‘The Substance of the World’, a conversation between Nanna Abell and Milena Høgsberg, CHART Journal

As part of CHART Journal, Nanna Abell has been in conversation with Milena Høgsberg, curator, writer and Director at Wanås Konst, who together consider the intimate and fragile properties that underline the artist’s practice. They explore the erotic clashing of material sensibilities; the intimate entanglement between the digital and the offline; and environmental contamination as played out in bathing a child’s body. “Yet while I was installing this show [at Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon], my daughter was in a state of euphoria embalming herself in sea foam at the coast just 30 minutes away. [S]ome time later, I learned that sea foam has the strongest concentration of fluorine substances (flourstoffer) and that one should avoid contact. Apparently the fluorine substances are very fond of foam and bubbles – and so is a little human body – this light fluffy tickling. So it’s not only the visible contamination, there is also an invisible accumulation that makes touching the world so much more difficult suddenly. I sometimes think that our mental shores are equally endangered with heaps and fragments of waste of information with daily debris of images and language pouring in. I think part of my work is trying to make tiny clear bays around objects – just to “pollute” them again, with a different agenda. An agenda that doesn’t have to add up.” 📖 Read the conversation in full via the CHART Journal. Photo: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen