the sky is blue

Abstract

Through its works the sky is blue wants to show that both institutional and subjective limitations are present in our lives but that we also have the ability to go beyond these limitations by way of our dreams, our fantasies and our visions. I maintain that this ability, which is built into the title’s adamant claim that the sky is blue, carries within it the possibility to change the present. However, knowledge and understanding of the now is also needed for change. the sky is blue wants to show how the individual experience and the subjective story are productive and necessary parts of the formation of that knowledge. The particular, or the individual experience, is central to the works in the sky is blue. the sky is blue contains photographic works, artworks and textual works. The three works “jag samlar på himlar, jag samlar på himlen” (I collect skies, I collect the sky), “1000 stories about a blue sky” and “under en himmel” (under a sky) are the point of departure for the dissertation and its central works. A subjective story that seeks the answer to the question why I do what I do forms itself around these works. By choosing the same method in the dissertation work as in my artistic practice I let the question intervene with the question what I do when I do what I do. This means that the dissertation the sky is blue, which has come into being in the search for a why, is an implicit answer to the question: what I do when I do what I do. In “två bakgrundstexter” (two background texts) is described how two losses have formed the conditions for the coming into being of the sky is blue. There is a series of micro-essays related to the “two background texts”, which, instead of looking backward, take their point of departure in the present. In “tolv betraktelser” (twelve reflections/discourses) everyday flow is central; in these texts come the thoughts and reflections on expressions that take up space when I am confronted with different events in my everyday life. The texts in “fyra verkbeskrivningar” (four descriptions of works) are written in intimate relation to the works, and are, instead of reports on the material of the works and their coming into being, portrayals of the personal “state” that are the points of departure for these works. Just like the personal experience, which never forms itself in a linear way but rather consists of different parts or wanderings here and there that correspond to each other, the sky is blue is built up of different parts that are situated in a dialogical situation with each other. In order to maintain the dialogue between the different parts of the dissertation, I have chosen not to use the book format, which, in most cases, invites linear reading; the different parts of the dissertation have been placed in a box instead. The dialogical situation between the works does not only correspond to my artistic practice; I also consider the former to nurture the methods that are used to convey knowledge and meaning within the arts.