Imaginings of a past bodega as we observe the remnants. A fictional location. Visitors to such a bodega bar would consume alcohol and drugs, providing food for fictions, a place where truths become tales and tales become truths, a constant swaying between concepts of reality with every swing of the door as a new customer enters. A pencil sketch of a clock hand strikes 11 and the time is set. The owners of Bodega Hjorten are gone and we are left with the stories of the residents in the building, anonymous spectators to the business, and the frozen face of a puzzled Native American Indian letting the off key decor speak of its treatment. The Bodega Hjorten members are mythologized, in the face of neutralization as the 'for sale' signs go up and keen artists and entrepreneurs walk in. Curiosity fills the neighbourhood.
And what is this of a parrot? I cannot see a parrot here? Walking into the bodega we see a junction with another set of doors into the space but we are oblivious to a parrot lighting are way as it noses in on the property's occupation. On the wall, in between the signs of 'Velkommen' and 11 o'clock is a puzzle of words travelling slowly around a circumference of what appears to be the mathematical format of a clock. Stand still enough and we notice its journey moving once per second. Slip to the left and we enter the corridor with teases of a labyrinth of rooms. We see the tufts of grass as the Direktor's old office continues to grow new pastures. Startled by a ring of light we see a parrot this time watching our way as the moods of colours and atmosphere creep past one another on route to the kitchen, where the cold of the tiles shock the heat of the fist punctured door. Continue the circle and you will find your way back to the entrance and now exit.
If we observe the bird species looking, the speed of the batting of eyelids is comparable to a mechanical shutter or in the installation of Parrot the speed of a second as the clock mechanism continues to tick. The three objects in the space create one piece, whose object nature turn into temporal interventions integrated in the space by relative positioning and merging with the awkward decor they support the exclusive, constructed time of Bodega Hjorten.
(Photography courtesy of Tina Umer)