About
“Micael Norberg’s art is securely anchored in his own reality and therefore appears to be distinctly documentary. From this starting point he seeks to ask and answer questions about himself, where he is from and where he is going. His art therefore calls forth a strong narcissist light, a light which makes its appeance through the fact that the individual works do not deal with Micael’s own self directly, at the same time as they all have his own persona as their final goal and purpose. Through this strategy his art can be interpreted as exclusively private, as if it would be interesting only to the artist himself. But this is only a semblance, since the private is only that which fits within the framework, the particular narrative or the actors in these pieces. The frameworks, however, are universal as are the questions. The narratives about Micael’s background and present are representative pointers for all of us. We all come from, and are made by, the narratives our surroundings carry (which is made very clear in the movie ”Meetingpoint of two lines that form an angle”). These stories are an essential part of the foundation from which we all operate, the foundation which our present selves stand on. And here is the universal in Micael’s art, in spite of its private tone, its truth if you like. It is these universal frameworks that make the private stories interesting f or all of us. Micael’s art touches us first of all because it, in dealing with his own person, addresses all of us. In this way we all experience and share the destiny of the artist, a destiny which flies like an arrow through history to the present and then on into an unknown future.In Micael’s movies we see three personas take shape; a narrative persona, a persona which experiences and finally a deprived persona. The narrative persona is part of Micael’s past, a part which has formed him and his life. The experiencing persona is shaping his life as an ever present memory and the deprived persona represents history’s shadow over the future. The present is represented by the movies’ images, the core of their narratives. However, the movie ”A continuous rapid buzzing or vibrating sound” complicates this pattern where the deprived persona appears inside of the narrative and the shadow of history within the image of the present. Thus one can read ”And kept as a reminder” as a movie about lost innocence. A narrative filled with the fate and destiny of the Middle-East of today, a story which interferes and shapes one section of Micael’s background.In the movie ”A continuous rapid buzzing or vibrating sound”, the deprived persona tells its story, the persona which has lost its life and vainly, and solely for its own sake, tries to win it back. It is this persona which, like the ghost of history, casts its shadow over Micael’s future, over the narrative persona. The deprived persona becomes an expression of the collapse which threatens to pull the other personas down into destruction. So far it is just a shadow, as private as it can be but still so similar to the shadows we all carry with us through the present.”
Per Nilsson, Philosopher
(from the exhibition catalog “umeå- hanoi” )
©Ha Noi University of Fine Arts, Ha Noi, Vietnam,
Konsthögskolan, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden