Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists

13. THE SPIKE: Egil Martin Kurd

139 13 THE SPIKE Egil Martin Kurdøl Egil Martin Kurdøl is a Norwegian artist who has extensive experience as a mapmaker and hiker. He works in Russia as well as Scandinavia. For his project Feste/Attach (1998–99) he created and cast stainless steel bolts, attaching them to rocky surfaces in remote places. The configuration of the bolts resembled the actual landscape surrounds of the places the bolts were set down in. As a land art project, Feste/Attach attracted attention from various governmental agencies concerned about this artist’s effect on the natural environment . The exchanges that took place between artist and government were part of the project. Elements of that project are now in the National Museum of Contemporary Art collection in Oslo, Norway. For another project, Perpetuum Immobile (2001), a self-created device made of tempered stainless steel has been designed by Kurdøl to pull and work forever. Molded with concrete and iron plugs into the mountain, this “perpetual machine” is designed to function in that place in perpetuity. The actual site for this land art piece is a rather undramatic high Norwegian landscape where all you can see is mountains in all directions. JG Your interventions in nature are frequently minimalist, mere traces, like the markings the natives left on trees. Though minimalist they integrate a notion of the landscape in their cast material forms and placement. They come close to being performance pieces enacted in nature. In particular, I am referring to Attach, a project that involved putting tiny iron handcast bolts into sites on mountains, valleys, in nature in northern Norway. Its a long way from the monuments and large-scale sculptures that we associate with modernism or postmodernism. Returning art to a natural context harkens back to our primordial beginnings when we were in tune with nature. Traveling though nature with your small collection of bolts, you mark your site modestly. Nature, your work seems to say, has the upper hand. You are merely a passenger , a visitor or nomad who passes through the landscape. Can you comment ? How did your interest in this way of making art arrive? 140 13.1 Egil Martin Kurdøl. Perpetuum Immobile (installation view), 2001. Ringebo, Norway. Courtesy of the artist. 141 13.2 Egil Martin Kurdøl. Attach, 1998–99. Feste, Tverrbotn. Courtesy of the artist. The Spike 142 EMK The work you refer to, Attach, took place in the “heart” of Norway, in the most inaccessible mountains in the middle part of the country. I have been walking in this area now and then for more than twenty years. Through that time I reached a point where I needed to give my reactions to this landscape. For many years, I distinctly refused to work in this landscape. When I finally decided to make encroachments in this nature, I realized I would have to respond in a much more consistent and precise way then I had with my earlier installations, and I knew I had to make it last. All my former work in nature had been of a temporary nature. This time, it became part of the concept to make it a permanent installation. Much of my early work was influenced by childhood summers in the deep forest, playing around and exploring the woods with friends. As children we collected objects from nature (stones, feathers, snail shells, roots) and made them our own. These activities established our first personal bonds and understanding of nature, and it was of great importance in developing a basic respect for the nature later in life. Attach belongs more to the adult world. I worked for four seasons (1972– 75), long before I even thought about being an artist, in the Norwegian Geographical Survey, making maps in the mountains in the northern part of Norway. During this period I also installed many bolts in the high and wild mountains. These years of making maps, signals, installations in the landscape, has been of great importance later in my artwork. Surveying and mapping are physical means of interpreting and processing nature. It makes nature more understandable and requires physical fixings or making marks in the rock. Attach is thus clearly comparable with survey work, except that it does not have the same usefulness as mapping. It still has a certain value in relation to the communities’ attitude toward and understanding of nature. JG Despite this...