Endalaust áreiti / Algjör friður is a coworking project made with the french poet Anthony Ghilas
Here is the story behind our book project… by Anthony Ghilas
December 2011
Victor Tsaconas was doing an internship in Akureyri with contemporary artist Gústav Geir Bollason at the Verksmiðjan’s center of arts. I met him there, then we spent a few days in Reykjavík with some of Victor’s icelandic friends.
One night, at four in the morning after talking for hour, we had decided to go out for a for a nocturnal visit of Reykjavik with our host and friend. The town was absolutely quiet and very dark except for the advertizing panels that shone hard on every street corner, vainly. Luckily for the Nordic stars, our friend knew how to turn them off. On the outskirts of town, we stumbled on a blinking panel with hundred of crazy lights and shapes. Once it didn’t blink anymore we noticed someone had graffitied the words endalaust áreiti on the plastic. I liked the way this expression looked and wanted to know its meaning.
“Constant harassment!” our friend replied immediately.
Summer of 2012
Victor had undertaken to cycle around Iceland for a month and since I didn’t have the courage for this endeavour, I met him in Reykjavík on August 9th 2012. We were to stay at his friends’ new house for a party that would last a month…
Back in France in the Fall, he showed me all the pictures from his bicycle trip. I was amazed but even more so when he printed a monochromatic booklet of some of them for a school project. This is when we decided to put our pictures and some of the texts I’d written there together.
Of course I wanted to name this collection with my favorite Icelandic expression but we realized that none of our pictures fully evoked constant harassment so we asked our friend what the opposite would be and he e-mailed us back: algjör friður. Then we realized that there is something in the Icelandic land and character that prevents complete peace to settle, exactly like silence exists nowhere really ; the charming mystery that foreigners can never unveil coming to Iceland.
We finally realized that our pictures all suggest quietude in turmoil and power in peace. This book is unique because it captures our very own personal experiences and our love of this territory ; because it is endless and has no beginning.
Anthony Ghilas and Victor Tsaconas
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View a pdf here
paper, hardback book, 102 pages
