As an art historian, I am often assumed to know facts about our past: Names, dates, how one thing led to another, who said what and when. In fact, I know very little about those things. What I do know, however, is how to put things together. Because history is something we do, history is an activity.

 

We argue that certain events are important and others unimportant; we decide what kind of objects that are of interest to us and which are not, we let some voices from the past be heard and some not. Most important of all, we choose which question to ask. This is how we turn the past - something that is beyond our reach - into something else: History. To be an historian has in this sense little to do with"uncovering the past". It is about making sense of both our past and our present.

 

Within my artistic research, working mainly with sculpture, drawing and collage, I experiment with history in terms of an activity.