Repetition Isn’t Boring, It’s Transformative
Repetition and mimicry have played a significant role in art since the beginning, whether it is imitating the human form, or echoing frequently used themes. This is something I contemplated while observing Ragnar Kjartansson’s “Me and My Mother”, an artwork constructed entirely through repetition, but one that never becomes repetitive.
It is impossible to precisely pinpoint when and where something was repeated for the first time. If I were to guess, I would suggest it might have started with mitosis, when a cell divides itself into two carbon copies of the original. That means the timeline started between 3.5 billion to 600 million years ago.[i] It could be argued that repetition is the start of all life on earth, and maybe of all culture as well. It is definitely recognisable in the cyclical and repetitive history of art. Take mother and child for example. A motif as old as time, emerging somewhere between the evolution of sexual reproduction and the arrival of wall painting. That’s a very long time to cultivate depictions of the same idea.
By now you would expect it to have become dull, but the motif keeps appearing and we keep getting enthralled by it. Everything from the iconography of The Madonna, perhaps one of the most famous mothers in art history, to more unsettling, and certainly less humanesque depictions, like Damien Hirst’s Mother and Child, Divided. These artworks couldn’t be more different from one another, yet they share the same core motif. Every living thing must originate from something, and this shared experience has been repeated over and over. With so many possibilities, it’s not surprising that each echo of a mother and child would look different.
There are two things that spring to mind when I hear the word “echo”. What an echo is and what an echo means. What an echo is, physically, is a sound wave bouncing off a surface and making it sound like it has been repeated. The second concept I associate with the word “echo” is its reference to change. When information travels, it changes until it is difficult to understand where it originally came from, like one long game of Telephone. Whispers spoken from mouth to ear, slowly deteriorated by each metaphorical baton-pass. Whether it’s knowledge of the past, surviving to tell the future, or information spread through word of mouth, it is shaped by every perspective and bias it travels through. An echo will forever be an imitation, still familiar but not the same.
Both interpretations of an echo can be found in works dating back thousands of years. In Metamorphoses, a collection of Roman poetry by Ovid, we encounter the tale of a nymph cursed to repeat whatever was said to her. This is a story about love and rejection. In the end, her body melted away and her bones were turned into stone. These remains sank into the earth and formed caves where all sound would be imitated. The nymph was named Echo, and even in death, she was condemned to repeat all sounds forever.[ii] Ovid’s poems explore the reason echoes are often found in caves, giving an origin for this phenomenon. Caves are a tangible place that anyone could connect to the experience of an echo. But Ovid also put emphasis on the echo’s transformative quality. The nymph might be physically changed, a woman turned to stone, but one aspect of her stays the same. She continues to repeat.
Repetition is no stranger to Ragnar Kjartansson, the Icelandic contemporary artist responsible for the huge exhibition ´Epic Waste of Love and Understanding´ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern art in 2023. The exhibition showcases more than two decades of his work, including a variety of artistic mediums.[iii] The sound of spit was what I first noticed when approaching the artwork, Me and My Mother. Harsh and insistent in the enclosed space, I could hear it before I even entered the room. Five screens were divided along the walls, each displaying its own looping video. These videos were similar, yet not identical, with two figures starring in each: an older woman and a young man, both visibly aging with each reiteration. A mother, spitting on her son. It was an intense atmosphere at times, and the intent behind the action seemed clear: it was meant to appear cruel. At least, that was my first impression. Until I saw them laughing.
Me and My Mother is a collaborative long-form video project starting in 2000. It features Ragnar Kjartansson and his mother, the Icelandic actress Guðrún G. Ásmundsdóttir. These videos were shot five years apart from each other, allowing us to see them both change over time. The initial film is visibly different from the others, with Kjartansson and Ásmundsdóttir struggling to hold back their laughter. In fact, she has openly admitted that, to get into character, she resorted to imagining her son as one of the bankers responsible for the economic crash of Iceland.[iv]
“It is trying for a mother and an actress with a 50-year acting career to spit on her own son—the son who has never been anything but a true blessing and has always made her laugh.”- Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir on filming Me and My Mother.[v]
Returning to this performance every half decade has allowed their act to evolve, grow, and transform into something unrecognisable from the original. Me and My Mother already differentiates itself from the typical motif of mother and child, echoing the trope through a hostile lens instead of a loving one. The same can be said between all the variations of Kjartansson’s piece from 2000 to 2020. Although the original performance contains all the elements of a mother demeaning her son, it has none of the venom. This illusion of malice is fully shattered when they break character on camera, revealing smiles and stifled laughter. The care they have for each other shines through. After two decades of spitting on your own son, the laughter doesn’t bubble up as easily as it once did. Ásmundsdóttir slips into a more believable role, and Kjartansson does too. Their expressions are hardened, not a crack in their façade. While their actions remain completely identical, it’s their demeanour that has gone through a drastic change. Over time, and through practice, they have lost that loving feeling. The most recent rendition in 2020 now shows Kjartansson finally displaying a sign of defiance as he looks at his mother. It is a complex expression that could mean many things, but it is carefully neutral. Ásmundsdóttir responds to this change in behaviour with more hesitation than before, none of the same intensity and anger as previously shown. The repetition has transformed it into something entirely new.
Getting to witness this first-hand was an incredible experience, but a somewhat uncomfortable one. The repetition of the format contextualises it very clearly for us, the viewer, that the mother and her son love each other very much. This, however, does not prevent us from experiencing a lingering discomfort. Even though I am aware that the true relationship between them is not a negative one, the other performances were so captivating and believable that anything else just fell away. Viewing it linearly, from start to finish, also aided in its portrayal of what I would describe as a visual echo. Five repetitions, similar but not the same, culminating into something colder and less humorous than the original 2000 version. Although, with all five videos playing simultaneously there is never a moment of silence away from the sound of spit. Me and My Mother is a piece that demands our attention through its storytelling and its visual and auditory elements. Not only is it a reinterpretation of previous depictions of the mother-child relationship, but it also becomes an echo in its own right. Through the transformative quality of repetition, it allows us to witness the evolution of a relationship over time: always similar, yet never the same. An echo.
All illustrations are made by Selma Flodgren.
Literature
[i] Choi, Charles Q. “How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?”. Astrobiology at NASA. 13.02.2017. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-did-multicellular-life-evolve/
[ii] Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Arthur Golding. 1567. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng1:3.337-3.43
[iii] Louisiana. “Ragnar Kjartansson”. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Humlebæk, Denmark. 9.6.2023 - 22.10.2023. https://louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/ragnar-kjartansson/
[iv] Dyg, Kasper Bech. “Ragnar Kjartansson & his mother on 'Me and My Mother'”. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Youtube. 1:46. Uploaded by Louisiana Channel 19.07.2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eicurgykZtk Visited 02.10.2023
[v] Ásmundsdóttir, Guðrún G. “Ragnar Kjartansson, Me and My Mother”. i8 Gallery. Reykjavik, Iceland. 11.6.2015 - 22.8.2015. https://i8.is/exhibitions/145/