.
The letter which shall invite participation:
”In the chest you can put love letters, poems, etc. that you might have written and perhaps don’t dare to send or show to anyone, but which you wouldn’t want to discard. Texts about your dreams and longings can also be written right here on the spot, put into the chest and mixed with other people’s hopes and longings. The chest will sail into the unknown and collect more writings from many places. It is sealed and will never be opened.
What is so open that it can be displayed and what is so intimate that one wants to keep it to oneself? By placing one’s writings in the chest, one doesn’t need to be answerable to anyone or to expose oneself.
Where is the threshold of modesty for the written word in our mobile and Internet-communicating age?
Many people no longer write letters. All communication happens fast. One does not wait with longing for an answer for days, weeks, months.
The generation over the age of 30 wrote love letters and handwritten poems, which one would keep in a safe place, if one didn’t dare to send them by mail. If you sent them anyway and the answers came, these letters were read several times and kept well hidden. Many people have taken care of such precious writings for a lifetime.
I work physically with my art. The digital is for me a tool, which is necessary for convenient communication, but not for innermost thoughts. Will the hand-written become more private than that which one writes and stores on the computer? Is the personal computer or mobile today’s private/secret treasure chest?
Marit Benthe Norheim
Her eyes are made by glassmaker Peter Kuchinke.
Composer Geir Johnson about the music of Longing
In ”Longing” the listener will encounter music that comes from many different corners of the world, traditional music that has the sea as the common theme. The sea has always occupied man in the art, and this is just a small section of the story, from a Laestadian hymn in Finnish to gospel, to Thai music of the sea each depicting the relationship in their own way - as well as from several other countries.
My ship is loaded with Longing
The chest for the inside of My ship is loaded with Longing is finished and has already collected the first letters
My ship is loaded with Life
- She floats on her back – with the pregnant belly as cabin
During the journeys, children and young people will draw self-portraits directly onto the walls and ceiling inside the abdomen. Earlier in the process, I thought that self-portraits should be modeled in ceramics, but when I stood inside the sculpture while she lay in the water rocking gently from side to side, it became clear to me that the children should be given the opportunity of feeling and touching her inside. They’ll draw their self-portraits directly inside her, so that it becomes a far more ’hands on’ participating project for them. If the drawings, at some point in time, disappear/fade completely, then other children can draw their self-portraits on top of the faded ones.
In this way, the sculpture also contains a dynamic and changeable aspect - new children, new possibilities in the future - all the time! (The ships will be able to sail for a hundred years or more!)
In working with the involvement of children and young people in my projects, it’s important to me that they not merely ”do”, but are made conscious of the creative process - to think for one self and find one’s own expression - and to stand by it.
Here schools and institutions can participate in a project, which is about understanding the importance of the self-portrait on many levels. Those who wish to join in can all work with the self-portrait as a genre – starting with how self-portraiture is used in all genres of art, both in the visual arts, literature, music and dance and in therapy with ideas on how this can be used in teaching.
This can, in time, be made big or small according to how many resources they’ll want to spend on it. It can lead to theater, dance, poetry, stories, etc., which they can bring to the sculpture ship at the port - as well as drawings on paper.
After many journeys, the walls will be covered by all the self-portraits - just like the ancient cave paintings and the saturated adornment of the medieval churches.
I’m hoping for representation of a diversity of nations and cultures.
Her eyes are made by glassmaker Peter Kuchinke.
Composer Geir Johnson about the music of Life
In ”Life” I have tried to recreate a music that the unborn child might register while still being in the womb - unknown noises can most likely he heard or felt there, from the outside. The unknown world may seem alluring, while another portion may seem more challenging – like life itself, eventually manifests itself for most of us.
My ship is loaded with Life, testsailing october 2015
My ship is loaded with Memories
- the old
She floats on the stomach with many figureheads on her back, so they can keep a look-out in all directions.
The 19 figureheads are symbolic portraits of living women over the age of 70 who have this in common that they come from different cultures and have had to relate to cultures other than their own for various reasons - work, love or as refugees.
In this way their stories live on for future generations.
”As a classical symbolic expression, the figureheads represent the ship’s protector. Thus the third Life-boat gets 19 female protectors. Apart from taking care of the ship, the female figureheads - on the strength of their diversity - also act as protectors against narrow mindedness, oppression and intolerance. They do not represent different nations; rather they are ambassadors for the trans-national as well as cultural values across national borders.”
Ann-Dorte Christensen
It will be possible to listen to interviews with the women, made by journalist Marianne Knudsen and read more interviews by Ann-Dorte Christensen, sociology professor at Aalborg University, in a book that will be published in October 2016.
There is an anonymous figurehead on the foot of the ship, the only one who looks back, and which has to be newly created by the various places we sail to. She doesn’t have a fixed profile or a face. Each location or port can come up with a new story about who she is which can be delivered in writing, in sound, dance or movement. The only criterion is that she must be over the age of 70. The sculpture can function as a paper doll with a new face and new clothes every time she gets a new female identity. She is no-one and everyone, the one we are, or will be, our mother or grandmother; a woman whom we admire from any culture, from anywhere, and to and from all ages - from all or nowhere.
A couple of hands are molded as a relief on the interior by writer and intern on the project, Yaser Yadkouri, as a final salute to Dorte Larsen, who was a big part of the Life-boats vision.
Also, inside, there are two figures each standing on their own rib that holds the ship’s head. These are portraits of - and in memory of - Inger and Ole Davidsen, who were the important supporting players of the Life-boats project from when they started the Private Foundation Life-boats (DSILB) and Support Association for Life-boats in 2012 and until they died in Greenland in August, 2014. They are, therefore, now a natural part of the supporting structure inside My ship is loaded with memories.
Her eyes are made by glassmaker Peter Kuchinke
Composer Geir Johnson about the music of Memories
In ”Memories”, I have let the voices of the women who are models for the sculptures, to have their say through their own words, while they give glimpses of what has shaped them through life.
Testsailing My ship is loaded with Memories, May 2016
Figureheads in full scale
Two of the finished figureheads in full scale
Three-dimensional sculptures of the figureheads