A R T S T A M P . D K

BERIT HEGGENHOUGEN-JENSEN

(DK)

HAIR-EAR PROTEST: I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE AN A STRANGER

Grow your hair! Stay in bed! In 1969, Yoko Ono and John Lennon converted their wedding into a Hair-Peace and Bed-Peace protest, which took place in a double bed at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam, where they stayed for a week.

Their actions were partly a protest against the war in Vietnam, and partly a demonstration for peace and love: stay in bed instead of going to war!

Grow your hair-ears! I reiterate, in a way, in my remix drawings: HAIR-EAR PROTEST.

Remix drawing because I revive a drawing that I made in 1993, shortly after I moved from Copenhagen, and continue working on it in 2010, in connection with the fact that I am moving again. But moving in another way this time. That is, I am moving from an imaginary place to another real linguistic place. I am relocating to a more linguistically pleasant place, and a place where there is room for the subject.

In these HAIR-EAR PROTEST drawings I direct my protest against both exclusion and cynicism. Protest against the distortion of history and the ways in which the subject becomes neglected; including the subject who is inscribed in the image.

Via the drawings I demonstrate in favour of a democratic society, something that can be taken for granted. The right to be a stranger in a democracy. A place where the human subject can also exist. And by the subject I mean the subconscious speech which is structured as a language. Subconscious speech which without doubt controls conscious speech, but without one ever realising it, in my experience.

Examples of historical distortions could be the following: if I claim that my drawings have balls. That the subject is not inscribed in the drawing. That the profiles in the drawings, subordinate to a copy scalpel, are constituted by Isabelle Adjani's nose; Beyoncé's temple, forehead and ear; Else Marie Bukdahl's ear hair; Elisabeth Roudinesco's lips and eyes; Mae West's chin; Nina Hagen's nape of the neck and eyebrow; Angelina Jolie's photogenic media profile; Lady Gaga's beauty spot; Mrs Smith's eyelashes; Gertrud Johannison's birth mark; Tina Turner's skin and breasts.

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