Text: The Necessary Angel

By: Cecilia Sjöholm, literary critic and essayist from Stockholm
For: Bigert & Bergström
Other invited artists: Johannes Albers, Petra Maitz (unfortunately a late cancelling), Ella Tideman
Interpol history: At first B&B intended to invite another “artist-dual”, but for different reasons the contacts taken did not lead any results. Then they decided upon the first project that they had thought of for Interpol: terapi taxi. As drivers and partners in the construction of the taxibar at Färgfabriken, they invited three artists.
Project: Terapi Taxi
Music: Johan Vävare
Wardrobe: Pernilla Sparring

 

Imagine that you, somewhere, have a double. A counterpart, a twin spirit, someone who is the same as well as equal. Not an uncanny phantom, “Unheimlich” with its icy empty eyes, but an understanding and gentle spirit who knows your thoughts before you have the time to think, who anticipates your gesture before you have the time to move, who maps out your footsteps before you have started to walk. Someone who knows everything about you and whom you know nothing about.

Then you have imagined that you have an angel.

Angels live like we do, but they live on the other side. They are what we are becoming. They know what we are. We do not know what they are. Every step of the communication goes from top to bottom, not the reverse. Every angel is frightful, said Rilke. Your double is a symbol of omnipotence.

Why do we need angels? Silent, terrifying entity whose faces we never can see, who scrutinize u, whose goodness we never can be sure of, and who therefore continues to haunt our fantasies. He will listen to you, but will never give an answer.

However, the angel is an essential mediator, otherwise there is nothing between ourselves and our equals. Without and angel, there is no understanding. The angel is what is between. Between you and me, the one person and the other, the one who talks and the one who is silent. Irigaray has replaced the power of the phallus with the mediation of the angel as the necessary third. The angel is the third entity who creates order where there is no order, a link where is only emptiness.

But the angel is also a third entity, creating a necessary space. Imagine the chaos from which you come and to which you will once again return in the hour of devastation, as Stagnelius wrote; who is coming then, showing himself, lifting you up once again, giving new stability to your world? A friendly angel. A good double is always necessary reflection of ourselves, helping us to step out of chaos. The angel is twin as well as an entity. You marry with your angelic double, the gnostic believed. We take the step outside and still hope to be able to return by way of good double. We never cease to look for the good double, the mediator, the helper across our internal abyss. Why else are we always fascinated by the likeness of ourselves, by the twin? Why else do we believe that what is identical to ourselves always a bit better than we are? Unless we deep down cherish fantasies about angels being so much closer to us than anything we have ever seen in the real world, closer to our truth.

And why else do we need this stranger, this helper who quietly plays the part of the good double, at the same time infinitely close and infinitely absent? Unless we believed in this angelic mediator to our truth. In our culture the angel has been replaced by media technology; the part of the mediator has been replaced by a space where the same silent answer is waiting for us, lifting us in a miraculous way against ourselves. The communication reaches us, but at the same time its source is lost.

The angel of communication, the angel of history, the vital angel appearing in his dream; this angel we carry along from the very beginning as one of our most original visions. In our weakness we never cease to hope that he will present himself, that we ourselves will appear in the form of perfection, behind the reflection. That which we will become or strive towards – but which we in fact always have been.

But angels, helpers, twin souls have to faces. Good doubles can be transformed at any time and become “Unheimlich”, at any time remind us of what we keep back from our consciousness. Doubles and twin souls can destroy us at any time. That is part of their magic power.

Only angels grant us mercy, but also, only angels keep us in a state of fundamental destitution in front of the superior force. Because the angel knows what we do not wish the world to know. That is why the angel is frightful. It is not the angel who is “Unheimlich”, but we ourselves. What we fear when we see that one who knows everything about ourselves and who we know nothing about is an abyss that we only can fantasize about.

 

Sjöholm, Cecilia. “The Necessary Angel.” In: Interpol. A global network from Stockholm and Moscow. Edited by Jan Åman, Catti Lindahl, Magnus af Petersens, Richard Hammarskiöld, Ulrika Westlund. Stockholm: Färgfabriken, 1996, Chapter R4. Exhibition catalogue.