M HKA Ensembles

Book, 21,1 x 13,2 cm, 158 p., language : Norwegian, publisher : Oktober, Oslo, ISBN : 978 82 495 1058 0.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2027/727).

Literary synopsis

A fisherwoman cuts open a fish she has just caught, but the heart of the fish keeps on beating. Unsure of what to do, she swallows the heart. The next day, her hands are numb. The fish heart has contaminated her with a rare disease, and she has to amputate both hands. Without hands, she can’t fish, and her only option is to work as a prostitute in Beijing Palace. Subsequently, she gets a hand transplant from an executed prisoner, she gets pregnant and gives birth to twins. What follows is a surreal and funny story, where characters, episodes and scenes are twisted, rearranged and turned inside out in dizzying, fascinating ways.

Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice

Beijing Duck (concrete) is an installation that consists of 54 cubic concrete blocks, made of 537 books cast in cement, in which only the tops of the books are visible. Beijing Duck (concrete) is the remaining stock of Tandberg’s debut as a novelist with the 2012 publication Beijing Duck. The installation work finds its historic parallel in Marcel Broodthaers’ Pense-Bête from 1964; the Belgian artist’s marking of his own passage from writer to visual artist, where he reworked the remaining copies of his own poetry into a plaster sculpture. Tandberg’s books are now encapsulated in concrete, unreadable and unavailable in their original form. At the same time, they have been given new content, by their transformation from literature and syntax, into objects and compact matter. The poignancy of the concurrent act of destruction and reuse is also explored in Tandberg's picture series Beijing Duck (shotgun), where the last remaining copies of the novel have been shot to pieces with a shotgun, and then scanned from various angles.

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