Archive Solutions – Stories in social Symptoms and social Landscapes

The art and archives of Patrick Huse

by: Hans-Jørgen Wallin Weihe

I had the honour of giving the opening talk for the exhibition «Archive – Solution – Stories in social symptoms and social landscapes» in Lillehammer the 18th of June 2016. This particular exhibition was a very special kind of exhibition giving glimpses into the life and art of Patrick Huse and his interaction with a variety of people and landscapes in the Arctic. One of the items exhibited is a letter from a man living in the Inuit parts of Canada. He writes, in a very personal way, about his own life, and illustrate the meeting between local culture and the materialistic dominating Canadian urbanized culture. People identifying with Norwegian local communities not the least from the Saami areas will well recognize the challenges, pressure and tensions described. For the rest of us it is thought- provoking and challenging us to be involved and take action.

The artist experience art as an integrated part of society. Social participation and the essence of art is social. The social value of art is the very essence and importance of art. Art can never be neutral and should actively seek to take political and social action. For many of us who want art as decoration, showing our status and success such a stand is provoking. For others who wish art to be part of social and political action their reaction is provoking. Thus, art has in-built tensions challenging the artist as well as the rest of us.

At the opening of an art- exhibition, we are together with our different expectations to art. Patrick Huse is from the technical point of view a very skilful artist. His drawings, paintings, prints and writing have a high quality. The use of his art is both the decorative, skilful and technically advanced, and the social and political challenges of the present and future. At the exhibition of his works – we have to involve ourselves with the drama of our time, the roots of that drama and the future we are facing. We can choose to involve and we can choose to be passive. The drama is really the drama of our own lives. At the same time, it is the drama of the artist as he is one of us as well as the one being the conductor. 

The selection of works is by Patrick Huse. He choose to expose his selected archive and his insights and memories to us. The archive illustrate deep respect of people with very different backgrounds. Regardless of social status, education and background we all have a story to tell. In the age of standardization, we are standardized being loosing local and well as individual memory and skills. Local and individual knowledge and skills is part of our own survival not only as individuals and societies, but also for the very caring for each other.

As professor of social work, I have travelled and worked in many of the same areas as Patrick Huse.  I have seen the tragic results of humans having no or little contact with local knowledge and identity. One the most devastating results of the meeting between local communities and the urbanized materialistic is the active pursuit of destroying local knowledge and identity. Still, the possibility of healing is very often a question of maintaining and preserving identity. Saying that I am ignoring the grave issues of social injustice and deplorable material conditions. People need, food, clothing and housing, but that is not identity.

In «Archive – Solution – Stories in social symptoms and social landscapes the artist makes us aware of that importance and that it exist even if nearly invisible and eradicated. One his works is a mountainside with an area of agricultural cultivated land in front. Local names and local characterizing of the landscape listed on the picture. Thus, the landscape that from a materialistic point of view is not important is a landscape of meaning and rooted knowledge.

The exhibition in Lillehammer is part of the program with two exhibitions connected to the yearly conference for the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) addressing the topic of “visualizing sustainability”. Those responsible for the conference are scholars at the University of Lillehammer. They want to illuminate us of art and visualizing as a method in social sciences. Patrick Huse has through his career worked with a number of scholars from different disciplines. He use science as well as local knowledge in his art. In his work art is ruling, it is through the eyes of art he makes us see and interact with the topics of social sciences, environment and indeed the very challenges of humanity. The art of the artist is art in dialogue with us that demand our action.