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Eirún Sigurðardóttir. A ghost made out of video. The character crotchets its own shroud from “threads of knowledge” coming from its head. Examines ‘knowledge’ as a tool to deceive or shelter oneself (in covering the body) or to deceive others (in the body being covered, and then as the actual figure and performance - the act of ‘knowledge creation’ - not being truly revealed, but only in likeness via the video). Also calls into question (what a surprise) craft vs. fine art (bla bla) in Icelandic culture. Craft is knowledge and can still be art.

It is a little tough for people (including myself, obviously) who have not been artists in Iceland before the 1980s to fully appreciate the importance of this discussion, but visual art was very suppressed, considered a waste of time, before the 19th century. And after that ‘appropriate’ visual art was pretty much confined to landscape painting. Although Icelandic artists made big strides into work in the foundations of postmodernism (which, hey! you can read a little about in the first three pages of my paper from earlier this year! remember that?). After Icelandic society caught up with artists’ exploration of the avant garde, as elsewhere in the world decades and centuries earlier, in some circles craft became the subject unworthy of appreciation for its perceived limited creativity, necessity over form and connection to commerce. In short subjects like this one are to some extent a lot of heritage-specific rhetoric. I still like it. It is, of course, also a discussion that is necessary within art in the broader context, too - but not as extreme, or specific to knitting. But I had better write a paper on Hannes Lárusson and his influence or all of this reading and internet will go to waste. And I think Glasgow Uni has fulfilled its quota of Icelandic art in its journals after that one.