Henrik Capetillo

Art can be many things.
Descriptions, experiments, refinements, cultivations, reflections,

demonstrations, protests, play, constructions, seductions.
Art is for me to discover.
Examinations of questions and actions where the answer often

doesn’t make sense, but sometimes discloses that which cannot

be predicted or planned; the unexpected.

Most of my photographic works are documentations.
Captures of a situation or a moment, which give time to think about what

one sees and what it was that lead to that which one sees.
To document means to focus, crop, wait and expose so the image acquires

its own meaning. A meaning which tries to answer the questions that are

the foundations of the photograph and at the same time expands the field

in which we can understand our lives and the possibilities it contains.

Kunst kan være mange ting.
Beskrivelser, eksperimenter, raffineringer, kultiveringer, refleksioner,

demonstrationer, protester, leg, iscenesættelser, forførelser.
Kunst er for mig at opdage.
Undersøgelser af spørgsmål og handlinger hvor svarene ofte

ikke giver mening, men somme tider afslører det som man

hverken kan forudse eller planlægge; det uventede.

Størstedelen af mine fotografiske arbejder er dokumentationer.
Fastholdelser af en situation eller et øjeblik, som giver tid til at

tænke over hvad man ser og hvad det var, der ledte til det man ser.
At dokumentere indebærer at fokusere, beskære, vente og eksponere,

så billedet får sin egen komposition og betydning.

En betydning som forsøger at svare på de spørgsmål der ligger til grund

for fotografiet og samtidig udvider det felt, hvori vi kan forstå vores liv og dets muligheder.

September 2011

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Smitten by sound
A here consist of a there.

Since I was a child the feeling of being a stranger has been part of me, which is not so odd

as I wasn’t born in Denmark or have Danish parents.
I have lived in Denmark since I was one month old, attended Danish schools and my parents

didn’t try to maintain any specific relationship with either Sweden or Chile from where they origin,

but that didn’t restrict my thoughts from moving away from where I was to places I didn’t know.
I remember the time between childhood and adult was filled with imaginations about ‘the other place’,

how did it look and what did people do there and how did they live?
It was not until later that I began to think about how it affected who I am.

The last couple of months I have had phone conversations with different people from different

parts of the world. Strangers that I didn’t know, and even though I know them better today
they are still strangers to me.
What they look, how old they are, which education they have or how they live their lives, I don’t know.
They are all people that have been recommended to me by people I have meet on travels or here

in Denmark, and my request was, that they all could speak English, came from different parts of the world,

had different age and sex, and that they had access to a telephone.

What we talked about was ‘the feeling of strangeness’, in whatever shape they had experienced it.

My intention with the conversations was to collect conversations with different origins, to see

if it generated a general image of ‘strangeness’.

Now, when the conversations are collected, there are two areas that stand out.
The near and the distant.
Smells, childhood, surroundings, dreams.
The world, politics, was and religion.

Whatever the subject was, it was presented passionately.
The feeling of strangeness, it appears to me, is a significant part of our identity.
Something that appears in our childhood and pursues us throughout our lives.

Our attempt to understand it, is our effort to control it.
Maybe it would be better to preserve it rather than try to assimilate it.

Smitten by sound.
Et hér består af et dér.

Siden jeg var barn har følelsen af at være fremmed været en del af mig, hvilket vel ikke er specielt

mærkværdigt da jeg hverken er født I Danmark eller har danske forældre.
Jeg har boet I Danmark siden jeg var en måned gammel, gået I dansk folkeskole, og mine forældre

forsøgte ikke at bevare et specielt forhold til hverken Sverige eller Chile hvor de kommer fra,

men det hindrede ikke mine tanker i at bevæge sig bort fra hvor jeg var, til steder jeg ikke kendte.
Jeg husker tiden mellem barn og voksen var fuld af forestillinger om hvad der var dét andet sted,

hvordan der så ud, og hvordan folk levede.
Først senere begyndte jeg at tænke på, hvilken indflydelse det havde på den jeg er.

De seneste par måneder har jeg haft telefonsamtaler med forskellige mennesker fra forskellige

dele af verden. Fremmede mennesker jeg ikke kendte, og selvom jeg kender dem bedre i dag,

er de stadig fremmede for mig.
Hvordan de ser ud, hvor gamle de er, hvilken uddannelse de har eller hvordan de lever deres liv, ved jeg ikke.
De er alle mennesker der var blevet anbefalet af personer jeg har mødt på rejser eller her i Danmark,

og min anmodning var, at de kunne tale engelsk, kom fra forskellige dele af verdenen, var forskellige

i alder og køn, og at de havde adgang til en telefon.

Det vi talte om var ‘følelsen af fremmedhed’, i enhver form de havde oplevet den.

Hensigten med samtalerne var, at skabe en samling af samtaler af forskellig oprindelse, for at se

hvis der opstod et generelt billede af ‘fremmedhed’.

Nu, når samtalerne er samlet, er der to ting der står frem. Det nære og det fjerne.
Dufte, barndom, omgivelserne, drømme. Verden, politik, krig og religion.

Hvorvidt emnet var det ene eller det andet, blev det fremført passioneret.
Følelsen af fremmedhed fremstår for mig som en væsentlig del af vores identitet.
Noget der indtræffer i vores barndom, og som forfølger os livet igennem.

Vores forsøg på at forstå den, er vores anstrengelser for at beherske den.
Måske det vil være bedre at bevare den, end at forsøge at assimilere den.

November 2004

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Conflict and Balance

An entry (English)

Conflict and Balance

En indgang (Danish)

Text

Biography

Book