Wen Li Jingyue
Humor is a magical tool that can trick the brain and catch you off guard.
Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg are a pair of artists from Europe. Natalie produces stop-motion animation, hans produces music, and their work extends to installations, sculptures and other media.
Over the past 20 years, they have created dream-like visual effects and fairytale-like atmospheres in art museums around the world, and have built a bridge between the adult world and the childish world.
Artist group Natalie Durberg and Hans Berg's work. (Photo / Artist and Prada House)
On November 11, 2021, Prada Rongzhai in Shanghai presented Natalie and Hans' first exhibition in China, entitled "The Moon Wrapped in Kraft Paper", focusing on their works from the past 20 years. The title of the exhibition comes from the poem of the English poetess Carol Ann Duffy: "I will give you an onion." It was the moon wrapped in kraft paper. It's sure to shine, like love, unwrapped carefully. ”
Also like this dramatic monologue, the exhibition scene is a visual spectacle and magic narrative composed of clay, music, stop-motion animation and rare natural objects, but their works are more like a sensitive, fragile and innocent sugar coating of the world than the childlike identification. From the earthy "B-grade" appearance to the poetic core of the moon, the exhibition touches on many important issues of human society at a deeper level, such as emotion, gender, violence and ecology, sometimes joking, sometimes serious, sometimes full of humor.
Natalie produces stop-motion animation, hans produces music, and their work extends to installations, sculptures and other media. (Photo: Wynrich Zlomke)
"Look, it's going to be like a lover, blinding your eyes with tears. It will turn your reflection into a picture that crumbling in mourning. ”
The following is an interview with Natalie Durberg and Hans Berg.
New Weekly: How did you get started?
Natalie: We're all self-taught, and we all have a very direct way of working, a non-verbal way, because we all think that art itself expresses more language than can say it. This means that from the moment Hans composed music for the first animated film, we had an incredible understanding of each other's creative process. This has deepened over the years. But we never need to talk about it, we just talk about things around the subject.
On November 11, 2021, Prada House in Shanghai presented Natalie and Hans' first exhibition in China, entitled "The Moon Wrapped in Kraft Paper". (Photo: Alessandro Wang)
Hans: We met in Berlin through a mutual friend, first by Natalie, and later with my music. But over the years, it's increasingly become a collaborative work, with music, video, and sculpture intertwined, and we'll go back and forth about our work—even if we lean toward the hands-on part, we'll spend a lot of time talking about the deeper meaning of the work, like what it actually is.
New Weekly: What influences have you influenced your work?
Natalie: I grew up in folklore, mostly Swedish, but not just Swedish. My grandfather gave me several beautifully illustrated fairy tale books that described the origins of fairy tales and how they were passed from one country to another. When I was young, there was no TV, and my mom read to me and my brother.
Natalie and Hans's work is a visual spectacle and magical narrative of clay, music, stop-motion animation, and exotic natural objects. (Photo / Artist and Prada House)
Hans: I grew up under the influence of folk music, and my mother not only played the piano but also played the violin, but what really influenced me was hearing electronic music on the radio and early carnival music, and there was a kind of freedom in the music I liked.
New Weekly: Natalie, I'm curious about your creative process, you "often create without a story or a screenplay", is that true? In addition to screenwriting, are there any other necessary preparations and experiments?
Natalie: An animation usually starts with a question that I have a hard time finding answers to, and when it's enough to frustrate me, I turn it into an animation and try to understand it; next, I start making puppets and sets, and the more I wait to animate, the more I know what the work will look like, but I prefer not to know the full answer, but only 50%-80%, and the more I know, the more I think it's boring to make animation, because I've seen it all in my head. When I wasn't hesitant, I preferred to let the creation itself go with the flow.
Natalie and Hans's work is more like a sugar coating of sensitivity, fragility and innocence in the world. (Photo / Artist and Prada House)
New Weekly: Your work is often closely integrated with sculpture, installation, and space. How will you define your creation? Do you know the location of this exhibition? How does the exhibition work?
Hans: Yeah, we do work in immersive environments. In fact, music makes everything three-dimensional because it completely fills the space, while the moving image remains in one place – the screen. We are very interested in Eiju because it is an ancient historical building, a place like this has many layers, has different uses in different eras, it reminds us of a living body with memories and experiences accumulated on it.
This is also reflected in the film and sculpture works, you can peel away its core layer by layer. I came up with the concept of an onion and assembled using natural materials to create an organic space in which the viewer might get lost and discover something new in the process.
Natalie and Hans's work is often closely integrated with sculpture, installation and space. (Photo / Artist and Prada House)
Natalie: I don't have any answers, I just explore, but when a work of art evokes something about a person, we are happy. When a work makes the person viewing it feel bland, it is meaningless.
New Weekly: What kind of creation is stop-motion animation for you? Easy or difficult? Because it is generally considered an energy-intensive but very slow form to make.
Natalie: After a few years in art school, I found that my faith in art was very limited (I don't know if my own beliefs limited me) and I got tired of trying to express something with an image, so when I started animating, I completely got rid of the concept of what it should be or what it looked like, and instead had the freedom to use the images I wanted and also to get rid of my own perception of what art should be.
In puppets, worlds are built and puppets can move and interact freely within set boundaries. (Photo / Artist and Prada House)
In the early years, I also created charcoal animation. The difference between charcoal and puppetry is that in puppets, the world is built and the puppet can move and interact freely within the set boundaries; however, in charcoal animation, you have to create the world through each new image (at least if you want to change the whole image). I think only some of the ideas are more suitable for charcoal.
New Weekly: You've said that there's no sense of humor in the arts, so where do you look for it? Can you share your favorite jokes, pop culture or movies?
Natalie: Am I saying that? That I had to revise, there was humor in art, but not much in the art world, or maybe it was just me not seeing enough. I love Rilke, and I really enjoy the messy letters that I've been rereading recently.
Hans: Humor is a magical tool that can trick the brain and catch you off guard, or look at things in a different light and surprise you —in that sense, it has many similarities to many arts—a mutual understanding that doesn't need to be expressed directly.