Draining the Corpse

Narrator: 

A dead human body is being perforated by a Donald Duck-like figure with tentacles that force themselves in all over the place.  

Bjørn Carlsen: 

It’s just as cool as the Gokstad ship. I remember how as a little boy I came in and saw the Gokstad ship out there on Bygdøy, and it was a real experience for me, to stand and see its prow, to me it felt and looked kind of organic. That Gokstad ship is just the finest thing we have in Norway, it’s really quite incredible. 

So this is an entirely Norwegian picture, you know. As luck would have it. That painting, it wasn’t born in Paris. 

Narrator: 

The Gokstad ship is a well-preserved Viking ship. It’s on display at the Viking Ship Museum on Oslo’s Bygdøy peninsula, a few kms west of downtown Oslo.  

Bjørn Carlsen, whom you are listening to here, painted “The Cadaver is Sucked” in 1983. 

Bjørn Carlsen: 

So how I see the situation today, is that there’s a battle between two self-harmers. One is Mother Earth, she’s a living planet, after all, and there are volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes … the whole time, there’s something going on. It’s like it never stops, because she’s alive, you see? And then on the other side we have the human race … with Donald Duck sitting up there, trying to anaesthetize this woman while people exploit her, because they haven’t got the sense to collaborate with her.  

Narrator: 

A Donald Duck-like figure recurs in several of Carlsen’s works. The artist sees Donald Duck as a symbol of a commercial super-culture, the opposite of purity and how it would feel to live on a planet where things are in order.  

Bjørn Carlsen: 

Humans would rather travel to the Moon and Mars than sort things out on their own planet and it’s a bit … well, I think it’s a bit strange.  

Narrator: 

And these dots we can see, what are they? 

Bjørn Carlsen: 

Yes, all the dots are sperm cells. In all this horror there is new life — it’s a bit like the sperm sacs in a cod! So it’s kind of like … I’ve often thought, Bjørn, what is it that you’re doing? And then I tell myself, that I’m “painting pain”.  

So pain is the thing that I’m kind of obsessed with. All the time.