February 28. 2010. Andri Snær Magnason’s Acceptance speech – at the Kairos Award Ceremony of the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S in Hamburg. 

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, my Dear Friends, Colleagues and my Dear Family og hæ – krakkar!

I would like to thank Mr. Christoph Stolzl and Mr. Halldór Guðmundsson for their kind words and all of you for this great honour.

I you ask an Icelandic child about Hamburg the first thing that will come to it’s mind is the word game that is often played when travelling in a car: “What are you doing with the money the lady from Hamburg gave to you?”. You must answer but you may not say “yes”, “no”, “black” or “white”. So you say: I bought a car. Was it red? Indeed – it was read? Not blue ?- No… Then you are out.  So it was funny when I told my children we would actually meet the lady from Hamburg. But we had to use the money on something very special – something between yes and no, black and white. Maybe that is the real space where art lives.

But why did I take this path in life? If you ask my psychologist he would say that it is because I have two mothers – they are identical twins – that creates a very good ground for a strange mind and some complexes – a douple öedipus to deal with for example. Despite sharing the same genes and upbringing – they have opposite veiws on everything. That I might have from my mothers, the ability to see things from two correct perspectives and never quite agree with myself. 

If you would ask my brother he would blame it on Lego – I hoped I would never grow up from Lego. But later I found out that Lego is quite like language – you have prefabricated parts but can build a whole world from them. But the cool thing is that language is bigger, more bricks – and endless colors. Even an old language spoken by very few people – like Icelandic, can be used to create almost anything. And then it can be translated to German or Chinese.

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From Bonus Poetry – published by Bonus 1996 and 33% more 2003

Gathering 

Man’s primal instinct 

was not the hunting instinct  

in ancient times  

before man had spears and weapons  

he roamed the prairies  

and he was gathering!  

he was gathering roots  

and he was gathering fruits 

and eggs and nuts  

and selfdead animals 

I  

the modern man  

I can feel how the primal man breaks forth  

when I race with the cart  

and I gather and gather and gather… 

At the protests in down town Reykjavík last saturday a person climbed up onto the parliaments roof to raise the Bonus flag. A symbol for Iceland’s international business hybris. In the introduction to Bonus Poetry on this web I wrote this last year: “Bonus is Iceland’s largest supermarketchain. It has an appealing logo, a pink grinning pig on yellow background. Many people think the logo should become our national flag. Starting with Bonus an empire emerged: Baugur group, now owning half of UKs retail stores and the crown jewel of the Danish merchant empire: Magazine du Nord.” So now you see how it would look like as a national flag.

Now with added material! 33% more!
Published by: Bonus 2003 

Bonus is Icelands largest supermarketchain. It has an appealing logo, a pink grinning pig on yellow background. Many people think the logo should become our national flag. Starting with Bonus an empire emerged: Baugur group, now owning half of UKs retail stores and the crown jewel of the Danish merchant empire: Magazine de Nord. Read the rest of this entry »