From Oscar of Between, Part 18D
by
Betsy Warland
Oscar got it wrong, Munch’s figure not standing on a bridge but a path.
Bridge?
Path?
Both spaces of between with a difference between them.
June 1976, Norway
On her first trip to Norway, Oscar driving the precipitous roads with her parents to visit relatives.
April 2012, Evening Standard, London:
“The gunman accused of killing 77 people in Norway’s worst peacetime attack denounced the court today on the first day of his trial and gave a far-Right clenched fist salute in front of survivors and relatives of the dead.”
May 2012, New York
One of four versions, the $120 million version of The Scream is recognized as the best. Only this version has Munch’s hand-painted poem written on the frame.
Norway 2012
“As victims’ families sobbed in the public gallery, Anders Breivik…pleaded not guilty…claiming he was acting in ‘self-defense’ against Islam and the country’s ruling Labour Party.”
Home from Berlin, Oscar reads that Munch’s “The Scream” sells for $120 million dollars. As the gavel falls, it becomes the most expensive artwork sold at auction.
Munch’s Scream selling at Sothebys
Photo credit: Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times
Norway, 1895
“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted and leaned on the fence –”
“he placed a car bomb outside the government’s main office building killing eight people…at the Labour Party’s summer youth camp on the nearby island Utoya, took 69 lives…” (Breivik was wearing a fake police uniform)
“there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city.”
“Breivik broke into tears halfway through a viewing of his 12-minute movie…an abridged version of his 1,500 page manifesto…released shortly before…his killing spree.”
“My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
Utoya Island, Norway
Photo credit: Lasse Tur
Telemark Prison, Skien, Norway
Photo credit: Bing Maps
Photo credit: Hamish Robinson
Guest Writer: Aislinn Hunter
Vancouver, BC
www.aislinnhunter.com
Redacted Thesis is unpublished and constitutes the first two pages of a paper given in full at the 2011 British Association of Victorian Studies Conference at the University of Birmingham (the conference theme was Composition and Decomposition).
Photo credit: J.Laskin
Featured Reader:
Eve MacGregor
Vancouver, BC
I read Oscar’s Salon because
it evokes the internal / external betweenness that I know well. Because it is both deeply personal and concisely human.
Profile
Eve is a writer/poet living in Vancouver. She recently completed the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive with Betsy and is a member of the Plays vs. Pipelines Collective.
Munch describing his inspiration as feeling “an infinite scream passing through nature” is similar to Oscar’s response to the Norway violence. Both compel the writer/artist to make mark, or to make “a basic/impression made via an implement/with his or her own hand” on canvas, paper or website. In this month’s excerpts, form equals content. Oscar juxtaposed “cut” quotes from Munch and the media surrounding the Norway killer’s trial. Aislinn Hunter used a redacted technique to “cut out” the work of art. It all comes together in the end of Aislinn’s excerpt: “a young threatens to cut up a picture “Here goes!” said he/making a menacing flourish. ‘and splitting’ To which screams: ‘No!No! NO!’/in order to save from violence.”
The painting is more than believable as a prescient piece of art, for that horror. It also grounds me, provided in context like that, as the vastly more ethical response. The huge price tag and sensationalism are frightening.
In Aislinn’s text: “information … becomes a choice” articulates Oscar’s compulsion to reconfigure the deluge of information that daily reduces us to numbness and uncertainty. Reconfiguring/redacting time gives information underlying meaning. In braiding Munch’s 1895poem, the 2012 the Norway massacre, and the auctioneer’s posture of a man firing a handgun, Oscar discovers a connect between the seemingly disparate that so often renders us isolate; desperate.