A different temporality, working within different systems, with different methods. Resisting the inherent impatience of creativity. Having the courage to be patient. Rebecka Bebben Andersson’s art studies started with painting and went on to other forms of expression. During her five years at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, she created her own, extremely slow, method of painting. Today, her meticulously constructed collages owe their existence to that same patience. Sheets of paper are painted, then cut into microscopic strips to form works on panels.
When Johanna Theander and Rebecka Bebben Andersson get together, their conversations generally deal with art, femininity, exposure, courage and painting. Some of these have made there way into this text about provocative experiences as a woman, about being devalued but still excelling. 

We’ve talked a lot about that technique and how it came about, how you started out painting but felt that the time you put into it wasn’t equal to the final value of the artwork.

I got stressed out by painting because I knew it could go quickly, and I never want things to go quickly. Then I found a way to work REALLY SLOWLY, and it was so great because that way it couldn’t go fast, so I knew I could stay calm then.

So it was a conscious decision when you started to make your collages?

Yes, absolutely. It’s as if I’m loading them with meaning. It might take 140 hours to make a collage, and I think about the content so much while I make them that it’s like it makes its way into the collage. I can’t think of any other way of doing it. I can only think of things that take a very long time. The other thing is that, with things I make that DON’T take an enormously long time, I don’t take them seriously myself.

The End (ocean), 2012. Paper collage on MDF

You created collages for a really long time, but then you started working on more politically focused art?

I did loads of political work when I was younger, then I stopped because I was moving around and just living in each place for three months. When you’ve been involved in politics and completely indoctrinated by it since the age of about 13, it feels like you need to take some damn responsibility eventually.

Like the way you turned your political activism into artistic production?

Yes, otherwise you can’t justify being an artist, in my opinion. It’s almost difficult to do things that are just… clean. There are still enough good things in the world, right? Lawns are always neat, and lilac bushes. Maybe it’s a women’s thing too. Guys can just go on doing their own thing and get insanely rich from it. But they might never have hung out at Socialist Justice Party meetings or Young Left meetings in their whole lives. I think it’s not just the politicians who are responsible for making things happen in the world – we all are, and that’s why I have to make the art I make.

In 2012, Rebecka Bebben Andersson exhibited the project “NOLLI STHLM” at NAU Gallery. In 24 maps, she reflected on public and private spaces. For each hour of the day, she documented where in Stockholm she felt safe and where she would choose not to go. Her perceived freedom of movement shrank to a couple of the major streets when the night was at its darkest. The maps were supplemented by an animated film showing how the Nolli darkness spreads across the city and then shrinks as the day breaks. The exhibition also included the sculptures “NOLLI FLOOD”. They illustrate the heavy wave of fear, black as night, that spreads across the city when darkness falls. Inexorably, the city shrinks, making the places that are left into as much a prison as a safe area, with the knowledge that those are the only places you’ll dare to be.

NOLLI STHLM #22, 2012. Screen print and drawing on paper

Tell us about how “NOLLI STHLM” came about.

When I went to the KTH Royal Institute of Technology to study architecture, the Nolli maps were part of what we were taught. I sat there in the lectures and thought about how Nolli maps like those aren’t actually true. Because, of course, what is an open or closed/private or public place changes. Over time, but also differently for different people. It became very clear to me then, because even though I lived in the middle of the city and, in principle, right by the school, I realised that I was restricted by my fear of being out by myself in the evening and at night. I started to think about what affected my feelings about different places. If I read in Metro that someone had been raped on Regeringsgatan at eleven at night, there was no way in hell I was going down Regeringsgatan, for example. The more I knew, the more trapped I became. And it was so clear, too, how the guy I lived with wasn’t even slightly affected by what time it was or which way he needed to go to get home. I often slept in various strange places during that period, because I didn’t dare go home. It’s like I was collecting thoughts about all this for a few years. Then, after a presentation at school, I chose to go through with it.

How did you think it would be perceived?

NOLLI FLOOD, 2012 Mixed Media

My professor wanted me to draw the maps by hand, but I chose to make them in Illustrator by following the City Planning Office’s maps precisely, as if it really was fact – just very subjective fact. The point was for it to be as dry as possible so that it would be accessible to people, to make it more credible and less squeamish. Meanwhile the sculpture, “NOLLI FLOOD”, is more a documentation of a feeling. So people get an intellectual experience at the same time as “NOLLI FLOOD” evokes something more emotional and primal.

“NOLLI STHLM” got a lot of press, and you also got a lot of comments from men who didn’t understand what the work was about.

Yes, there were a lot of guys who didn’t get it at all; they thought I should get therapy. Maybe 95% of all the women I’ve spoken to feel more or less the same as me in urban spaces.

What do you think about that?

About how guys think I need to get therapy instead of, as an artist, making a film about my experience of having no freedom of movement? Well, perhaps I think it’s absurd that 95% of all women should get therapy so that men can keep acting any way they like, right?

Because the men are what a girl is scared of at night in the city…

My art is based on my subjective perception. The fact that my subjective perception happens to match up with crime rates and other women’s feelings and experiences – in what way does that undermine my basis for these works of art? Most violent crimes are committed by men and I have to base it on myself, my friends and what I know about how society works. I can’t use my art to pretend I’m afraid of women. I can’t come up with a reason to be afraid of anything other than men just because there are three women in the whole of Sweden who are disturbed and want to kill people. It’s only men that I’ve seen beat people, men I know who have killed people, and who have become nazis who have beaten up and raped women. I can’t base it on some distorted statistic that’s not true.

When I think about myself, I don’t think, “Yeah but maybe I can run away from a rapist.” I see myself as having no chance. That exposure is one of the premises of what I do. I depict that instead of starting to train in Krav Maga. Maybe I’d feel safer and happier if I did that, but now I practise ballet instead because I like it more. Should all women be responsible for making sure they aren’t beaten or exploited by guys, or should the guys be? It feels completely twisted that it should be us.

Two weeks after “NOLLI STHLM” was taken down from the walls at NAU Gallery, Rebecka Bebben Andersson began drawing “The Male Issue”. For a month, she traced every article on violence by men against women from the newspaper Metro. The result was a completely new newspaper, several metres long. As in so many of Rebecka Bebben Andersson’s works, her collection of stories, events and thoughts has an overwhelming effect. The same is true of “The Male Issue”. Like a slap in the face, the grim reality becomes palpably evident.

In “NOLLI STHLM” you base the work on yourself a lot even though you also include material from stories and accounts you have read. But in “The Male Issue”, you base it on completely different material and not on anything to do with yourself.  

I made it as a kind of response to when people asked what I was afraid of after “NOLLI STHLM”. I thought, we absorb this kind of information all the time, which is kind of what NOLLI STHLM is based on: that we know a lot of stuff. It’s not that I personally have been chased down Grev Turegatan; it’s things I’ve read or heard, but also been involved in – we get totally saturated with loads of things. I wanted to show how it passes right through you, getting that kind of information all the time. When I made “The Male Issue”, I wanted to show that I really had read every word by drawing it.

So the drawing process in “The Male Issue” becomes a kind of metaphor for the way we as women react when we read those sorts of accounts, that we’re fed them every day.

At least, the way I react. The way I get into it and get trapped. The way I can’t escape. I think I should work on something else. Especially after “The Male Issue” – it really felt like I was going to die then. It was like I overheated in a way after doing first “NOLLI STHLM” and then “The Male Issue” straight afterwards. I was totally destroyed and knew everything about all the violent crimes; I couldn’t sleep and I was in such a goddamn funk.

When Rebecka Bebben Andersson left the Royal Institute of Art, she presented the project “Jag har känt på friheten” (I Have Felt Freedom). Scenes showing a park or a forest, arduously produced using the well-known collage technique, filled huge sections of Galleri Mejan, and later Confidencen at the Ulriksdal Palace Theatre. Along with the installation, she also presented the text work of the same name. A map in the form of a free poster with stories, observations and facts about her upbringing in day-to-day surroundings populated by men.

What was it like to go back to collage as a medium after your work on “NOLLI STHLM” and “The Male Issue”?

If I’m working with colour in a picture, it’s always the collage technique I want to work with. I don’t know if it’s because I feel most confident with it or because it’s the best? The year before I did “Jag har känt på friheten”, I had worked with so many techniques that were completely new to me. I wanted to do something I knew I could handle before my master’s exhibition, which is insanely stressful anyway.

 The forest in “Jag har känt på friheten” is influenced by your studies in scenography at the University College of Opera. Tell us more about it and about the map.

The semester before I started on “Jag har känt på friheten”, I’d been studying opera scenography at the University College of Opera/the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. When I was meant to start work on the master’s project, it was like I wanted to do some kind of summary. Maybe an explanation of “NOLLI STHLM” and “The Male Issue”. It started with the texts. I gathered different parts of my history that could perhaps be put together and provide a kind of guidance as to why I had come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as public space. It was hard to write the texts. It was so ambivalent: did they leave too much out, or were they too impersonal? I didn’t want them to be too specific, so that they would be more inclusive. Besides, we’ve all been involved in these things. It’s just that we never think about everything at once and put it together. We women could write stories like this forever.

I made use of the ideas from “NOLLI STHLM” about having a part of the exhibition that describes a feeling and another part that is more fact-based. So I wanted a very fact-dense and informative part (the map) that couldn’t be misunderstood. That would be like a map of the installation (the forest). First you see one thing, and then the more you read the more you see something else. I wanted to do an exhibition that was like something performative. Like an experience and like a choreography.

People saw you, but you didn’t see them. It was beautiful, but the more you knew, the more everything became pretend and more and more terrible.

I’d written an essay about situationism before, and I’d had the idea that it wasn’t just life between people that was a society of spectacle; it was public spaces as well. That they were a construct that didn’t really exist. A backdrop. That’s what the map is about. How there’s no such thing as public spaces. And why there’s no such thing, so the Forest came as if entirely by itself. I wanted to describe the feeling of unreality and exposure that exists in the texts. In the exhibition, you came in as if from the back of a stage. You were in the spotlight. People saw you, but you didn’t see them. It was beautiful, but the more you knew, the more everything became pretend and more and more terrible. I wanted to make the visitors feel unsettled, and like a part of the exhibition.
I made the installation as a collage perhaps because I really missed making collages, but also because I think it’s something that’s important to show, that I put my strength, energy and time into this. It’s the same with the map: I gather things up, in a way, and when I put it all together it’s like you can see so clearly that life really, really sucks, like a lump of masculine concrete hanging over you.

You’ve said that the map also serves as documentation of your understanding of men’s and women’s roles in society.

The map is a bit like a portrayal of my childhood. First, you realise that guys have an advantage, so you should be a guy. Then, as a woman, you realise that isn’t going to happen. Then it’s more that you understand the disadvantage you have. That you just accept things they do that would never be accepted if a woman did them. You start to understand that society is all built around letting guys do whatever the hell they want. And then it’s like you just embrace it and it’s just kind of “do whatever the hell you want”. And then you feel like they can go to hell.

In Rebecka Bebben Andersson’s latest work, she continued to draw articles from Metro. She gathered every word associated with misogyny and violence against women. Using those words, she made a pun for each day in October 2014.

Orden (1 October 2014) Pencil on paper

 Tell us about “Orden” (The Words).

It was really a continuation of “The Male Issue”. With “Orden”, I wanted to see somehow whether things had improved after a year and a half in the articles, if it was just last January that there was such a crazy amount of violence against women. But of course it wasn’t.

How did it end up as puns?

I wanted to use the work to highlight this ridiculous way that violent crimes and hate crimes against women are diminished. In the end it became a pun or sudoku, something like “crazy words from today”, as if it’s a joke. But it’s not.

You’ve carried on with the same technique as before, an extremely time-consuming but also physically demanding way of drawing where you didn’t just draw the words out from Metro but also every letter in “Orden”. Why did you go back to that technique?

With “Orden”, I wanted to show what the world is like, but then there’s also the person who is the victim of the crime. I didn’t want to be flippant about the fact that these are real people. I want it to be clear that it’s important to me. But also for the observer – I want them to understand that it’s important, not just for the topic but also for how it’s done. That I deal seriously and physically with the stories I use.

Then I use material that has something slack over it, like newspaper for example. But it’s to reflect another side to the problem: that no one takes it seriously. I want to reflect how the stories are treated like some throwaway product in the daily press. How it’s presented as sensations that people read because it’s exciting, then forget again immediately for the next sensation on the next page of the paper.

It’s a crazy contrast too, the way I do something that takes a massive amount of time and I put an insane amount of patience and effort into something that has no durability and is treated like rubbish. There’s a huge distance between the material and the way it’s done.

And “hatestorm”?

It’s one of the words from Metro that I collected. It’s so crazy that there’s a made-up word that also appeared twice in October last year and that describes some kind of mega-hate against women. So much hate that it needs to be compared to a natural phenomenon.

Untitled III (Sig Sauer + Merkel 8), 2014. Paper collage on MDF

Together with “Orden”, Rebecka Bebben Andersson also presented some new collages. She put these large-scale works together with care, then, in the next step, she shot them with a shotgun. As if all the articles, hatestorms, research and knowledge she had appropriated had finally taken their toll. As if her soul had finally had enough and her body, her instinct had taken over. As if all there was left to do was to fire a shotgun.  

Rebecka Bebben Andersson is represented by NAU Gallery, Stockholm. She has an exhibition in the art booth at Odenplan metro station in Stockholm this autumn. She is working on a concrete school façade for Stockholm konst and has just received a studio grant from the city of Luleå.

 Cover image: Jag har känt på friheten, 2014. Paper collage on MDF, pine, sandbags, photo: Johanna Åkerberg Kassel