A pair of thighs glimpsed underneath a skirt’s hem, with their moles and comedones, and if we study each point for long enough they form a constellation directing our gaze toward the deepest black hole. We go further and further into the room between the legs, between the lines, while the universe in there becomes steadily bigger and more expansive. Everything’s in there.
A series of images fade in during the zoom:
Star map
World map
Older and older world maps where borders and accuracy shift and more and more imaginary kingdoms appear. We get farther and farther away from the mundane globe, and nearer and nearer Hy-Brasil and Atlantis.
A waffle segment with brown cheese spins in kaleidoscopic crystals. Waffles already have patterns, and through the kaleidoscopic lens every little square on the heart-shaped segment beams different coloured lights into the surrounding air, like mirror balls, freshly fried.
A group of witches dressed in padded coveralls stand in a circle on a marsh, singing loudly and energetically and with their whole bodies. Every voice is different, every voice breaks away from the melody in different places.
A quicker collage sequence begins, perhaps a roll of film with rips and holes:
A girl swims, seen through the kaleidoscope.
Blood, or pinkish-red foaming water, runs into the drain of a dirty sink.
A nebula slowly twists inward in a spiral.
White larvae, insects and butterflies stream out of a hole.
A needle shaft, a little thick, pushes into skin, then punctures and shoots through it.
A thumb is stuck in a mouth.
Jelly flung through air.
Fast movements through hyperspace.
A close-up of frozen pizza topping melting, like a blurrier and blurrier prehistoric world map of Norway’s underground. Closer and closer to Hy-Brasil and Atlantis, in the shape of mythological bits of pepper.
A band, standing by a monument, toss their hair around in slow motion.
A waffle with jam is folded up and looks like blood-covered labia.
Marie Hamsun sits in a white hammock in a summer garden, Nørholm 1943.
Mashed potatoes topped with beets trembling in slow motion.
Body parts are displayed: abstract but sensual curves, one side of a lower leg, an arch, a spine, a close-up of an armpit with curly hair, the dip between collarbones, a wrist bone, an eye socket, an earlobe.
Labia open and close, letting out little drops of blood.
An eye cries or blinks.
A face speaks in tongues, coming extremely close, tears streaming from the eyes and nose, the edges of the mouth and chin wet from drool, lips and eyes swollen in the heat of ecstasy.
Inger from Sellanrå farm squats in the white hammock on Nørholm with her hand in the air. She has short, light hair and tattoos down her arm. Her index finger and pinkie form the sign for Satan’s horns.
Fish balls wobble in their tin, making the brine flow over the edges and down the sides.
A sourdough bubbles, ferments, rises.
A carton of milk, skimmed, fortified with vitamin D, is opened and tipped over a glass.
A long wad of spit hangs from a pair of lips.
Thick blood spills from the skim-milk carton and covers the glass, which is actually upside-down, so the blood runs down the outside and over the table surface underneath, evenly.
A fountain of blood.
Raisins are sprinkled over a bowl of rice porridge, forming the image of labia, if that’s what we want to think it looks like. Raspberry jam is added and the porridge grows redder and redder.
A six-year-old girl sucks her thumb with eyes closed.
Hands above the porridge, dripping milk and jam.
A Midgard serpent sucks its own tail energetically.
A banana that looks like the thumbs-up gesture is inserted into an inflatable vagina and disappears inside it.
Brown bread is sliced and blood comes out, as though it’s a severed arm.
A group of witch girls in leather jackets, white T-shirts and jeans stage the Munch painting The Day After in the shed where Mayhem took some of their most famous press photos.
The three images are superimposed: the hungover lady from the Munch painting, Varg Vikernes from Mayhem and the witches.
A hand with rings and black nail polish with a silver shimmer picks up a white plastic knife and spreads a brown topping, maybe chocolate, maybe shit, on a slice of the brown bread.
The same hand stirs a bloody meat casserole with a wooden spoon, fast. Big bubbles and liquid shapes rise and fall in the pot, like animals that attempt to reach the surface but are stuck in the blood.
More fruits disappear into the same inflatable vagina. Plums, a green apple, a little pear. Grapes.
The thumb that’s sucked starts bleeding.
Smoke rises from the spontaneously ignited occult fire of hatred.
A leech draws blood from a foot.
Gooseberries.
The hand with rings and nail polish stirs the meat casserole without a spoon, the whole hand stuck into it.
The witches that staged The Day After perform a version of Puberty in the same shed. One of them wears a nude suit and sits on the bench with arms held in a limp upside-down cross over the crotch. The other witches are covered in black body paint, and together they create the shadow behind the naked girl, against the graffitied wooden wall. One of them forms the girl’s hair by sitting directly behind her and putting two black hands over her forehead while her elbows point down toward the shoulders on each side of the head. Then everyone looks up, peering at us with ferocious, seething eyes, hating.
Tinned sliced carrots.
The hand is stuck deeper and deeper into the boiling blood soup in the pot. It is reminiscent of a veterinarian’s hand deep inside a cow’s butt. As the arm is pulled out, it has a scruffy live chicken in its hand. The chicken squeaks.
Crabsticks.
Venke tears a sheet from Pan, third edition (1908, with gold typeface and a picture of clouds and sea in gold), puts page after page in her mouth and begins to chew. As her mouth fills with Hamsun’s book, she
