Twenty years in the past, in November 2003, the Nationwide Financial institution of Iceland made contact with a brand new gallery house known as Kling & Bang, an rising up to date artwork venue in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.
Kling & Bang was based earlier that 12 months when ten native artists clubbed collectively to open a small exhibition house on Laugavegur in downtown Reykjavik. “There was no platform, no alternative for younger or rising artists to exhibit,” says Erling Klingenberg, one of many founding members. “We opened the gallery in an effort to change that.”
Town’s small circle of monetary employees have been evidently impressed. The Nationwide Financial institution of Iceland wished to assist the gallery, with its title on it—however how? The artists satisfied the financial institution to transform an enormous, unused industrial constructing—a former fish-net manufacturing unit—which stood empty, a stone’s throw from the gallery. They divided the 5,000 sq. m “artist base”, as they known as it, right into a myriad of studio, exhibition and efficiency areas. In all, 137 artists, designers, film-makers and musicians labored within the constructing on a day-to-day foundation. They known as it Klink and Financial institution—“klink” being a slang phrase for poverty in Iceland. “Their solely proviso was we needed to run it responsibly,” Klingenberg says, with a wink.
Klink and Financial institution was a famend arts house the place 137 artists, designers, film-makers and musicians labored on all kinds of initiatives© Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon, courtesy Kling og Bang
“All of the artwork you may consider”
The mission was a petri dish for an artwork ecosystem that quickly went international, turning a tiny metropolis on one of the remoted islands within the Atlantic ocean right into a byword for multi-disciplinary artwork. “Everybody was so completely satisfied to be part of it,” Klingenberg says. “We had experimental theatre, installations, musicians, designers, raves—all of the artwork you may consider, each day. Everybody into artwork in Reykjavik was there. And artists simply started to collaborate, routinely, throughout disciplines. It had a lot impact.”
“We determined early on that we didn’t need to be underground,” says Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir, an unique founding father of Klink and Financial institution and now a professor of wonderful artwork on the Iceland College of the Arts. “We wished to achieve out.”
Ragnar Kjartansson, one in every of Iceland’s best-known artists, reduce his tooth there whereas Icelandic famous person Björk was a daily attendee. The post-rock band Sigur Rós had their first performances within the basement of the constructing.
“Kjartansson was born on this constructing”
“Kjartansson was born on this constructing,” says Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon, a fellow founder and in addition now a professor on the Iceland College of the Arts. “Ragnar received his gallery in New York after a customer noticed him doing his earliest performances in Klink and Financial institution. All of us simply knew him as a scholar who was making an attempt some issues out. All of us simply thought he was a wannabe pop star.”
Jónsdóttir studied artwork on the California Institute of the Arts within the US and retained contacts there. Klink and Financial institution started, in consequence, to unfold round Californian circles. “The house grew to become a means for us to have contact with artists from America and Europe,” she says.
Magnet
On the time Reykjavik had a inhabitants of lower than 120,000, however the nightly mash up of creativity at Klink and Financial institution unfold, quickly gaining a mythic standing within the artwork world. International artists wished in; inside two years of opening, the Californian artist Paul McCarthy exhibited there, as did the German artist John Bock. The Canadian electro act Peaches carried out there. Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground was a customer.
Klink and Financial institution grew virtually too rapidly. “We have been always having to work out find out how to run the place, given it remained a volunteer-led initiative,” Jónsdóttir says. “It was difficult.”
It grew to become a graffiti-covered warren that usually coupled as a de facto membership for town’s ravers. “After a late night time, we regularly didn’t know who had taken the keys to the gallery,” Klingenberg says. With little hierarchy, the maintenance began to change into a problem. Inside simply two years, the founding members started to really feel they’d misplaced management of the venue and moved on to different ventures. The constructing continued for use by different artists in a haphazard means, however it fell more and more right into a state of disrepair and anarchy. The constructing was demolished within the autumn of 2006, by then derelict.
“It was a good time, it was enjoyable, however quite a bit occurred,” Klingenberg says. “We grew to become exhausted by it. After which the constructing simply went.”
God bless Iceland
On 6 October 2008, on the peak of the monetary disaster, Iceland’s prime minister Geir Haarde gave a speech that ended with a phrase usually referenced by Icelanders as we speak: “God Bless Iceland.” Haarde introduced that every one three of the nation’s main privately owned industrial banks had defaulted. Iceland’s authorities was unable to discover a method to recapitalise, and billions of kilos’ value of property in impact disappeared.
The aftermath of the banking disaster continues to be felt in Iceland as we speak. Whereas tourism, particularly from the US, has change into elementary to the island’s economic system, the state nonetheless struggles to allocate its meagre assets on tradition, whereas the nation’s monetary providers now not assist artwork.
“The constructing is lengthy gone, however the community and the tradition stay”
The bottom on which Klink and Financial institution as soon as existed has been transformed, unsurprisingly, into accommodations. Kling & Bang continues to exist, in a smaller gallery housed in a former herring manufacturing unit in Reykjavik’s still-working harbour.
Final month, the founding of Kling & Bang was marked, 20 years on, by its founders as they exhibited as a part of the eleventh version of Sequences, Reykjavik’s up to date artwork biennial. Klingenberg says: “The constructing is lengthy gone, however the community and the tradition stay.” Magnússon provides: “They carried on, extending out into the world.”
