PÅL HOLLENDER; from Överspelat, 1997 CLICK THE IMAGE TO SEE MORE VIDEO STILLS

Pål Hollender chooses the word "confidence" to describe what his art is about - the conviction that you can rely on someone. His latest film called Pelle Polis deals with the subject matter of pederasty. In this project Hollender´s only weapon is - according to himself - his lack of respect for the ethics and moral norms which he, through his work, actually want to establish. Here he talks with Magnus Bärtås. by Magnus Bärtås, Index 3-4.98

Magnus Bärtås (MB): In your work Journal, 1996, you were dealing with a case of sexual abuse that you went through as a thirteen-year old. The video contained interviews and performances referencing several different genres and languages, such as the drama documentary, the social commentary, and the performance documentary. But these languages were not isolated from each other. They meshed together. You were constantly shifting position from being in front of the camera to being behind it. When the viewer thought he was watching a news report, you would suddenly appear dancing and singing some kind of couplet, and when an interviewer, concluding a long conversation, turned his back to the camera, one suddenly saw the word "God" written on his jacket. "When I do a piece, I choose a method that makes it impossible for me to set limits until I've already passed them. When the piece later encounters the viewer, I create a confidence that the viewer is forced to either let down or trust, because my work demands of the viewer that he or she create his or her own limits." Pål Hollender (PH): When I began working with Journal I had no idea whatsoever that it would in the end turn out to be the genre-crossover drama documentary that it became. I only knew that I was going to show little respect to my interviewees by always placing my own subjectivity first, in contrast to the 'objectivity' about the topic that I wanted to get out of my participants. The people I sought out and interviewed during the six months I worked on Journal gave my story legitimacy. In order to approach the senior physician of the child psychology department-the representative of 'reality'-I practiced a song and dance during my trip there, planning to perform it before entering the building to do the interview. Through the use of subjective rituals, I gained control of my encounters with the people who are thought to represent objectivity and legitimacy . I actually felt no limits as to what was possible or impossible to do in my work on Journal. MB: Some of your actions in Journal are violent, which is something it has in common with other video pieces you've done. The violence is directed against yourself. Is it a way of countering the pain that the degradation has caused? PH: That would ascribe me far too much of a sense of distance from myself. The violence is there partly because I can endure it, on a purely physical level. When it hasn't worked out, my way of treating myself and my integrity in the works has only caused me an intangible, unfathomable, and introverted sorrow. But, in the best cases, it has offered instead an extra dimension to what I'm doing, a hint of the underlying motives. I am really willing to use anything I think might contribute to my story. MB: The word trust seems to be important in your art. The theme of trust crops up, for example, in your Överspelat (Overplayed) contribution for the "Konst på bio" (Art at the Movies) project, where you encouraged your brother to reconstruct an event where he balanced his daughter on his outstretched hand. It was a breakneck balancing act. PH: I would rather use the word confidence, the conviction that you can rely on someone, even if it's yourself. Sometimes the idea of confidence is included as a motif, represented like it was in Överspelat, or more "functionally" as in my performance Sauna Massage at the 1997 Stockholm Smart Show 97. When I do a piece, I choose a method that makes it impossible for me to set limits until I've already passed them. When the piece later encounters the viewer, I create a confidence that the viewer is forced to either let down or trust, because my work demands of the viewer that he or she create his or her own limits. MB: The piece you did in connection with a performance workshop, the one that Tony Labat of San Francisco held at Valands Konsthögskola (The Valand School of Visual Arts) in Gothenburg, also addresses the subject of trust. PH: It was preceded by a long succession of actual conflicts-open and unresolved-between a number of students (including me), and the manager of Valand's carpentry shop. The manager thought that we "artists" were constantly behaving carelessly in "his" shop. The morning before my performance, I asked if I could borrow a nice old sledgehammer-a sledgehammer I promised him on everything that was holy to return promptly. I filmed the transaction, and replayed this painfully fresh sequence to the crowd on a tiny monitor during my actual performance. Valand had just relocated to a newly renovated building in downtown Gothenburg. While the last cranes and construction equipment were thundering outside the window, I smashed a hole through one of the just finished walls, threw the sledgehammer into the hole, re-laid the bricks as fast as I could, and spackled it so that no one would ever discover it. Then I waited nervously for a few months so that the manager would begin to miss "his" sledgehammer and call me to task on it. I avoided his workshop until I couldn't stand it anymore. I then made an appointment with him down in the workshop, brought along my camera, and explained to him what I had done, and why. We "talked it out". We watched my video documentary together, and to my great surprise he liked both the video and the idea. Or maybe it was the attention? "Since I have not been gifted with any skill to speak of in either juggling or in other technically demanding acts, my role in our performances has been solely based on my ability to expose myself to things which are either very painful or also very disgusting." MB: About your brother, who took part in Överspelat-someone has said that you devoted yourselves to physically demanding games when you were growing up, that you were always challenging your limits of pain and endurance. PH: I have five older siblings. Together with two of my brothers I have on occasion presented a kind of "freak show" to an audience. My brother in Överspelat works as a physiotherapist but is also a skilled juggler. The other brother is a drama teacher and a variety show artist. Both have traveled around with a family variety show in circus tents during summers for many years and together presented classic fakir, juggler, and fire-eating acts. What we have in common, in this context, is a fair amount of tolerance for pain, and so we have on occasion put our resources together in order to treat people to a full-out, genuine, gross-out show. Since I have not been gifted with any skill to speak of in either juggling or in other technically demanding acts, my role in our performances has been solely based on my ability to expose myself to things which are either very painful or also very disgusting. In Journal, I allowed a few of these "gross-out acts" to remain because I see them, among other things, as part of the pattern of acting out which, especially earlier on, was my life. Since I acted them out in front of the camera, I have never again put myself through at least those exact actions. For the first time, the purpose of the performance was something other than to shock people, and with that I was through with it. PÅL HOLLENDER from Trying to get out of my body, 1996 MB: Your family also participated in the video Vinare (Bullroarer)-in this case your son and your mother. The video is introduced with the words "My mother is an alcoholic." After that, there are no explicitly dramatic events in the video. We get to see your son play while your mom watches. Your son's voice is in slow motion. From time to time they ask if you are filming. Their anxiety increases. For some reason it is one of the most distressing films I've ever seen. PH: Of all my videos, I consider Vinare to be the most violent. It also happens to be my only piece in which I commit a criminal act. It is illegal to publicly represent someone in a way that would cause other people to disdain them. (The exception is if the person has voluntarily given his permission to be filmed, or if the general public interest is so great that it could be regarded as a defensible exposé). By showing the video, I made myself guilty of slander. Vinare exposes our lack of connection, that is, even my own lack of connection to my mother and to my son. To show it is an act of violence against my mother and even against myself. It is I who points the camera towards those I am close to without answering their questions; it is I who comes along with the assertion about my mother's alcoholism; it is I who causes their worry. It is impossible for the viewer to determine if the scene is arranged, or if my mother is really an alcoholic. When all is said and done, the only thing that becomes really tangible is my assertion, and, in the face of this, it will always be me who has to answer for it. MB: To me it sounds like both an appropriate and ingenious idea that you are a participant in the new episodes of the TV show Expedition Robinson, if you consider the ingredients of the show: taxing physical exercises, the ability to endure a series of demanding tasks, degradation, and broken confidences. Even the dramatic form of the program is somewhat reminiscent of your videos: staged reality causes effects that in some cases are difficult to control. When the listless angel of death, Harald Treutiger, smiles at the camera, you are already in Pål Hollender-land, so to speak. At the same time I wonder: didn't you have any doubts about getting involved in an entertainment show that was so close to your own work? "He was a police officer and during that car ride he became the first person I ever confided in regarding my sexual abuse. He didn't file a report. Pelle was acquainted with, and had in fact had sex with, the man who had assaulted me a year before." PH: No, I didn't. It's fine with me that identification with me as a person will already be established by the time I present my project Pelle Polis (Pelle, the Police Officer), since the project works to a large extent by getting the viewer to be able to identify him- or herself with things that lie outside what society, or TV audiences, are probably willing to accept. MB: How did this latest work, which you are calling Pelle Polis, come about? PH: I was contacted by a police officer called Pelle after he had seen Journal at Borås Konstmuseum (The Borås Museum of Art). It turned out that he remembered me from way back. One evening, fifteen years ago, he had picked me up in his car to "drive me home." At that time, I was fifteen and he was forty-one. He was a police officer and during that car ride he became the first person I ever confided in regarding my sexual abuse. He didn't file a report. Pelle was acquainted with, and had in fact had sex with, the man who had assaulted me a year before. When he got in touch with me again, he was 56 years old and was still working as a police officer at the bureau of criminal investigations in Borås. I already knew that he had been notorious in Borås since the mid-seventies as the "cop who picks up little boys." In December 1993, he was sentenced for sexually molesting two boys aged thirteen and fourteen. "I have traced how he used his job and his lifelong involvement in the RFSL board of directors to defend his actions and to influence legislation in such a way as to better accommodate his interest in young boys." I interviewed him over a period of a year, and gathered all the information I had unearthed about his practices and contacts relating to his pederast activities. Most often they were in the form of statements he had made on behalf of Riksförbundet för Sexuellt Likaberättigande (RFSL-National Association for Equal Rights in Sexuality) which in the early 80s had the function of being the official deciding body for the proposed sex crime legislation that's still in effect today. I have traced how he used his job and his lifelong involvement in the RFSL board of directors to defend his actions and to influence legislation in such a way as to better accommodate his interest in young boys. In this personal battle of his, he has cooperated with organized pederasts as well as ridden on the coattails of the powerful and otherwise deeply needed struggle for equal rights for gays. My work depicts how a confirmed victim meets a confirmed culprit. I have filmed him both admitting and denying his actions. I have sought out and interviewed people Pelle collaborated with and who share his attitude regarding the sexual conduct of adults towards children. Among these, is an interview on a dark forest path with a man Pelle knows, the founder of "Pedofila Arbetsgruppen" (The Pederasty Working Group). MB: Pelle Polis, which, as of this conversation, is unfinished has involved a work method that's reminiscent of journalism. It also includes some material that could appear both on the newsbills for tabloid papers and also in the magazine Striptease. PH: Pelle Polis will never be anything but a piece of biased pleading of my own case, but this can also constitute the actual framework of the project. In my work, I have conscientiously kept within the framework of the law: it is my only shield against him. I don't want to risk being sued by him and sentenced-not because I myself wouldn't be ready to make that sacrifice-but because it would jeopardize the project itself. There's really no sense in carrying out a project like this if you can't show the results later on. At the same time, my only weapon throughout my project with Pelle is my lack of respect for the ethics and moral norms which I, through my work, actually want to establish. MB: In what ways were you disrespectful? "I realized that I wouldn't be able to stand hearing him give me his admirable story time and again. So, in order to gain the kind of real contact with him that I imagined would correspond to the uneasiness I felt about him, the thought came to me that I would be forced, in one way or another, to confront him physically." PH: I "screwed" Pelle about a month after I began filming him. As each interview approached, I would summarize for myself what I had so far heard from him, and, beyond that, what I suspected about him. I felt strongly that there was something very twisted about our whole situation. I don't think I was completely clear as to why I had latched on to his first attempt to contacting me ; I understood even less his actual reasons for agreeing to do this at all. Moreover, during our meetings he had been such a damned decent fellow that I was ready to throw up. I had a gut feeling that he had had sex with children-what he calls youths- on far more than one occasion. I also had a gut feeling that he was constantly straightening out and polishing the picture he presented to me of his world. I realized that I wouldn't be able to stand hearing him give me his admirable story time and again. So, in order to gain the kind of real contact with him that I imagined would correspond to the uneasiness I felt about him, the thought came to me that I would be forced, in one way or another, to confront him physically. That he later provided me with the appropriate scenario strengthened my conviction that I should go through with it. He told me how he had felt that the children he had molested had lured him into traps. The children had sat there and created a "sexual tension" which he then could not resist. He also told me that he had decided-because he had promised his bosses this-to wear blinkers, for example, when he was in the sauna of a public bath. This way, he said, he would no longer care about what others did, or which signals they (the children) gave him. With this description in mind, I called Pelle and said that next time we would film over at my place. He accepted. I had, for a while, begun to dress provocatively-slightly transparent shirts, tight pants, and so on-during our conversations. Perhaps he suspected what was beginning to happen. As for myself, I was not at all sure how it would develop. I tried to hold on to the possibility that he could very well be the completely open and on-the-level police officer he presented himself to be, and that the incident with the boys in the sauna was just a one-time slip-up, and that his bad reputation was really just the result of being openly gay in a shitty little hole of a town like Borås. "I felt that he had fallen for my "trap" and I told him that we could go to the bedroom but that I would bring the cameras along. "Let's forget the cameras," he said and I answered "No". In front of the cameras then, he undressed and I did too." I had rigged up two video cameras and had prepared for the meeting by having a little television and a VCR just within reach. I sat at my kitchen table interviewing this middle-aged police officer who had an altogether very honest face. It was late morning, and it was light. Daylight. I brought out a video, put it in, and played him a section of myself jerking off. During what seemed like an eternity I smiled as hard as I could (it wasn't very much). He sat quietly and watched. When it was over and I'd turned off the TV and smiled my smile again, he took my hand and kissed it. We stood up and he hugged me and kissed me and said that it had been very nice. He asked that I forget the cameras and go with him to the bedroom. He had an erection and pressed himself against me and caressed me the entire time and kept feeling for whether I had an erection. I didn't. I felt that he had fallen for my "trap" and I told him that we could go to the bedroom but that I would bring the cameras along. "Let's forget the cameras," he said and I answered "No". In front of the cameras then, he undressed and I did too. He gave me a hand-job, then a blow-job, and jerked himself off. I tried to jerk him off, too, but he had such a tiny cock that I really couldn't get a decent grip on it. For about half an hour I fed the scene by abusing everything I usually do. I never actually screwed him, but I laid myself on top of him as he lay on his stomach, and moved against him so it would look like I was doing it. Both at the time and afterwards, I have been struck by the weight of guilt I feel for using myself and him in that situation, the guilt that it turned me on, and that those currents of anxiety which lay in my being aroused and the consequent drainage of power were nothing compared to how tough it had been before this event always to walk around worrying about him giving me a blow-job. I have been struck by guilt for having been forced to expose myself to his world without gaining anything I could take back with me from it. MB: You say you disrespect the ethical rules and moral norms you actually want to establish through your work. The ends justify the means, in other words. I understand your action as an artist to be deeply moral. To me, it is the kind of morality that goes hand in hand with the passion for truth. The passion for truth creates an attitude that is the opposite of decadence. At the same time, this attitude is akin to the self-righteous person's manic obsession with "promoting his cause," using any means possible. Hamlet is the preeminent literary figure illustrating such a passion for truth. His language alternates between cynicism and melodrama-he would presumably have gone crazy if it weren't for Horatio and the guards Bernardo and Marcellus being able to confirm his visions. But the person who is driven by such a passion for truth will never experience fully that "justice has been done." Isn't it so that the Pelle Polis video is in some ways an anticlimax? You really aren't proving anything with the scenes in which you seduce him, other than that he's...easy to seduce? "When I film Pelle, I am, due to his agreeing to be filmed, allowed by the law to take advantage of his willingness in a similar way to how he wished and wishes the law would allow him to take advantage of the willingness of the underage boys." PH: I don't see my "trap" as "evidence" against Pelle, and neither do I want to present it as such. I would never have gone through with the scenario if it weren't for the fact that I had to make it clear to myself that it was within my power to have his vulnerability within my grasp. He could have sat there for all eternity polishing his image and putting things in order, and I would never had anything but my gut feeling to raise against it. The unfortunate thing for me was that I simultaneously stigmatized myself by staging what we had so far only intellectualized: the situation where a victim meets a perpetrator. I awakened the victim in me and allowed him to wound me. When I film Pelle, I am, due to his agreeing to be filmed, allowed by the law to take advantage of his willingness in a similar way to how he wished and wishes the law would allow him to take advantage of the willingness of the underage boys. After the interview, which resulted in him losing control and allowing himself to be exposed sexually before the camera, he still stated that he cannot keep me from using the material I had just filmed because he knows the film is mine. It was during the 'afterwards talk' and the next few filming sessions that all the things about him that now constitute the central portions of the documentary came up. MB: What effect do you yourself think your work will have? Now that it is going to be shown at Galleri Index in Stockholm, it will, for example, be seen not only by an initiated art public but also by a quite a few school classes. In addition, we are dealing with a subject matter-pederasty-which the media pounces on whenever it has a chance. PH: I can't know what effects my project will have, whether considered as a whole or in parts. I do know that I ended up in a situation I was not able to ward off, and that this defenselessness in itself is something I want to describe, since it lies very close to those things I've always tried to evoke. I can also speculate that the effect of this quality of defenselessness will be dramatically increased by my participation in Expedition Robinson, and consequently its impact might be increased as well. MB: Your idea, again, takes for granted that it is up to the viewer to set limits. Will you be surprised if viewers aren't up to the task? PH: No! ~