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Thursday
We got a cheap flight to Torp, the new airport at Sandefjord. The plane landed and then turned around on the runway and taxied the wrong way to the terminal. There was some dirty snow on the ground. We picked up our bags okay but got stopped at Customs. They wanted Simon first, but when they found out we were travelling together they wanted me too. I've never been searched before. They unpacked everything and scrutinised all of my belongings with an insane attention to detail. I had brought tea and biscuits for my friends which were opened and examined. The officers tried to take apart my keyring, assuming it to be filled with drugs. They held up my lip balm and asked me what it was. I felt as though I was explaining the world to aliens. They separated us and questioned Simon in a cell-like room. They wanted to know if we were carrying narcotics. The woman questioning me was healthy, blonde and fresh-faced. She couldn't have been older than 21. She said: "Do you take drugs?" Then: "Have you ever taken drugs?" I tried to keep my gaze steady and calm, tried to look dumb and innocent. Bottles and bottles of confiscated home-brewed hooch sat on a shelf in the room. A man came in and signed a form for them. There was a lot of waiting around. I was worried that we would miss the bus into town, it's a two-hour ride into central Oslo and it was already late. If we missed our bus we would be stranded at the airport until the morning. Simon came out of the room, the Customs officers disappeared. No one said that we could go, but we packed away our stuff and got out of there. It shook me up. Friday -3 this morning. We took the tram down to the Astrup-Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Snow started to fall. We saw an exhibition by Jane Cardiff and George Bures Miller. After we bought our tickets we were just in time to catch a performance of Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet. It's a reworking of Spem in Alium which was written by Thomas Tallis in 1575. Cardiff recorded each member of a 40-strong choir and played the pieces back on 40 separate speakers. A group of us sat in a big, empty, grey room and listened. The snow came down outside. We looked like the last forgotten people in the world. I started crying and I couldn't stop. January is shit. The beauty of the music and the quietness of the people listening gently...it felt totally comforting, like someone whispering "Yes, go on, just keep going." It was, as they say, a religious experience. The rest of Cardiff and Miller's show was excellent too, crazy installations and soundscapes, weird disjointed videos. I read in the programme that it might be coming to London later this year. Please, you must go if it is. In the meantime I'm ordering you to go to the Whitechapel Gallery and ask to do Cardiff's walk, The Missing Voice. You won't regret it. Have a look at her website too. Saturday The point of this visit was to go cross-country skiing with our Norwegian friends. I have never been on a pair of skis and the idea of Simon whizzing through the snow was too funny to ignore. But...the snow turned to ice, it was grey and drizzly today and there was a good chance that we novices would break our necks if we went skiing. Instead we visited Oslo's charity shops and marvelled at the weird things on display. Want second-hand salopettes? Vintage ski-jumping stretchy all-in-ones? A wardrobe full of matching fur coats and hats? Beautifully tailored 1950s suits? Hokey traditional Norwegian knitwear? Knickerbockers and matching cagoules? Hand-painted folk art? It was all there. In the evening our friends B and T cooked us a gigantic meal that culminated in a Norwegian pud called The Best Cake in the World, which has a topping made of egg yolk. B and T live in a house that has a big garden and a veranda that catches the sun, plus many cacti. Our friends Bd, J-H and R were there too. It was a happy evening eating and talking and making stupid jokes. They made us feel so welcome. Sunday B took us to Emanuel Vigeland's Mausoleum. His brother Gustav is one of Oslo's most celebrated artists. In 1921 the city authorities built him a museum where he lived and produced the statues that now populate Vigeland Park - Norway's number one tourist attraction. Emanuel was also an artist. He wanted his own museum too, so he built a large brick building in the suburb of Slemdal with the intention of living and working there. Things didn't go to plan, however, and it was decided that the building should become his mausoleum. The windows were bricked up and Emanuel covered the interior with dark frescoes. You creep through a tiny door. The mausoleum is barely lit, the idea is that more and more images come into focus as your eyes get accustomed to the dark. Where Gustav's work embraced the cycle of life, Emanuel's mausoleum is death solidified. Scratched and painted into the walls are piles of babies, worn-out women, skeletons fucking. You feel as though you are looking at the underworld. Every sound echoes grandly. In the corner there strange statues of figures weirdly entwined and cut-off. it's hard to make them out, and over the doorway sit Emanuel's ashes in a stone urn. www.emanuelvigeland.museum.no |
   
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