Thank You - The Icelandic Love Corporation

2002, video work, 3 min. 10 sec., 3/3 (edition)

In 2002, the cultural program Mósík on RÚV (Icelandic National Broadcasting Service), made a special episode on The Icelandic Love Corporation. For this occasion, we were commissioned to create a performance for the program in their recording studio. We thought this was a great opportunity and decided to create a work with a message that would be relevant to the entire nation. At this time, fishing was Icelands biggest industry. So we chose to celebrate the Cod. And since this was not a live performance but a filmed one, we wanted to exploit the technical possibilities of the medium, and that's where the simple trick of playing the film backwards came in.

A prose by The Icelandic Love Corporation:

The women enter the white space with a black briefcase. It contains the ocean

silver, the heart and the intestines, the natural system of the slimy silver mine.

They are dressed in the glittery glitz of the rich.

They repair the victim of a hundred years with their sharp blades.

The cod anthem is in their ears.

He has given and he shall receive.

Thank you!

A performance commissioned by The Icelandic National Television, RUV. Recorded at their state of the art TV studio, to be played backwards, using the oldest trick in the book, to trick life and death. In memory of the cod, Iceland's biggest resource. The video exists in three copies and the first two copies have already been sold to private collections in Japan and the United States. The third copy is in the collection of The National Gallery of Iceland.

Text by Markús Þór Andrésson and Dorothee Kirch, curators of the exhibition Lífróður in Hafnarborg 2009:

 “When The Icelandic Love Corporation was asked to make a work to be shown on television for all of Icelanders, they wanted to work with a material that the entire nation could relate to. The cod was chosen and the idea was to create a performance in its honor in gratitude for the lifesaver it has been to Icelanders over the years. The artists recorded the piece and then played it backwards, so that instead of gutting the fish, it is as if they are performing a ritual and conjuring it together from loose pieces, to make it whole again. Dressed in white, in a white television studio and adorned with gemstones, they create a sublime atmosphere that is a complete counterpoint to the gory reality of the fish factory. From the background comes the echo of a song by Bubbi Morthens, Ísbjarnablús."

The work has been part of the following exhibitions:

2023 Resistance. The interaction of art and science - National Gallery of Iceland, Safnahús
2017 National Treasure. Selected works from the collection - National Gallery of Iceland
2009 Lífróður - Hafnarfjörður Art Museum, Hafnarborg
2007 Gjörningaklúbburinn / The Icelandic Love Corporation - Reykjavík Art Museum, Hafnarhús
2006 Icelandic Video Art - Kunstwerke, Berlin
2005 Independent Heroines Film Festival - Bristol
2004 Sons and Dottirs - Tent, Rotterdam
Boys and Girls - Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw
2003 Behind the Eyes - Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen
Culture Night - National Gallery of Iceland
Praguebiennale1 - National Gallery, Prague
2002 Mósaík - RÚV

The Icelandic Love Corporation in 2002: Eirún Sigurðardóttir, Jóní Jónsdóttir and Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir.