Lene Berg – «From father» at Bergen Kunsthall – Reviews and recommendations

It is said that memory is a poet and not a storyteller. In Lene Berg’s powerful festival project in Bergen Kunsthall, the focus is precisely on the dictatorship of memory. Berg is a trained film director from the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm. Throughout her career, she has explored the borderland between fact and fiction. THE CONFUSING CHILDHOOD MEMORY: In the work “The day stands up” (2022), Lene Berg shows the vulnerability of memory, how what we remember from childhood is affected by what we have been told. Photo: Thor Brødreskift A fascinating example is the film «Kopfkino» from 2012, which is shown in connection with the exhibition. Here she has created a kind of video version of the Last Supper, with German luxury prostitutes portraying classic, sexual fantasies: one is dressed in lacquer and leather, another as a schoolgirl, a third as a nurse and a fourth as a circus director. They represent fantasies and it all takes place within a theatrical framework, but the stories they tell are real enough. Depicts a fatal morning In the Festival Exhibition, this examination of the relationship between the actual and the fictional is more personal. Here, Lene Berg tackles a childhood trauma. When she was nine years old, her father was arrested for the murder of his stepmother. In the film “The day stands up”, she tries to recapitulate parts of the course of events. She depicts the deserted parking lot outside Paris and the dead drunk father snoring in the little red car with the lifeless wife next to her. Lene Berg tells about the incident, but at the same time ponders how it can be that she remembers these things when she actually never experienced them. In this way she shows us how things we have been told, and which we have lived into, form as clear images in the memory. The film is simple and strong. Berg has built a kind of small puppet theater with a miniature parking lot. A small red toy car with an illuminated compartment is parked under the streetlights, and you can barely see that there are two people inside the car. THE CRIME: Lene Berg has created a small puppet theater, where she tries to form a clear picture of what happened the morning her father was arrested and her stepmother was found dead. We hear Berg’s voice wondering if it might have been dawn, or maybe moonlight, and if the car was really red, and if it was a Renault 4. Why does she think her father snored? Has anyone told her this? Or is it just something she has imagined? Smells like tobacco and Old Spice MOVIE GHOSTS: This beautiful work she has braided and woven together her father’s old films, like fragments and remnants of something that was once him. Photo: Thor Brødreskift The exhibition is divided into color zones: a shiny red room, one green and one white. In the red zone, Berg has braided and woven old analog film rolls together into something resembling fragile textiles. A light wanders over walls and ceilings in the smoldering red darkness and creates beautiful shadow effects. Maybe it is in her father’s old films that she can find answers to who he really was, and why everything went so wrong? This loose film web can be seen as a picture of the great work of remembrance that the entire exhibition represents. Who was the father? And why did he kill his wife, and later himself? CIRCLE IN: Four-channel video projection entitled «Casting Arnljot». In this project, four actors try to circle the person Arnljot Berg through information they have received from the artist. They perform monologues from a feature film script Lene Berg has written about her father. The whole exhibition is really an attempt to find answers. An attempt to recall the father she lost. Through the various works, Berg tries to piece together what is left of remains and traces, both of the kind, warm father, of the inspired filmmaker, but also of the alcoholic who eventually became the killer. Even the smell of him she has recreated. The art gallery now smells of tobacco and Old Spice. The exhibition is characterized by a desire to understand, but also a sore pain on behalf of a father who perished. “From Dad” is both gripping and interesting. The exhibition highlights a deeply personal and rather extraordinary narrative, but also shows something universal: our basic need to understand our origin. news reviewer Photo: Thor Brødreskift Title: «From father» Artist: Lene Berg What: The Festival Exhibition 2022 Venue: Bergen Kunsthall Curated by: Axel Wieder Date: 25 May – 8 June



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