‘It’s Great Until It Becomes Disgusting’: Watch Artists Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg Create a Weirdo Puppet Show About Shame

“Where does the work end, and I begin?” Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg asks in an exclusive new interview
as part of Art21’s Extended Play series. “It’s so hard to
differentiate,” she says, laughing, and a beat later, she groans:
“that sounded so cheesy… even though it’s true!”

Although the fair-haired artist, who appears in the interview
along with her creative partner, Hans Berg, looks nothing like the
handmade clay figures that populate their surreal stop-motion
videos, the feelings the work instils are ones she knows all to
well.

“Shame is one of my predominant feelings,” she says frankly,
explaining that negativity always feels like it can overwhelm a
person entirely, while happy emotions, such as joy, seem to be
fleeting.

“The fear of being trapped in that despair is like a lie that is
so strong, it tricks me every time.”

For Berg, the musician in the duo, music is a way to heighten
scenes and amplify these complicated emotions. While working on a
frantic, aggressive video titled How to Slay a
Dragon, for example, Berg says he was channelling feelings
associated with addiction. The music, he says, is “almost like a siren song, luring you into
something.” 

The videos are filled with nightmarish scenes of debauchery,
with characters acting out their most primitive impulses in
humorous, often cringe-inducing situations. Four of the films the
duo created for a 2019 show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York
will be streamed for free on Art21’s website
this week, celebrating the artists and their bizarre, hallucinatory
rollicking work.

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part
of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. “Screening Room: Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg”
is on view at Art21.org through May 5, 2020.

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration
between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking
artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art
in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch episodes
of other series like “New York Close Up” and “Extended Play” and
learn about the organization’s educational programs
at Art21.org.

The post ‘It’s Great Until It Becomes Disgusting’: Watch
Artists Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg Create a Weirdo Puppet Show
About Shame appeared first on artnet News.