Hels pond is as deep as the mirror of the sky above it. Last week I imagined I was going blind. The darkness closed around me like a fog. And I panicked. Entering the endless halls of Hellheim. Her realm.

 

I pulled the card for adjustment. A blind folded woman on her tip toes. “She could not see the outside world, but she drew herself a picture of the inner world”.

 

“My tent is full of eyes which are able to see everywhere, and it placed itself in the north .. I saw a very great and peaceful brightness which was similar to a flame. This brightness had a lot of eyes in it, and it had four corners turned to the four parts of the world.”

Saint Hildegard

 

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The piece is influenced by Simone Weil’s book Gravity and Grace published in 1947. Examining the two terms through the visions from Benedictine abbess and mystic Hildegard von Bingen - with with a series of rituals at the ancient sacred pagan site for the norse goddess Hel in Berlin - a pond leading directly to the underworld.

 

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Ingeborg Wie Henriksen, is an artist, art historian from the Barents coast of Norway. Johanne Bøckmann, is an artist and architect from Mo i Rana in Norway.

 

Ingeborg and Johanne have been working on a series of performances from 2019 about friendship and exchange of identity. Guided by omens, algorithms and paranoia they create contemporary myths through drawings, performances, collaborative rituals and live action role plays.

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