Interviews made by Margrét Blöndal in connection with exhibitions in the Living Art Museum in 2004 and in Gallery Kling og Bang in 2005.

MB: Rádhildur, can you tell us about the title of your work:

“Inside a Coneshell, One Dot?”

RI: This is something I have been working on for some years. The coneshell can mean time, f. inst million, thousand, hundred years or just a few earth years. It is like a frame around my art and within that frame anything can happen.

MB: Why are you so occupied with the coneshell? (would a flower, like Icelandic rosebay, or a baggalútur stone be the same?)

RI: When I have a coneshell in my hand I feel I am holding a small cosmos.

I feel time, growth, rythm, the rotation of the earth, order and chaos. An Icelandic rosebay could be considered because it gives a hint of all this but it stays but a short time and therefore I can not have it with me like the coneshell. A baggalútur stone has all this too, but it does not show it as clearly as the coneshell.

MB: What part do dreams play in your art?

RI: When I had been working on my art for quite some years I realised that dreams I had dreamt long ago were connected to what I was doing in my artwork. Therefore I decided to reconstruct a few dreams in video and examine them closely.

MB: You refer quite often to your dreams. Are they a way to break the bonds of the definable dimensions?

RI: I don´t know. All I know is that my dreams are half of my existance.

MB.: Your work seems to be divided into a kind of system on one hand, and timelessness and chaos on the other. Are those two eliments inseparable?

RI: Yes, this is a whole. When you experience this timelessness or chaos, you are in fact finding a system. Your are simply in a different place. When f. inst. we gaze into space we find chaos and timelessness but if we look at the galaxy from outside it we find a system i.e.a spiral.

MB: In one of your videos the onlooker becomes one with the universe; - are there some hidden hints about

1. our limitations as intellectual beings

2. our obsession to systemize everything

3. our tendency to organize everything perfectly.

RI:  I don’t know.. One thing is certain, It is difficult for us to trust something that we don’t under-stand

When I was ten years old I dreamt that I was roaming in space, flying in the universe and watching the world. I was frightened but at the same time I felt a desire to stay there longer. – For many years after I felt dizzy when I thought about this dream.

MB: Don’t you feel dizzy in all these immense spaces? What do you hold on to?

RI:  I hold on to my art

MB: Rádhildur. Has the coneshell revolved? Have we entered into another dot?

RI: I don’t think so. The coneshell is like the universe. We experience different kinds of reality de-pending on where we are placed in it. With the dot it is the same, it can have many layers where different events are happening.

MB: On the first level in Kling and Bang Gallery there is a peculiar mixture of void and mass. Could you tell us something about these two components? Is it necessary that the mass is wax? Could it be something else? 

RI: Mass and void is the same thing. Neither could exist without the other. Mass is just another form of void. And void is another form of mass. This installation is an environment from a dream. It is important that wax has the quality of changing easily into the other part of the mass i.e. the void. It is somewhere between liquid and solid, it melts and burns easily.

MB: On the one hand you seem to have the tendency to dissolve limited space like the space which you work with and on the other hand you are making small limited worlds with your video work. Tell us something about these two components, that is to reduce and to expand.

RI: When I dissolve the space by painting it as I did in The Living Art Museum last autumn or make a wax installation like I am experimenting with now, I perceive myself in a different place in reality. This is like getting into another layer of the dot, I experience reality from another point. Somewhat like when people get my letters about the loop movement of the planets. The letters draw their at-tention to space. Those who receive the letters are suddenly placed in another place in reality. I am not making a circumscribed world with my video. I am dealing with the same reality as in the dissolved space, but from another point of view which requires another medium.

MB: What significance does it have for your exhibition that it extends into different rooms?

RI: I think it enhances your feeling for the complexity of reality.

MB: Dreams are something you can store in a safe corner in your mind. They often signify veiled messages of a person’s inner life. Is this your subconcious that we are invited to attend?

RI: I don’t know. The dreams just exist. I retell them as I remember them, make use of the feeling they leave behind. I do not interpret my dreams. I simply experience them. They are a part of my existence. They have played an important role in my choice of subject-matter in art through the years, that is why I am examining them closely.

MB: How do you pick out the dreams you exhibit, have they been censored?

RI: It is not so long ago since I started working with my dreams the way I am doing now. I had to practice new methods of working so that some of the dreams presented here are selected out ac-cording to whether they are easy or difficult to perform. Apart from that, I choose the dreams de-pending on how strongly they live with me into the day.

MB: Is the coneshell in constant motion?

RI: Everything is in constant motion.