Frode Markhus (Norway)

http://piratenpad.de/p/solanhesselberg (you can also use this link for comments and/or corrections if you like. Choose a colour)

Artz - an online mgzne

Jungle Fever – the legacy, disappearance and rediscovery of a restless soul (Part I of IV)

By Frode Markhus

(author of 'Asger Jorn. Banal? Really? 'Mallarmé. Surreal? Really?' and Bas Jan Ader. Conceptualist? Really?')

I was asked by my editor to do a piece on the enigmatic character Solan Hesselberg. A standard task I assumed. Little did I know about him, and my quest for answers indeed proved to take me into unknown and very strange territories. The standard biography proved to be puzzling enough in itself, but my continued mission had plenty of new surprises in store. What follows is an attempt to unravel the myth of a legend. Solan Hesselberg was widely believed to be disappeared and dead. He's not. This is my story as it unfolds.

Solan Hesselberg (born 1922) is an artist and poet born and raised in a small Norwegian harbour village named Stavgersand. His family was, in conventinal judgement, destitute and poor, and generally uneducated in terms of academic achievements.

As a toddler Solan was normal in many respects, raised by a single mother, two brothers, one sister, all older than him. His father, Reodor Kilhavn, jumped ship before he was born, and the father of his older siblings was out of the picture as well by the time Solan came in to the world. This never troubled young Solan, as he saw it he had two fathers and two mothers, more than enough to learn the ropes of life. And so he did, cherry-picking identity traits from his older siblings and his mother like shopping about at the psychological bazar. Having a different father than the rest of the lot gave him a sense of observing someone elses family, as a kind of anthropologist gradually coming to know his assigned tribe. And a tribe to behold it certainly was.

His mother, Annlaug (1894-1988), was the family's most enthralling storyteller, old school of sorts. Where she was from, Pratmykjdalen, there was a long and proud oral tradition, which she tried to pass on to her young ones. Her favourite subject was stories about derelicts and delinquents, drunkards and dabblers, and their skewed philosophy of life. Her children would be all ears when she habitually were to share the anecdotes, legends and poetic recitations of these outcast of mandated living.

It was through her he developed his love for the stranger poetics of life. Rejecting the local ideal of the unassuming and hardworking man, he would gravitate towards the peculiarities that fits into the nooks and crannys of things, the dirt wedged inbetween the behavioural pieces of the puzzle.

His brother, Rune (1917-1999), known to be the family jester, had an uncanny aptitude of deflating any family crisis by making a charade of the whole thing. For example were the Hesselbergs to enter dire economical troubles, he would turn it into a kind of domestic Dickens-gone-one-man-vaudevillan show, making the whole family at least be happy they were on the VIP list.

Anyone got beaten, either by fist or system, he would put on his too tight suit and set up his Office of Intraexternal Affairs. All questions came in the form of a chinese style riddle, whereby its due answers were delivered in elegiac prose with a slice of Kafka, making everybody feel as if fictionalized in Runes surreal take on the machinations of an unforgiving society.

And in the instances of their mother's occasional mental breakdowns, it prompted Runes slapstick Madame Bovaryan impersonation, wig and dress and all, refusing to leave bed, projecting wild depictions of a society not fit for her. It's hard to convince yourself you're the one insane in these circumstances. All this made Annlaug feel anchored, though not in solid bedrock, and the rest feel that lunacy wasn't a cop-out at all, rather a salvage to the complexities of life. As an early precursor to Charlie Sheens claim that he isn't 'bi-polar', he's 'bi-winning, Annlaug kept afloat.

His brother Arvid (1915-1980) was an avid record collector, introducing young Solan to the world of music. He used to DJ at a local bar, Pøbben, many years before any such concept as a DJ was conceived. Every Saturday he would host a night dubbed 'Kumbaya'. The name came from an African-American spiritual song from the 30's and can be loosely translated 'come by here'. Arvid never had much spiritual inclinations, he choose the name out of phonetic qualities, as well as it being a sort of pun on, and invitation, to the local 'bajas'. A 'bajas' in Stavgersand was dialect for a cocky-looking-for-trouble type of person. Arvid saw great potential in these rowdy guys, rather than trouble. An asset, fuel, antidote to the status quo of prescribed behaviour.

Through his girlfriends missionary father, a Nordic offspring of the music anthropologist John Lomax' iniative, he got hold of music from all corners of Norway, as well as borrowing records from the international sailors harbouring in Stavgersand. Inspired by the British radio host Ray Newby he was also a MC, inbetween records sharing small snippets of anthropological facts about the villages, counties and countries the recordings were to be from.

The nights Arvid spun his records had a tendency to go from disiplined linedance, as improvised as it might was, into some freak Dionysian free style folk dance. Story has it Arvids unveiling of Pacific polyphonic rhythms, African chants, Sami joik etc to the locals also set in motion a hitherto unseen demand for psychedelic drugs, something not all unsupported by narcotic records from local archives. The sailors that supplied him with all this exotic music often had mind-expanding supplements to go with it. Peyote from Mexico and Iboga from Amazonas were poisons of choice, untill some local farmer, Ronald Felgen, introduced the homegrown Flein mushroom, as potent as anything. If the partys had been vivid enough up to this point, it was about to absolutely go off its hinges now. The stuff had literally been under everybody's noses all the time. The town was surrounded by farmland, and Flein grows on cowshit.

Kumbaya was melting. Come by here indeed.

Anne Gro (1912-1970), his sister, was the deep philosopher in the family. All of them read a lot, mostly way off canon though, but Anne Gro set out to get the very essence of, particularly, Western thought. In her quest for the Final Conclusion, she got all messed up and ended up in a destination she couldn't find a way to departure from. Once she came upon Kierkegaard and related existentialists, she embraced the pure biblical jest of it all, and jeez did religion have clearer answers than she had ever encountered in philosophy. Kierkegaards intentions sullied at whim, the endlessly fruitful doubt/faith nexus squandered in a dive into biblical doxa, as if it ever was one. She started the local affiliate of a Jehovas Witness reading group, soon to attract local devotees of other Christian congregations. Traditionally the Christian, mostly Protestant, congregations in Stavgersand was known to be, well, traditional. Pietist preachers spewing visions of hell for the unworthy and promising a life of unfulfillment for the devoted rest. Jehovas Witness is all this on crack, but this particular witness had a godgiven knack for salesmanship. Inspired by her familys various performative talents, she would construct her very own way of conveying the word of God, totally emulating the various apostels as she told their gospels. Intimate with the lure of existential philosophy and the doubt and angst that comes with it, she would go for the full entertainment factor and conflate the congregates lust for spiritual fulfillment with their craving for sheer shindig. Gospel style preaching and Jehovas Witnesses are two components that traditionally don't go too well together, especially in these days, especially in Stavgersand, but that mattered little to Anne Gro, as she went all prophetic immersive on the impressionable audience, thirsting for spiritual kicks.

The town needed to be emancipated from their hollow existence, whether through comedic, corporeal or spiritual means, and the Hesselbergs were there to pour up.

Follow us next week for part 2 of this article, as we try to plow deeper into the story and legacy of the man himself.

Jungle Fever – the legacy, disappearance and rediscovery of a restless soul (Part II of IV) comes here

Jungle Fever – the legacy, disappearance and rediscovery of a restless soul (Part III of IV)

As I wrote in part 2, Solan was nowhere to be found, and literally forgotten. Only anecdotal flotsam and jetsam floating around on the fringes of art history. Untill now. Two days after part 2 of this article series was published I got contacted. Solan Hesselberg came upon our story on him on our Artz site, and he’s not all pleased about it. Not at all. It all starts off rather bumpy with an email, reading, in telegraph style:

GO TO HELL BASTARD--STOP--REFUSE ATTENTION--STOP--NEVER ASKED FOR IT--STOP--AGAINST ALL DECENCY MIX ARTIST AGAINST HIS WILL IN YOUR PUBLICITY--STOP--I WANT PUBLIC CONFIRMATION NOT TO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN YOUR RIDICULOUS GAME.

I’m absolutely shocked. And totally excited. Why me? Why now? At the age of 90, after being missing for 55 years he’s suddenly responding to an article in a virtually unknown online art magazine. Where the hell has he been and why has he had the world believe he was dead? And why throw out this bait of reply, even if he literally tells me to go stuff it? It must mean he’s ready to speak at some level. So many questions.

After endless prodding by email to no awail I start to suspect it was all a prank. How green can a poor journalist be. I mean, talk about wishful thinking. But no. Or yes. He proves to be real and alive all right.

After a week being anxiously at loss as how to proceed with the development of the story, I get a new email:

Ok. You’ll get your interview. On one condition: stop try to pamper an old mans vanity. I know you were lavishing me with all this crap in your endless emails to get me on the hook for journalistic reasons, but from now on it will get us nowhere. You don’t know me. At all.

S. Hesselberg

Interview with Solan Hesselberg

FM: First of all: where the hell have you been? You haven’t been heard of since 1957.

SH: I never disappeared you know.

FM: What do you mean?

SH: You disappeared. I made you disappear. Like in a cheap card trick.

FM: But life is no card trick.

SH: Oh?

FM: No but seriously what happened?

SH: All kinds of stuff happened, happens, will happen, happenstance riverdance Amazonaz river is.

FM: Is this how you will conduct this interview? In enigmatical nonsense?

SH: No.

FM: Ok.

SH: Ok.

FM: Ok then, what and why and where?

SH:

FM: Spontaneity is clearly important in your work. Can you tell us about how to balance control and freedom in the face of the material you work with?

SH: First of all I don’t acknowledge that ‘control and freedom’ are necessarily adversaries. Or the idea that ‘with freedom comes great responsibility’. I would rather say that with responsibility comes great freedom.

FM: Cobra was a movement that wanted change in society, and where the association between life and creativity was the antithesis of the capitalist machinery. Is your work a reaction and rebellion - and can you say something about the function you want them to have?

SH:

FM: In an early interview, you mentioned the death anxiety as a kind of impetus. Anxiety is said to be the source of the development of German Expressionism, but also for the Cobra and its successors. Hal Foster also mentioned recently that the anxiety and pressure from the environment as in postwar Europe, may be the source of the animal in man emerge. What do you think about this?

SH:

FM: The requirement to be innovative can be experienced as being something of a trap for artists. What do you think about the relationship between recycling style set against art's potential to act critically and comment on the perililous questions of his own time?

SH:

FM: How would you describe your way of working, and the background for this?

SH:

FM: In several of your works we are given the impression that you look at the immediate contact between the body and painting as important. For example, you have described the "body" as naive and vulgar. Can you elaborate on this?

SH:

FM: You also once said something about that painting has lost his memory, and no longer belong to "the hierarchy of representational images," and also you have tried to look at painting from a zombies perspective and that it has rounded a kind of zero, and reborn as direct and unaffected.

SH:

FM: Will you agree that your work is seen as expressive at all? You have said that it is important for you to work spontaneously and directly with the material. But you have also on earlier occasions stressed the impressionistic aspect of your work.

SH:

FM: You have previously akined your work to the idea of the 'banal'. Is that a criticism or aggression in what you do? Here I think particularly in the Cobras rage against the commercial and the pursuit of the grotesque as an anti form.

SH:

etc etc

Abstract for the rest of my thesis

The thesis is written as a 4 part article series.

For now I have pretty much the 1st part/chapter ready and are presently working on the 3rd, which is when he make contact and I finally convince him to do an interview.

In part 2 of the article I’ll try to plow deeper into the story and legacy of Solan , beginning something like this:

Solan Hesselberg disappeared in the jungle of Borneo in 1957 in his quest to find a tribe rumoured to make expressionistic paintings for shamanistic purposes. This was something they apparantly had been doing for many generations, way foreshadowing any such movements in the Western world. Solan has never been heard from or seen again.

An elaboration on this mission as well as on his body of works here. I will ’give’ my own works over to him, setting them back in time, and basically write ’objectively’ in 3rd person about my own works.

The chosen method, or style, constitutes my tools to loosely portray myself and my interests, although in a partially hyperboled way. The family biography are basically based on my own family, of course fictionalised the hell out of. But still, my mom loves to talk and talk and talk, Rune is the funny guy, Arvid introduced me to the world of music, Anne Gro had her quest for final answers lead her into Jehovas Witnesses, but was also my companion in questioning the world in my teens. I do have the feeling I have been picking up on traits of all of them, so that part is true enough. In many ways it will be a autobiography by proxy, or a sort of metabiography. As cranked up as it might be.

I will also build on the mini biographies from the 1st chapter, as it is now it is more like preliminary vessels for expansions. These expansions might find their right place in the other chapters instead of the 1st.

For the 3rd chapter I have an early and hasty sketch of a few interview questions, some answered already. Here I will try to negotiate my conflicting doubts, interests and beliefs though staged proxys. The works that will be presented and discussed in the 2nd chapter will serve as a backdrop for this. The questions will not be in this order eventually, it’s more like a box to pick from and rearrange and follow up on. Also of course there will be questions about his travels and whereabouts, as well as his reasons for going under the radar. And this portion is also where I will try to draw out the initial density of the 1st chapter into more linguistic and narrative fluid matter. The 2nd chapter will make a better flow as well, and the interview maybe should be in a more haggard fashion… Also some of the references in the interview are leaning on things that will be outlined in the preceeding chapter… If this sounds confusing I can assure you I know what you mean. The 4th chapter will be an epilogue.