+/- Or To See If A Pen Works

The title of Birke Gorm's work is fixed by her during our telephone interview. Birke Gorm, born in Hamburg, grown up in Denmark, now studying with Monica Bonvicini at the Academy in Vienna once made a performance entitled "Modification Of Habits."

Birke has spent the past 4 weeks at the stone quarry on the Untersberg together with 12 other sculptors from the Peter Niedertscheider course. "The weather was fine for the first 2 weeks, then it was up and down, rainy days at the stone quarry are very slow. It is important for me to get to know the stone here in this isolated environment, to see where the stone is coming from. I would  not know where else to find a place like here."

"I heard about the Sumer Academy two years ago and I wanted immediately to apply for the stone course, but I only managed to come this year. I did a stone course at the Academy in Vienna but there you work and then you come back a week later. So it is nice to get more into it here, into this intense and meditative work process."

How did the concept of your work come up?

"At the beginning I thought I would like to engrave but no letters, more drawing. It turned out then to be these kind of doodles, you know, what you draw spontanuously and unconsciously when you are talking on the phone with someone having your thoughts somewhere else. I thought it would be nice to see how it is to transfer the drawings that come from a very fast movement into a very slow material, where you suddenly spend a whole day engraving."

Above ↑ we see a testpiece, Birke Gorm worked 4 days on it. During the course Birke got faster. She sculpted plaster cast forms for the worm-doodles, then she cast them in cement as models, then she sculpted doodles out of stone. During the work her left hand ring finger got numb and fell alseep from the hammer vibrations. The + and the - in the title "+/- Or To See If A Pen Works" refer to the positive and negative forms of doodles in the making.

Birke Gorm found a piece of metal at the quarry that she sprayed with granit spray and placed the stony doodles on it. What is cast and what is sculpted? You can check out the work of Birke Gorm and the other sculptors today at the stone quarry. We take the bus nr 21 at 3.14 pm at Bus-stop Hanuschplatz / Schiffsanleger in direction to Fürstenbrunn to see all the completed stone sculptures.

Birke Gorm's left ring finger is still sleeping. "Maybe it will wake up in a week." she says.

"+/- Or To See If A Pen Works" by Birke Gorm, metal, stone, 2014