LAC Lieu d’Art Contemporain, Sigean, France. 2015

Pictures in Motion

Bragi Ólafsson

Text written after a visit to Sigurður Árni’s studio in 2003.

First picture

They are in the living room. Him and her.

He is sitting in a deep leather chair which has thick arms, and he is watching the door leading to the corridor. It is shut, and has quit probably been shut for a long time. She is sitting on a dark green sofa looking in his direction, without actually watching him. Her arms are folded across her chest, and on the ring finger of her right hand – the left from his point of view – is a ring that she continually twists by stretching out her little finger to rest against it and pushing it with her thumb, which she has slipped under her index finger and middle finger. Between the two of them, him and her, is a low, teak-colored wooden table, with a folded newspaper lying on it. Down from the ceiling, above the table, hangs a yellow lampshade not unlike a lady`s hat without a brim.

The bulb in the lampshade is switched off.

And in the street outside there is silence. Where the red bricks in the house opposite form a wide frame around the glass in the windows. Soon after a light goes on in one of them, it goes of in another; then the same happens in two other windows, except that this time it happens in reverse: first a light goes off, then on.

They are still in the sitting room when the lampshade hanging from the ceiling suddenly begins to move. At first it trembles slightly, just as if an earthquakes is making itself felt and will build up the next moment; then the movement intensifies, it almost seems as though the person who lives upstairs is dropping heavy things onto the floor – even himself – but these movements are not accompanied by any sounds, and it is not until they stop. As suddenly as they started, that he and she turn their eyes up to the ceiling.

Second picture

More than four years pass. Instead of the year two thousand and one, it is nineteen ninety-seven. They are still in the sitting room, and a dull light pierces the chinks in the curteins. The black leather chair he is sitting in forms a kind of frame around him, and he looks in the direction of the half-open sitting room door. She is sitting on the dark green sofa on the other side of the sitting room, with her arms folded across her chest, and has twisted her nylon shirt into a small, sharp point over which she stokes her index finger intensely. For a fraction of an instant he looks away from the sitting room door and fixes his eyes on her movements, but when he turns his head back to the door the lampshade hanging from the ceiling starts trembling; at first as if someone is stamping on the floor above, then the movements intensify; they suggest that the house is being rocked by an earthquake. Neither of them takes any notice of what is going on, they continue as if nothing has happened; she strokes her index finger over the point on her shirt, he rests his eyes on the sitting room door which is still half-open, as if someone had sneaked in through it and the trembling from the ceiling was supposed to distract them.

And then it happens. He presses his hands down on the thick arms of the chair, raises his body and stands up.

„I’m leaving the room,“ he says. And before walking in the direction of the sitting room door he reaches for the table lamp beside the chair and switches it on. It lights up the wall on the other side, and at the same time lights her up; it illuminates the dark green sofa where she is sitting; it illuminates him, who has set off for the door. But at the moment that he walks past the lounge table he casts a shadow above the sofa; his image is produced on the wall, it is an image of him on his way out of the sitting room.

When he has gone through the door she turns to the wall behind her and looks at the image on the white surface. She has stopped stroking the point on her shirt; she reaches her left hand towards the wall and rubs it across the image, as if intending to erase it.

Third picture

Two and a half years pass. The date of the newspaper on the lounge table shows the year nineteen ninety-four, but it is an old paper; many more years have passed: it is seven years since he stood up from the chair, since she intended to erase his image from the wall. Outdoors, in the house opposite, the bricks still form a wide frame around the glass in the windows. Now a light in one of them goes out; a few moments later a light goes on in another.

And then she stands up from the sofa. She walks over to a switch on the wall next to the door and turns on the ceiling light. When she sits back down and has put her hands in her lap the lampshade hanging down from the ceiling begins to tremble and the image of him, who had left the room, moves back and forth, just as if it is shaking, as if everything around it is still.