SIMONE & TOMMY vs. GRAVITY

Conversation between Simone Aaberg Kærn and Tommy Støckel.



Simone: It seems like our projects have had simularities lately, the fact that we both deal with flying, in different ways though. Tommy, have you ever levitated?

Tommy: No, of course not! I do not believe in such things. And I think that people, who tell about experiences where they have levitated, have just been dreaming. It is nothing but figment of the imagination.

S: Now, now! That categorical, and you are saying that right in my face? All of my latest projects are about me trying to regain my ability to fly.

T: Alright, now I have never wanted to question your flying. It would be too stupid, and it is irrelevant to your project if you really have been flying or not. Besides, you revealed yourself in your latest work. I mean, when you base your project on having been able to fly as a child, have lost the ability, and now are trying to learn it again -then what can I say?

S: Well, it is not that big a problem to me. But I have started to include the risks of flying, and show the failed attempts to fly, the falling. To show the "drops" which are the conditions for the basics of flying. You have to be willing to risk a "drop" in order to be able to fly. But Tommy, flying saucers? Is your project about uncovering the UFOs or what?

T: It is very much about doubting the existence of these incredible and scientifically groundless phenomena.


S: Such as intelligent life elsewhere than on Earth, higher intelligence and better ways of life on our own planet, beside the human way, such as dolphins, or such silly things as flying Tibethan monks?

T: Yes.

S: I sometimes think that you are from outer space yourself. Maybe you are just one of the phenomena you are trying to uncover? For example when you, by memory, reconstructed the famous photo of a flying saucer and itĒs uncovering, a picture you saw as a child. On the picture you are posing yourself holding a broomstick with a string to the flying saucer, you had lousily glued together and added three half table tennis balls underneath. Or the circle on the floor made up by potato flour with a pair of footprints in the centre, and of course with a diameter too big for you to have been able to get in there. As if you have fallen from the sky or were the first man on the moon. One should think that you were born in 1969, as I am, with your interest in space travel, moon landings and stars, also when I think of the floor piece where you sticked one thousand white stars to the floor of a bar in Copenhagen. -Are you not a part of the myths you are riddeling?


T: The myths are being riddled, but that has got nothing to do with me being in the fake UFO picture myself. But the picture is exactly an example of a person who has complied some peoples wishes of life from elsewhere, people who do not dare to be responsible for being the highest developed race anywhere. And to comment the asumed obsession with the moon landing, that is in fact not my favorite moon story. My favorite is about the way the Russians cheated with the human placed monuments of man conquering the moon. After the Americans had dropped their moon program, and left about thirteen American flags on the moon, the Russians felt that the Americans should not be the only ones to be remembered. So the Soviet Union launched a couple of rockets with only one mission: to crash on the surface of the moon and spread out a large amount of red stars.

S: Yes, it is a great story, but to come back to the possibilities of extra terrestrial life and intelligence, have you never seen a UFO yourself? Or just something else that could make you doubt? Actually have I, a couple of times, seen phenomena in the air which are difficult to explain, but I was at one of the times quite positive that it was a space craft.

T: I once had an awfull experience of seeing a phenomenon in the sky I really do not know what was. Sometimes, if I am among the right kind of people, I tell about the incident as seeing a UFO, but deep down I am most doubtful, there has to be a scientific explanation. But are you really a "believer"? Do you believe that you saw a flying object that was not a bird or a plane? Do you also believe that you actually have been flying yourself?

S: When I am flying now it is by using cheap tricks, unfortunately not the real deep feeling of controling the airspace -but it is coming back. To me flying is something much more fundamental, and it has to feel great, if I in fact have flown or not is not that interesting, and I would never go to a psychologist or religious fanatics to seek the right answer. And when we are talking about UFOs, I think it is enough that you have seen it. Why must it be proven physically to be believen? Basically people can experience whatever they want, I will be the last one to raise boring, discouraging, positivistic questions, as long as it is a good story.

T: OK, maybe it is just me who has this point of view, but it is very hard for me to believe in it, when I am not presented with scientific facts.

S: But are your work not fakes too? I mean, you are not the one to come up with these scientific facts. For instance your piece with the two table tennis balls, where the one seems to be levitating, just one or two millimeters above the floor, but is actually kept up by a very thin string attached to the ceiling.

T: Yes, of course my pieces are just fakes. I am not trying to hide that I am faking, in fact that is an important part of it.

S: My flying videos are in fact fakes too, but, on the other hand, not really because you can easily see how I do it. The thing is that I can make my dreams come true by using well-known video tricks and lousy editing. The uncovering of the tricks is a part of yours as well as my work, but what are the other aspects of your work?

T: There are many different things I could point out, but in this discussion about faking, I could say that cheating is also used to get around some things more easily, in order to reach some otherwise impossible goals. Just as you are talking about making dreams come true. In my table tennis ball piece I use this almost invisible string to make one of the balls more important than the other, better than the one that just lies on the floor. At a distance they seem to be alike, when you come closer you are first surprised about one of them levitating, and when you discover the string you are struck by the simple and cheap trick.

S: As well as in the piece where you have changed the names in the Guinness Book of World Records with your own name?

T: Yes, it is just as when you talk about gaining control of the airspace, I am not capable of breaking the records, even though I really would like to, but on paper I can make it look like I have, as you can on video. That is the advantage of using media with such a strong authority, because photography and video have a built-in quality of showing the truth, things that really have happened. All you have to do is actually just filming the sky over some city, with nothing but a handheld camera, afterwards pretending either to fly or imitating a fall in a front of a blue or green screen. Then you just have to sandwich the two together in the editing, and you are flying. The way you are flying also seems like you have got this idea that you have to use your legs more than your arms to fly, and do it a little desperately, I did not know that kind of flying before I saw your videos. As if you were a bird of some kind, or maybe a caricature of a bird, it makes it very comic. And especially when you lately have added music sounding like it was taken from a silent movie. Well is there anything you would like to say to finish off this conversation?

S: Yes, I would just like to say that, it seems to me that the Russian star project could be one out of your heart. Only too expensive for you since most of your works are made out of quite cheap almost household materials, and made so badly that they fall apart, often before you even have finished them. Your work are of such a kind I would think boys would make at home in their bedrooms, just for themselves. The latest work seen from you with the fourtynine flying saucers in fishing lines began to fall down at the opening of the show, so I was wondering if I should put my title "DROP ZONE" on your work!



T: That would be OK as long as I do not need to
have your silent movie like music.