VESTFOSSEN KUNSTLABORATORIUM, TO YOU (KUNSTGAVEN 2018-2020), 2021
ORGON HOUSE MARIANNE HESKE Excerpt from the catalogue text, Marianne Heske´s Brave World, by Ingrid Aagaard Holden Heske’s Orgonskap (Orgone Accumulator) was constructed in accordance with the theories of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich concerning a deep-seated biological energy he dubbed orgone. His concept builds on Freud’s original notion of libido energy, but Freud’s disciple Reich develops it into a general life force that includes not only the sexual, but also all energy that exists around and within all living things. More specifically, Reich proposed that a layering and ordering of certain materials could concentrate the life forces all around us, and to effect this conjunction in a way beneficial to people he constructed a box, similar in size to a telephone box, that he called the Orgone Accumulator. Having fled from persecution under Hitler’s nazi regime, Reich was based for five years in Oslo from 1934 – a period during which his orgone treatment became popular. Among those who sat in Reich’s Accumulator were a young Willy Brandt and, much later, Sean Connery, who came to Oslo in 1967 to have his energy levels charged. Whether or not Heske actually believes in the existence of orgone is not actually relevant here, and it is more useful to regard her references to Reich’s theories as a way of bringing old, pseudo-science back to the surface. ‘I work with relativity’, Heske said in an interview with Ken Friedman in 1994. ‘What is what, what is what for whom, where, and when? This is one of the reasons I have used, as a metaphor, discredited scientific theories such as phrenology and orgone therapy. It is a way of asking just how many of today’s theories in art and science disciplines will be discounted in a few years. I employ theories in my work in much the same way as painters employ colours.’i Despite the fact that Heske does not give credence to Reich’s theories at a scientific level, she constructed her Orgonskap according to Reich’s model, faithfully following the principles of organic and inorganic materials arranged in layers. To be precise: Heske’s Accumulator (working from the inner layer to the outside) consisted of a layer of video stills on glass-enamelled steel plates, then a layer of sheep wool, followed by a layer of inorganic steel wool. A casing of sand-blasted wood veneer was added. The imitation was so convincing that, when the Orgonskap was exhibited at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in 1993, the doctors and therapists of the Wilhelm ReichGesellschaft came to see her work, and were full of praise for the life energy gathered by her Accumulator. i
Morgenbladet 25-28/3 1994, p. 14, via Jorunn Veiteberg, To Whom It May Concern, Museet for samtidskunst, 2002, p. 134