10. Tenth resident for two months, from the 1st of October til the 30th of November 2011: MargrĂ©t ElĂsabet Ă“lafsdottir
Margrét Elisabet Ólafsdottir is Icelandic. She has been a journalist (Art and Culture).
She teaches at the Academy of Art and at the University(Háskoli ĂŤslands), in ReykjavĂk, the History of New Media ,
but also, in French, the French Art History (mainly Modern Art and Contempory Art)
Working first of all to-day as an Art critic, she is the founder of an Association: LORNA (created 10 years ago),
which promotes Electronic Arts through exhibitions in Iceland, sets up projects in cooporation with Latvia or Finland,
and has created the Festival PIKSLAVERK (about programming and coding).
While staying at HÖFN - for 2 months - Margrét Elisabet Ólafsdottir worked on a thesis about Art and new technologies
(connected with Université de Paris I), to be finished in the course of 2012.
The 12th of Decembre 2011, Margrét Elisabet Ólafsdotti sends few photos, which she took without much thinking;
They do not pretend to be more than what they are...
A light obsession which prompted her to photograph the sky - at dawn or at sunset -,
some plain photos... before starting working, or after, during car escapades.
A somehow impressionnistic game (?), work (?).
She did photographed as well fruit-trees, the wind - and would have liked photographing dogs' barking!
But she finally chose for HĂ–FN rather monochromic or abstract photos, where neither figures nor landscapes come out.
Those photos were halts, because it seems difficult to "show" anything from an unfinished work .
The last photo to be seen here (which was taken in a car) has a special meaning for her;
It is THEN (so she says!!) that she had decided to ask whether she might come again and be at HĂ–FN in order to finish there her thesis.
Arles- full moon at dawn
Arles- the colour of the sky at sunrise
Marseille- the sky just before nightfall
Marignane- dying day after the stroll
A spoilt photo taken in the car, coming back from the crick "(calanques", in Marseilles)
....................................................................................................................................................................................
8 and 9. Eighth and ninth residents for two months, from the 1st of April until the 31st of May 2011:
Heidi Strand, a "fiber artist", and Matthias Kristiansen, translator.
A Norwegian native, Heidi Strand studied at the Art School in TRONDHEIM, ( Norway) (1976 -1978), then at the Art School in REYKJAVĂŤK (Iceland) (1986 -1987).
Since1990, Heidi Strand has devoted her life to her work as a fiber artist, in Iceland , where she lives with Matthias Kristiansen, an Icelandic translator.
The Icelandic nature, its fauna, its colours, sustains, and "fills up" her work. It is eveywhere, including within the main material she has chosen: Icelandic sheep wool.
Heidi Strand has exhibited her fiber work in individual or group exhibitions in Scandinavia, the States, in Europa and Asia.
During her staying at HĂ–FN, she wrote a children's book, and drew some of her future "fiber pictures" in connection with the story.
Matthias Kristiansen, who is Icelandic, studied languages at the University in Iceland: Danish, English, Norwegian.
He started teaching Danish and English to Secondary School's pupils, one year in Norway, then in Iceland.
At the same time, he translated short stories and children's books. He wrote as well songs, in English and Icelandic... and composed music.
Since 1997, he stopped teaching and devoted himself exclusively to translating: English, Danish or Norwegian books in Icelandic,
Once in a while, he happens to translate Icelandic books into Norwegian.
In such cases, Heidi Strand et Matthias Kristiansen work together.
During their staying at HÖFN, after they jointly translated, two years before, from Icelandic into Norwegian "Hvitta bókin" by Einar Már Guðmundsson,
they went on translating, again in Norwegian, the author's last book: "Bankastræti 0", which was published in May 2011 in Iceland.
Matthias Kristiansen, together with Heidi Strand, while at HÖFN, completed the translation in Norwegian of "Bankastræti 0", but he had given himself an additional and inescapable task:
a DAILY poem to be written from the first day of his staying at HĂ–FN (the 1st of April) until the last (the 31st of May)...
HE DID IT!! He actually selected finally 55 poems by the end of his residency time. Dominique Poulain translated 19 of them.
The 5th of October 2011, Matthias Kristjansen allows HĂ–FN to select some of his poems (among those Dominique Poulain translated in French).
6 of them have been chosen here, the first one a "six words poem", Matthias' bit of a joke and challenge, in French.....
