Storyboard (Hurlements en faveur de Sade)

Powdered charcoal on paper

Each drawing 21 x 29,7 cm

2011

This series is a sequence of drawings based on the script of Guy Debord’s cinematic debut Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952). The work consists of a grid with twenty-four drawings in which texts from the script’s marginalia alternate with compositions based on the famously blank screen from Debord’s film.

Click here to see Debord’s film in full (via UbuWeb)

Click here to read Ken Knabb’s translation of Debord’s script (via Bureau of Public Secrets)

Opening Chord

Clash City Rockers (Strummer/Jones)

CBS Records,1978

Geometric representation of E minor chord generated with ChordGeometries version 1.1

Software developed by Dmitri Tymoczko, © 2006.

Digital print and coloured pencil on millimeter paper

23 x 23 cm (framed)

2010

The Earth is Soft and White as Snow (But Warm Inside)

Coloured pencil and stelliform passepartout on paper
Framed diptych: 23 x 32 cm (left),  23 x 20.5 cm (right)
2010

Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen

Six extracts from the series One Hundred and Something-Something Drawings for the Lazy and Hearing-Impaired:

Scene One: (water splashes), underneath a certain amount of splashed Coca-Cola^®
Coloured pencil on watercolour paper
42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
2006

Scene Two: (lilting melody played on acoustic guitar), underneath a certain amount of spilled Moutain Dew^®
Coloured pencil on watercolour paper
42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
2006

Scene Three: (violins join in), underneath a certain amount of spilled Fanta^®
Coloured pencil on watercolour paper
42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
2007

Scene Four: (French horns playing), underneath a certain amount of spilled Fanta Exotic^®
Coloured pencil on watercolour paper
42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
2007

Scene Five: (trumpets join in), underneath a certain amount of spilled Blushing Snapple Apple^®
Coloured pencil on watercolour paper
42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
2008

Scene Six: (solo guitar resolves melody), underneath a certain amount of spilled Hershey’s Strawberry Syrup^®
Coloured pencil on watercolour paper
42 x 29.7 cm (unframed)
2009

Photo: Hilde Honerud (5) / Øystein Thorvaldsen (1, 2, 3, 4, 6)

When activating the function English Subtitles for the Hearing-Impaired in the on-screen menu of a DVD, the film is presented with additional sound-transcriptions to accompany the screenplay’s dialogue. If the subtitler in question has performed his service conscientiously, an exhaustive translation of the entire film is attempted: music, unarticulated exclamations, irrelevant auditory detail as well as the production company fanfare is treated as being of (almost) equal importance as the spoken lines. André Tehrani’s series of drawings One Hundred and Something-Something Drawings for the Lazy and Hearing-Impaired, records the first sounds of the opening credits of a Steven Spielberg movie, a sequence lasting a mere few seconds in realtime. A further temporal quality to the work is readable in its presentation: the wooden frames of the earliest drawings have darkened and are conspicuously older than the newer ones. Furthermore, the variations in precision reflects - and has evolved accordingly with - the heightened skill of the draughtsman. The painstaking reproduction of a few undramatic seconds took years to realize and the time consumed is embedded in the images.

Johanne Nordby Wernø