/trʌst/2020-2022
Project design Carmen Line Hust
Photographer Nora Benz Editor Annette Ovesen Inspiration Hans Fink This project has its point of departure in the (missing, nuanced, doubtful, sceptical, submissive, affectionate, dramatic) trust, as being the core foundation of (a dynamic) humanity. During the pandemic, I’ve collected chairs from the streets, the garbage and any place, where someone has left a chair behind. In the process, I’ve been reflecting upon how we (during these pandemic times) pass each other objects, share stuff, without being together, and how much it really affect those of us living in dense cityscapes, yet divided/separated and isolated - and how little these objects, things and props really mean in the absence of absence of intimacy and personal presence. The chair, as an object, is both functional, caressing (armchair), practical (highchair), ergonomic (wheelchair), comforting (rocking chair), safe (auto chair) among many others. |
Common in the concept of all these chairs, is our trust that the chair will carry our weight and sustain or support a given need (to rest, to sustain, to uphold, to comfort), initiated in the interaction with the exact chair. Unlike other objects, the chair, once broken, is replaced. And why is that? Because it has failed and, once broken, we fail to optimise our belief that ‘it is as safe as before’. In Danish ‘a chair’ is linguistically ‘en stol’, while to trust something is ‘at stole på’. Literally the chair, in Danish, is a symbol of the trust we mindlessly ad to the chair as an object, and to each other in society, when depending on others and their behaviour during times of crisis. To talk of trust, along with mistrust, as a binary composition in which one does not exist without the other, has become a highly relevant matter in these pandemic times. In the media-nest of fake-news and conspiracy theories, it has become utterly difficult to navigate in the over-flow of (mis-)information. |
Reference
Hans Fink (b. 1944): About trust, mistrust and professional ethics.
Hans Fink (b. 1944): About trust, mistrust and professional ethics.