LIST - Icelandic Art News

KlinK & BanK came about as the result of a unlikely but fortuitous confluence of chance events with complicated origins in the convoluted development of Icelandic society. It is a bit like that chance meeting described by the Comte de Lautréamont and later celebrated by the Surrealists “on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella” and the result has all the chaotic energy you might expect from such an alliance. It’s future, however, is now very uncertain.

Some three years ago a group of artists started a gallery in an unused space on Reykjavik’s main shopping street, Laugavegur. This in itself was not unusual as competition from malls has disturbed the once-prospering commerce of the downtown area and artists have sometimes been able to occupy for a while bits of prime storefront to exhibit, working in various collaborative groups. Such galleries are generally short-lived, their spaces being reoccupied by commerce as the wheels of business turn and losses recouped. The new gallery, called Kling & Bang, proved itself to be more focused than most, though, and its exhibition programme was more ambitious and presented with more professionalism than one would expect from an ad-hock group of young artists. The gallery persevered and became a focal point for the younger generation and an inspiration to those who would not wait to be taken up by the established venues and museums. While shops continued to go bankrupt and be reborn up and down the street, KlinK& BanK, improbably, survived.

At the same time, in another large-scale shift of the economic and demographic make-up of the city, industrial companies were abandoning the downtown area for the open spaces and low-cost land at the city’s edges, leaving unmanageably large gaps in the urban landscape which the city authorities were slow to rezone. One such space had been built by Hampiðjan, makers of nets and trawls for generations. Their 5000 square metre headquarters, a huge building in the accumulated sprawl of downtown Reykjavik, was home to various businesses for a while but was eventually acquired by the National Bank of Iceland as part of complicated deal that included dramatic bankruptcies. The bank itself had recently been privatised and taken over by investors who, while certainly very successful in business, were unusually open to fostering art and culture. While waiting for the city planners to agree to its development, the bank decided to allow artists, led by the group from Kling & Bang, to move in for a short stay, beginning in March 2004. The city was expected to take about a year to finish rezoning the area at which point the building would be torn down and the artists would have to move on.

Some 137 artists, designers, musicians and filmmakers took advantage of the offer of rent-free studio space. This large concentration of creative people were working against the clock. With no assured promise of future accommodation they quickly built a cooperative structure to make full use of the vast three-floor building which, in addition to studio spaces and workshops, includes performance and concert halls and even an informal club, all run by the resident artists on a collaborative basis.

The energy and organisation surprised everyone, not least the bank that had warily initiated the experiment. The artists set up an energetic programme to exhibit their work and organise concerts and performance. They also, using their own contacts, provided space for a number of visiting artists from abroad who came to exhibit and perform. The roster of events is already too long to recount but in just a year and half KlinK & BanK has grown to where it could host one of the most noted events of the 2005 Reykjavik Arts Festival, a collaboration with Christoph Schlingensief.

It now looks as though KlinK & BanK will become a casualty of the very same market forces that made it possible to begin with. The bank has already sold the building and the time allotted to the collective has run out though the city authorities have yet to give their permission for the redevelopment of the site. No one knows what the future will bring though there has been talk of finding alternative sites to continue the experiment.

The people at KlinK & BanK have always known that they had only a small window to build their centre and make the most of it. Though working with the owners of the building, their occupation had much of the flavour of a squatters’ collective, the impermanence and feeling of working outside the system, on a exception to every rule and regulation that would normally stifle such an undertaking. There can be no doubt that they have made the most of it and the collective is now proving its strength by fielding a large contingent at the Berlin Forum, bringing the spirit of the Reykjavik centre to the international art scene.

At the time of writing, there is no decision on the future of KlinK & BanK. It seems clear that in the inflated property market of the Icelandic capital there is no place for a permanent centre of the kind built in the old trawl factory; the land is just too valuable to investors and developers. Whether another temporary solution will be found is uncertain though the Central Bank has given indications of its willingness to continue working with the artists. What is certain is that the KlinK & BanK group has proven it is capable of great things, creatively and organisationally. Whatever happens, it is hard to imagine all that energy just dispersing and disappearing without a trace.