Kaspar Bonnén

Kaspar Bonnén is a multi-disciplinary artist working with painting, ceramics, installation and poetry.  His work often explores themes of memory, identity and sense of place - with depictions of his childhood environment acting as a recurring motif.  Kaspar is also a critically-acclaimed author of such novels as ‘Ind Til Min Mor’ and ‘Bag Om Min Far’.  He is a recipient of the prestigious Eckersberg Medal and his work is part of the permanent collections of Statens Museum of Kunst and ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum.  

Explore more of Kaspar's work here

Transcript

KB 0:03

I mean, I also like the idea that every person is an artist, that people they have something to bring and they want their life to evolve. So you can you can bring these artistic or these creative things into your life in many ways.

NP 0:22

That was Casper Bonin, and this is Nordic Portraits. Working with painting, ceramics, installation, and poetry. His work often explores themes of memory, identity, and sense of place, with depictions of his childhood environment acting as a recurring motif. Casper is also a critically acclaimed author of such novels as Interminmoor and Bayon Min Far. He is a recipient of the prestigious Eckersbear Medal, and his work is part of the permanent collections of Staton's Museum for Kunst and Aros Aarhus Kunstmuseum. Casper, welcome to Nordic Portraits. Thank you, Ben. It's nice to be here. Casper, in your 2020 book, Bayom Min Far or Behind My Father, you mentioned as a young boy having often played football by these large metal sculptures that your father had created as public art and quite understandably not feeling any relationship to his work at that point in time. I wondered when was it precisely that art first showed up on your radar? And what was it that compelled you to pursue a career as an artist? Well, that's a great question.

KB 1:55

Um it's funny that you pick up this work of my father, which is in Philippunk, because just the other day I went there with a filmmaker actually. Wow. To make a small art piece there, because he makes these very minimalistic, but this is actually a very geometric sculpture, and it's it's really hard to explain it, but it has some geometrical shapes, and and I wanted to comment on that. So I made a small ceramic sculpture, which was between hills and between uh football. So I'm really into that sculpture and into this kind of yeah, how do you emerge as a person? And so I like this question. I think I remember it when it started. I think it started when I went to high school, and and I was kind of thinking of who am I and what am I going to do actually? And I really didn't know. I mean, I grew up with a mother who was making theater and also was an artist, but she she also had a lot of mental health issues, so she wasn't really always doing it. And then I visited my father, and he was a professional artist, so I kind of knew of art. I mean, in many ways, it was a part of my childhood, but I somehow, you know, I didn't understand it as a personal thing or what need does it have or why are you doing it. So it kind of grew while I was trying to grow as a human, and then it was still kind of a mystic thing to me. I was looking at art and something kind of, you know, you go into this mystery when you see a work of art in that period of life, and it took me in sometimes, and I was really emotionally touched by some artworks, and I like that emotion, but I was still bewildered about it. And I think from there, you know, I was trying to do something myself, and really failing so many times. I mean, also after many years after high school, I was trying to figure out what I can do with this art or should I become an artist, and then I was you know trying to enter this art academy and I failed, and and I went to a photo school and I made a lot of photos, and then I wrote some small poems, and sometimes something came out, but other times I really felt like a big mistake. So I I remember that period of my life very well because it was kind of trying to figure out who you are, uh, and yet you want to, or at least I wanted to to find out so many things about the world. Yeah. Did you ever think to walk away? Um yeah, because you know I applied for the art academy. I think it was the fourth time that I entered, and I think it was a really hard time because society is so hard sometimes, and I just didn't know where to go. So it was really my intention. If I didn't enter the art academy this fourth time, I had to walk away. I mean, I don't know whether I would have walked back, but that was really how I felt at that point. But still, you know, now it's difficult to imagine what would have happened. Maybe I would have an ordinary job. I mean, there's a lot of interesting people out there, there's a lot of people who also want to go into the art academy. And I mean, I was really close to not entering, so something else might have happened. But I mean, I also like the idea that every person is an artist, that people they have something to bring and they want their life to evolve. So you can you can bring these artistic or these creative things into your life in many ways.

NP 5:30

How much did the the mantle of the Bonin name play a role in you being drawn to art? Was it something that was discussed as you were growing up? Because of course your mother was an artist as well.

KB 5:43

Yeah, my mother, she was not really active because she developed a schizophrenic thing when I was a small child. So sometimes she kind of had this creative energy, but most of the time she was in the hospital or or she drank too much and my name because my family is kind of an art family, or there are several artists in my family. Um, it was not discussed. I mean, I didn't discuss it with my father because I didn't really feel comfortable with him, and as you started to say, I was not really understanding what he was doing, and he wasn't really very good at formulating why he was doing art. It was like very emotional to him, even though his thing is very uh minimalistic. So it was not like he could talk about what art really was for him, or at least I didn't um understand it. Uh but of course, I mean if you are a son of bakers in in a small town in Yulan, I mean the way to do art is much longer than mine was because it was really just around, but still it's like a language that you have to explore by yourself and learn. And to me it was a process. And I know some people they kind of just jump into it and they can do art. I don't know how they do it. And and it's it's like a longer process.

NP 7:00

And this process that you went through, you talk about many years of you trying to find your voice within art. Was it mainly an internal dialogue that you were having in trying to find your way? Or did you have peers and mentors who you could use as a sounding board to figure out what art was to you?

KB 7:20

Yeah, I mean, of course, it's always an internal dialogue that you have, but I went to these high school or these small schools where you can kind of focus on some things, and it was very important. And I went to this photo school called Veta Mokena, and that was really important because I needed that space to try a lot of different things. Uh, you kind of just throw something at the table, and slowly it seems like you have to do that for a long time to kind of look back. What was that? And and and you know, I also wrote a lot of poetry and I still do, and sometimes you just write without thinking about it. I think in these kind of uh moments it's when the poetry really can come through, that it's something that you tap into, whether it's your own subconscious or another consciousness, I don't really know, but it's like you have this more fluent understanding of the world. And and it was I just have to, you know, jump into it and feel free to make a lot of errors and try different kinds of things.

NP 8:24

Yeah. In your 2016 book Interminmoor, you chronicle what life was like growing up with a mother who suffered from schizophrenia and an alcoholism in an incredibly volatile environment for you and your sister. I wondered, Casper, what impact do you think that has had on you throughout your life as an adult?

KB 8:50

Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to imagine that my life should have been in another way, and I think that's really important. So I I really try to embrace it, but of course, I mean, sometimes when I listen to other people, then I can see that it was really a tough time for a child. I mean, I had to be aware of my mother, and we were always aware of signs of her being ill, or we have to get her from the pub, and there were a lot of periods where she was in the hospital where we had to take care of ourselves, and and so there was a lot of insecurity, and I think I brought that with me. I mean, I mean, to me, like opening up as a person took a long time, also in relationships and and also to other people, to friends. I was very guarded as a person, so I also think that maybe art was a place where I could kind of, especially in writing, open up to these emotions and try to explain to myself what was really going on. So so it's been a big influence to me. But I think there's a lot of kids who go through these kinds of things that they try to bring uh an inner fantasy or they make this inner world that can be bad, but you can also create a lot of energy and a lot of uh self-awareness in maybe some other areas. I was making once an exhibition where I tried to build this apartment where I lived, my mother's apartment, in a very realistic, but also that had some scary elements. And when I looked at that apartment after I became aware that it resembled some of my paintings, and I was really puzzled because I thought a lot of my paintings had much more to do about that. We live in this chaotic world, complex world. And so I was making it a much more philosophical thing that I was trying to do, but I could see that it was this connection that I hadn't even really thought of myself. So that was really interesting, also.

NP 10:47

Yeah, well, that's obviously a theme that runs throughout your work, and your new book, which is a retrospective, encapsulates that with its title, The Past Will Never Leave You. One of the situations that you write about in Interminmour is the day that your mother abandons you and your sister, leaving you both in the reception of the Ministry for Culture shortly before taking off to France for an extended period. As a reader, that's a really shocking episode. So by writing it, do you get desensitized at all by retelling these stories, or or is it still just as difficult today?

KB 11:29

There was after writing these books about my father and my mother, I talked to a lot of different persons, I mean family and friends of the family. Then there was a couple living below my father, and she talked, Oh, your mother was so funny, and we celebrated this New Year's Eve, and and we were drinking from her shoes, and everything was so funny. And then the next day, my mother came with me in a child carrier and asked, Can you take care of this baby while I'm trying to find a place to live? And I was really emotional, uh hurt by that story because it was like I was four months old, and and it was like that she left me there. I really felt lonesome in that story, and I didn't know that story. So there's a lot of these other stories about I was left there, and I mean, sometimes you know you can't really remember it, but you know it's there, and so I was maybe desensitized to some of these stories. But then I heard this one, I felt really touched and hurt by it. So it's definitely there. This sense of being left and loneliness in many parts of these stories that I tell, and I really tried to also maybe tell them to kind of establish it as a truth. I went to a psychologist and she said, Yeah, you're really I don't know the English term, but it's called Omsous Svictle. Maybe you are here.

NP 12:47

Yeah, you're uh emotionally neglected.

KB 12:50

Yeah, I don't know, but the Omsous Victor is that's really a psychological term, so it it's it's like there's a lot of distance in that, and I tried to avoid that term for many years because I don't want to go through my life being uh a victim of, but still, I mean, of course, I get a lot of memories from that times as you talked about that I was trying to make out about like in some of my work that is called The Past Will Never Leave You. Because of course, these early memories they put some marks on you, and you can try not to capture them there, but liberate me from it and try to be more free as a person. I try to do that, but sometimes they also carry me away and and I can in relationships get feelings of being abandoned or hurt easily. So they have an impact still.

NP 13:40

But I could imagine when you often use your work and your writing to explore memories, that there's a fine line between using that for catharsis and liberating yourself, as you said, versus being stuck in the repetition of dwelling on what you've experienced, if if that makes any sense.

KB 14:02

Yeah, yeah, of course. Um I mean I think we are all in many ways very stuck in our patterns. I mean, sometimes people live in normal families and maybe they're only small dysfunctions for them. It's even harder to distinguish what is really normal. I mean, at least I knew that she was very sick and that it was a paranoia and it was not real. But even though I knew it was not real as a small child, I really thought about how come she has these ideas and maybe could some of them be true. I mean, sometimes it was hard for me to distinguish what was real. And there are also fascinating things about it. I mean, because in paranoia or in these emotional states, there's also a lot of release of energy and a really transcendent world coming forth that is really interesting compared to these lives that we live here in our society that is really regulated, and you have to do this, you have to work eight hours a day, you have to do a lot of things, and we have these patterns of how a family should work, and and and there's so many things in society that it's really hard not to repeat in our lives, and this paranoia is kind of totally disconnected from that, and it has its own reality, and I always like that as a as a really transcendent creative thinking, but then mostly it's dystopic, so it's not feeling good for anyone. I mean, so it's not that I kind of think that it's something that you should seek, but it has some kind of liberation in your mind. I really like this Danish artist, Watatio, who was in a mental asylum for 40-50 years and creating these figures that he was living with and making paintings about who he were 2,000 years ago as a woman in Egypt, or he was a bird, or I mean this kind of imagination that is totally transcending normal thinking. Does your work often go there? Uh I don't know. I mean, I don't think so. I grew up like I had to be realistic, maybe because of my mother. I had to stand firm on the ground and making small, not too big movements. So I really disliked a lot of this kind of new age. And I mean, like corona skepticism and and all these kind of uh areas where people they get enclosed in in certain um almost conspiracy. Conspiracy, yeah, and and easy models of trying to find uh places that is kind of better than here. So I think I stick to this world we are in, but I still like that we should challenge it in many ways. But I'm really interested still in boundless space, and I think some of my paintings they want to create this space where you don't see the boundaries. I mean, they're a lot about where I live and where I used to live, but they are also about a larger space. I I heard a lot about uh UAPs or UFOs recently. I think it's really interesting just to have this idea of something else that is present, whether it's God or whether it's something else. I mean, like I never took drugs, but I like the idea of also that we have this boundless space inside. So I'm kind of drawn to those things, but uh but I've also been a little bit afraid about jumping into that whole thing.

NP 17:30

Yeah, it's funny you talk about being grounded, but also sometimes just hinting towards a bigger space. And I thought about your recent painting, Relics from Inhabited Spaces, which is this uh extraordinary three by two meter large-scale piece and the way that it features domestic elements, but layered in a really interesting way, with for me as a viewer, a certain level of mystery about it. Yeah, so I guess I'm interested in how conscious are you of contrasting the familiar with the unrecognizable?

KB 18:07

Yeah, I think that's really what I'm looking for, actually. I mean, the things that we can see with our eyes, it's so limited and we know it. I mean, we know that the things that we touch and still aren't in the atomic structure, they're really transparent in some ways. So that in the quantum physics that we're really in in a space that we are not aware of. So even in the most physical things, there are many qualities to it that we cannot maybe perceive. And my usual phrases for it is also that in our memory we are really sitting in many spaces at the same time. That sitting here, you and me talking to each other. We know maybe that some people they're sitting somewhere else listening to us, they try maybe to imagine how do I look? How do you look? This voice, what does it tell me? But also, then I imagine something you ask me about my mother, and immediately I go back there, and we can kind of as humans we can be in so many places on the same time, and maybe even I mean, like in the quantum physics and all this dark energy, there's something really close that we cannot really get hold of. So this very large universe that we can only perceive minor details of. So I like the paintings to be about that, and some of it is anchored in my daily life. I really think that this curiosity and exploring element even of these total domestic things. I mean, I think people they want to deep down we want to develop as human beings, and you need this curiosity and this hard work sometimes to strive for something else. So I hope that some of this gets through. But also, I mean, in the painting, it's it's also very much structured in elements. I mean, there are some squares, and so it's like like a puzzle sometimes constructed of bricks that go together in this painting. Some of them have an organic structure, some are uh more squares, some have black and white, and some are colored, and and so it's I hope to invite people into that kind of chaos, but and then at the same time, oh, there's my chair, I know where I am.

NP 20:21

Yeah, and I wondered on a very pragmatic level, when you approach works like this, particularly when you're dealing with a large-scale canvas, are you meticulously sketching everything before you start? Or are you allowing yourself a certain level of flexibility and stream of consciousness as you layer the works, or yeah, is everything very carefully planned beforehand?

KB 20:45

Mostly, I mean, for these larger paintings, I have a few vague ideas actually, and then I maybe start to draw with some charcoal on it and just go by it as it comes, and you know. And then I mean, for this exhibition, I had made like four larger paintings, and when I started, my idea was that they need different starting points. So one was like I started just very colourful and organic, and the other one started with these squares, and so I tried to give them a different kind of energy. Also, I mean when you start a process like a big painting, the starting point is important, of course. So I wanted to make these different starting points so they could grow in different directions. Is that something you often incorporate in your practice? Yeah, it is, but sometimes you know when you look at a painting and you say, Oh, this is a painting by John Carnegor or Teler or Christine of Stoff, like persons that I used to go to the academy with. So I think it's not interesting that it looks like this artist, but I think it's interesting how much can you escape from yourself actually as an artist. And I think it's really difficult. I mean, I could maybe try to start to make a very realistic painting. I'm not so good at that, but you know, and then And in the end, it will look like a Caspar Bonin painting. So I like that idea more that you kind of try to escape some of your ideas as well, but it's really hard.

NP 22:11

Is that often what leads you to experiment with other materials?

KB 22:15

Yeah, I th I think so. I mean, now I've been in my studio for like 30 years or even more, and I think that's kind of depressing to think. So so right in the moment, I'm also thinking about, oh, what can I do? I want to do something out of this place, and it should have nothing to do with art. Maybe it should have to do with planting trees. I'm in a small organization where the goal is to plant trees, but but it could be something else. But on the same time, I'm really bad at it. Kind of escape myself. And so I go regularly to my studio and I think about how I could start a new painting.

NP 22:52

You mentioned, Casper, about the sense you have that humans want to improve themselves and develop by nature. Does it then surprise you how many people don't? That many are content with not challenging themselves and just following the status quo?

KB 23:10

Yeah, but I'm I'm also disappointed about myself. So so I kind of I can't blame others. And I think it's very few persons that I met that changed themselves fundamentally. I used to go in my high school, and there was one guy that was my friend, and and he also got mental sick, and I remember him calling me, and I couldn't recognize his voice. That was really a scary thing. And then there was another guy in my class who was coming from this very low-class background. And uh after high school, a friend of mine met him and he was a mover removalist. But then we met 20 years later, and I couldn't even recognize him. He was like totally changed, and he found out that he was actually really clever, intelligent. He'd made this test, and somehow that kind of changed him, and he had a total new appearance. And I found that really nice that he that it's actually possible. And of course, I mean you can also do it in other skills, like trying to go to a psychologist or meditate or trying to be aware of your patterns and who you are. And a lot of people they do that and they develop as persons, and then others say maybe they don't do it, but it's not like I have to decide what is best. But I think that we need to grow somehow. But then on the other hand, a lot of people they have tough jobs, and you know, I have three small kids. I know I it's not like I have time to sit one hour a day and meditate or go to uh what is it, self-development classes, or so so. Yeah.

NP 24:53

You joked that you maybe aren't that great at it yourself, Kaspar, but I I thought your book that came out in 2020, Bayong Min Fa Behind My Father, that was a step in a massive direction in terms of reconciling yourself with this father-son relationship. And yeah, we've talked about what it was like dealing with your mother, but he's the other side of the coin in terms of how you and your sister survived childhood. You write about the fact that at some point you and your sister Cena are living in an orphanage and your father's living less than a kilometer away with his new family, and he didn't intervene and help you in that moment of need that you both had. Can you remember what it was that made you want to write the book in the first place and why you decided to explore your feelings through a published work rather than a letter or a direct conversation with him?

KB 25:52

Yeah. Um in the beginning when I I wrote the book about my mother, which is very much a book about myself, and I deliberately made the choice not to put my father in it because he always avoided these conversations, and I wanted it to be more clean and about her. But then after writing it, firstly, a lot of friends they asked why he wasn't in it, and I was actually living in the flat besides my father, so there was a lot of questions coming up. It was also living with my mum, it was my childhood, but visiting my father was like small breaks in my daily life, so I never uh came close to him. And I also think I write that in the book. It was like a piece that wasn't there but was still missing. So it was trying to fill in that empty space, also. I mean, it's not like I didn't try to have conversations with him about it. I really tried uh I mean I tried, I don't know whether I really, really tried, but I tried many times and he was always avoiding, and he was saying, Yeah, but I was busy and uh maybe he drank too much. He said that at a point, but but otherwise he was like, Yeah, I couldn't visit you at the orphanage because your mother she she made a police till he so he restraining order. A restraining order, so he couldn't uh visit us, and all these kinds of explanations that was not really explaining why he was never really there helping us. So I tried to talk to him about that, but it never gave me any real explanation or an excuse. So it's been hard for me to to be close to him and to be so distant from him. I mean, I moved in the apartment with my former girlfriend uh because she thought it was a really good apartment. So so I said, okay, I don't want to do it, but uh okay, let's try it. And then um I mean there were some moments that were good, but retrospectively I shouldn't have moved in there. And you know, I'm just thinking about why why should I publish that book? I think it was. I mean, there are different opinions about the book. I think there's a lot of love in it too, a lot of hope in it, but there's also a lot of effort to try to establish what I think is the reality in it, and and that he could never really offer me that reality, or what was his point of view, and why couldn't he be there as a father, and and all these things that I needed for him to explain. And and so it was like establishing this truth for myself and also trying to establish it for I mean, when you do something like that, I know that something would be changed in the family. We had to change some patterns, or or I mean I couldn't go into the same room sitting in a dinner after, I mean, and acting like everything was fine. So it was like establishing this is how I look at this, and and you have to understand this. And of course, that's a dramatic way to do it, but sometimes it's really hard when you try to have this conversation with your parents and they don't even listen or they deny it. So I think I just have to do that for myself, but also put a lot of my longing and hopes and love into it, but also all the bad things that he hadn't done, more than he had done. There's a few things that he did that that I didn't like, but most of the things were what he never did.

NP 29:25

Hmm. So that's a very vulnerable position to put yourself in when you publish that. You write in the book itself that your intention is not that this should be a middle finger so much as an outstretched hand. Were you met by any sort of response or acknowledgement from his side?

KB 29:46

Yeah, it's interesting. The first thing I mean, he was he was proud of me as an artist, actually, and I felt that, but then on the other hand, I felt that that's not who I want him to be proud of. I want him to be proud of me as a person. But the first thing he said was, because there's a line on the back of the book, a quote from the book, maybe when I publish this book, I won't see him again, or something like that. But the first thing he said was, Well, why should I be mad about this? Because it's it's all true, except one thing that he was never jealous about this artist. But like a minor thing, and it was not even I was actually quoting one of his friends that I met. But then uh there was a review in Politik in a larger Danish paper, and so he was kind of he was proud that it had a good review, and and but he was also talking about this bad relationship. But then in the same evening, the review came online, and there was this very harsh headline that wasn't in the paper. Uh, the artist's son talking about his father who is pissing in the bed and something like that. And then after that, I don't think I I talked to him again. But I but I, you know, I was kind of amazed about his first position more than the last position.

NP 31:07

But do you think that speaks to the fact that and you write about this in the book, that you're diametrically opposed, you're a maximalist in your expression as an artist, he's a minimalist even in the way that he organizes his own apartment. Do you think that speaks to the connection point only being art between the two of you and the fact that he could only acknowledge the book on an artist-to-artist level?

KB 31:32

I don't know. I think it was not only to me, I think he had a lot of personal issues. I mean, he had a lot of friends that he had big arguments with when he felt kind of hurt. Of course, he had a long history that I'm not really even familiar with. I mean, I know about it, but I don't know how he related to it and he was an alcoholic too. But yeah, I mean, art was kind of his language. He was where he felt he lived, I think. I mean, he could understand art and see art, and he was very much into reading and he could be very emotional about reading, but in his own life he had difficulty in dealing with emotional stuff. I don't think it's just me, but of course you feel it as a child in another way, because I mean he should be the grown-up, the responsible person. But he didn't have these kind of tools to do that.

NP 32:20

When he passed in 2022, undoubtedly you experienced the full gamut of emotions. How did you process that?

KB 32:31

I mean, we moved away from the apartment because he was so angry with me. He was like going past me on the stairs without uttering a word, and he was writing these very hateful messages to me about I mean, this wife died, and he was writing, you shouldn't come to her funeral. She detested you. And then I said, Well, I'm planning to come. Well, why are you doing that? She really didn't like you, and uh, I'm and at one point before we moved, I was thinking, why can't you even say hi? And you say, Well, I think you're looking you resemble your mother more and more. You're all this uh schizophrenic, no, you didn't say schizophrenic, but all this rappling that you do, and and so it was really hurt, but also really hateful. So of course it's kind of uh very sad that it ended that way, and he, you know, he took his own life. But I I don't think I could do any more to approach him. I I before his wife died, I tried to write them, you know, should we meet? And they really didn't want us to meet. So yeah, and then it went very fast. I mean, I was not able trying to reconnect because he was not sick, he took his own life, so of course it's sad, but it was also liberating in many ways. I mean, I I became much more friends with him after he died. It's been reconciling in a way, but of course it's sad in the same time.

NP 33:58

Yeah. You've talked quite openly, Casper, in the past about the fact that you've had multiple marriages and you have six children now? Yeah. Ranging from I guess four to thirty, would it be Yeah.

KB 34:11

Thirty in a couple of months or yeah.

NP 34:14

Um how has it been for you to be a father, and do you feel like you've been able to break the pattern of neglect that you experienced from your childhood?

KB 34:26

Yeah, I think so. But I mean there has been some some issues with my older sons, but I when I got my first child, I was 27, and I thought it was the best thing. I felt a lot of love in me, and I was not prepared for that in a way. So it was really liberating, I think. I think I'd been in this mode of questioning everything in myself. I mean, from very daily things and into my art, and everything was kind of so self-centered, and it brought another center in my life. I think I've been a good father, I think I could have been a better partner. Uh I think it was difficult for me to to open up and also to think that you could actually that I could actually and we could, I mean, a partner and me could actually change things in a relationship. I kind of felt stuck in many ways. Uh but I always really felt the role as a father as a very comforting thing for me, but also to be with my kids. Then it's been difficult sometimes. I mean, this is my third relationship where I have kids and to bring all these things together and that brought some difficulties. Uh and I also think being with smaller kids has been easier than with grown-up kids. There's some other needs there that is harder to to look into, maybe if they don't tell you. But I I really like connecting with my kids. I feel really intimate and feel the love in them and me, and that's comforting and joyful.

NP 36:07

You said earlier that through your childhood and understandably as a result of this volatile environment you grew up in, that you perhaps found it more difficult to be vulnerable. These written works of yours struck me as a reader to be very even-handed and loving in the way that you reflect on the relationship to your parents. Has your art helped you to unlock this vulnerability? Yeah, I think so, definitely.

KB 36:35

I mean, I think I've had that vulnerability all the way, but to keep that alive and to check into it again and to be touched by fragility and not locking it away, and to relive it sometimes. Also, I mean, when you write, there's a lot of stuff that you remember. I mean, it's like, you know, also very old people, some of the things that they remember, it's parts from that childhood, and it's very vivid because it's rooted so deep in you. Uh but still while writing, it's some new things come alive and you start to remember what really happened, and and also, I mean, the loving side in my parents. I think my mother was really uh a loving person, and she was really wanting so much from life and trying to do a lot of things and failing a lot and trying again. So there's a lot of understanding of her as a person, which I not only did through my writing, but was also trying to give that side value as well. And I think also in the book about my father, which is maybe because he didn't experience him as a loving father, but still to feel that connection to him. Uh as an artist, he he really understood that it could be a way of experiencing my own life.

NP 37:52

But as an artist, putting things out in the public forum of a personal nature has never been something that concerns you.

KB 38:01

I mean, when I wrote the book, when I started writing the book about my mother, she was still alive and I knew I couldn't publish it. There was an ethical barrier there because she was not really she didn't talk about her own mental illness. It would have been too much to put it out there, so but not for my own part. I don't think it's been bad at all to put it out there. I think it's been really important to me to dare to put this out there. I mean, I think the worst thing is that it was so difficult for me to try to talk to friends in a very personal way. I mean, that's so difficult for me, or especially among men, to to talk about these vulnerable things. And I mean, this common space is where I should put it, or should I put it in with my friends and my family? But of course, I mean, art is also a way of putting things out, trying to talk about what is really relevant to me as a person. Maybe you can dig a little bit deeper sometimes in these experiences.

NP 39:07

You reference your father in the book saying something that really struck me, where he told you it's never too late to have a good childhood. What do you think he meant by that?

KB 39:18

I forgot who it was a saying from. I think it's something that he kind of learned, but also many from that generation they they think that people they dwell in the bad things and they don't go on and and try to make their life light and do things. So there's a lot of criticism of dwelling in your emotions and not creating your your life as you want it, and rather you stick to the boundaries and stigmas and you kind of dig yourself down into your own problems. But then of course there's another side of it that I don't think you stick to it. I think it sticks to you. I think you have to understand it. I mean, I think also there's a reason that my father he was an alcoholic. I think he was good at being joyful, but then he also had a darker side, a depressive side. Sometimes he didn't know what to do, so so I don't think he succeeded in that way of making his own childhood good. Or maybe he did, but then he forgot a lot of his own experiences when his father abandoned them, or I don't know how it kind of struck him, but I think it's kind of a denial of your own past. I think you have to go into not only as a person but as society, go into the past to see what kind of drives your history and why you are here. I mean, there's a lot of things that we don't know that drives you. I was very interested because my father's grandfather he was an artist as well, and he's kind of the ancestor of this idea that our family is an art family. He was an artist, and then um he had some kids that they were maybe not artists, but my father and my father's sister and my father's brother, they were artists. Um but then there was another side that this grandfather he was also a member of the Nazi Party, and it's not that it wasn't talked about in my family, but of course, I mean, maybe you you stick to some ideas of your past that you prefer. But I was really interested in why was he that? And I don't think he was evil in any way, he was just attracted like many artists by this freedom of doing. But all these things that you don't tell, they also have kind of a backside that you have to understand, maybe, to liberate it.

NP 41:48

As we draw to a close, Casper, if we were to broaden things out, what do you think is the role of an artist in society today? I think art should really explore all of yourself.

KB 42:06

I mean art is so many things. It's movies, it's music, it's like trying to put the inner poetry, the inner spiritual side of you into being to understand life, to understand yourself. I mean some compare uh art to religion because it has this trying to engage with the deepest side of yourself, but then art is also very much more like an experiential side to it. I mean it can be s sometimes it can be very easy things you do, experiments about geometry, about colours, but then in the end it kind of opened your perception, your understanding, trying to open up the world that you can expand your own view of things, deeper insights. Uh and I think there's a lot of intuitive thinking in art. It's not like when you start art you should have all these big things that you should start with, what am I? But it's just like trying to follow your intuition and go out there and use art as a tool to open other dimensions of life.

NP 43:23

So again, this notion the past will never leave you. How is your relationship today with your past?

KB 43:32

I mean I just feel it every day. Maybe not every day, but I feel it and sometimes I feel sad, and sometimes I uh I'm really lucky and happy, and I mean on the way to this meeting, driving through uh cemetery. I mean, all lives they have very joyful, emotional, happy moments and still some sadness. My fiance, she's a psychologist, so yeah, arguing all the time, but but also having wonderful moments and and trying to kind of get into these conversations about both the uh dark sides and trying to move to towards lighter sides as well. Um you have to be really strong in love, don't you? I mean strong in hope. Then that gives you a lot of poetry to bring into life.

NP 44:30

And art continues to be that language for you?

KB 44:33

I don't know. I'm not really I'm not really that concerned about it being art. I mean it's kind of a language for me to to make worlds and it's a way to keep things alive. But I'm more interested in how my life should explore these ideas. But of course it's kind of an important language for me. Sometimes I I wish for other languages to open up maybe more spiritual languages that is kind of uh not so well placed in art.

NP 45:06

Maybe I'm just more searching in these directions. Well, we'll watch on with great interest as you continue the search. Casper, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the program today, and I just want to thank you for taking the time.

KB 45:20

Yeah, thank you. It's been really I I like the way that you pose the question so generously.

NP 45:36

Nordic Portraits is a series by me, Ben Catford. The music was composed by Nina Leal and the visual identity by Copenhagen-based studio Frame. To learn more about today's guest and all the others from this season, visit Nordicportraits.net. You can also follow us on Instagram and remember to rate and subscribe on iTunes so we can get the word out. Thanks for listening.