The Northern Pragmatisms Universal Capacity

A doghouse and an expression for social truths, cultural stereotypes, global challenges and universal
problems. The same doghouse a story of wind and weather, which particular materials are easily available,
peoples way of doing things, the tissue of meaning that people associate with the need for finding a
substantial basis under their feet and roofs over their heads.
Simply said, a doghouse as a journey within the most essential pragmatism in lived life, but simultaneously
within the most complex discursive material of vast social, political and cultural constructions.
Still, only a doghouse.

Joars project Doghouse, one of two visual typologies that investigate self-sufficient constructions in the
Northern architecture, is charged with an almost provokingly quiet presence, both in the essential and the
deconstructed. This methodology resembles one he previously used in The Indigenuity Project (in
collaboration with Silje Figenschou Thorsen), whilst traveling around in the Northern areas with a camera,
a notebook and a tape recorder. The method emerges as though imprinted in the work, not unlike
anthropologist sketches of `the Others way of doing things it is just that Joars motif is not `the Other (his
own Sami background from indigenous community annuls this gaze), his subject is the improvised, nomadic
and temporary architecture. To Joar there obviously also lies a philosophical question in the provisional
building traditions, as an architechtonal idiom between the necessary material and immaterial needs.
And with a particular interest for the marginal, is there also present a political discussion, together with an
opposition here?

The magic in Joars aesthetic lies in the apparently simple way of just being there, in a natural way.
There is equally together with Sami wives who have knitted lavvu-patterned woolen jumpers, knitting
patterns and a typology of 20 lavvu constructions that compose the work Saami Shelters. The simple
everyday craft contrasts the the enormous architect drawn lavvu-buildings, and thus become symbols of so
much else rather than the daily life they mimic.

Joar is of a generation artists with Sami background having realized there are no essentialist sizes.
The art piece or Sami has no essence. The absence of traditions, the introduction of lifestyle, and a
(chosen) freedom from tradition, represents a post-structuralist critique towards the idea of essence.

Though at the same time peoples lifeworld is complex and primordial. It answers to our basic reality, the
world we live our daily lives in, the world we experience, talk about and take for granted. With this
exhibition it seems difficult to ignore the feeling that there is something essential here, something that is left
when else is taken away. Joar withdraws the dualism between essence and the constructed. It is not a simple
position, but it offers a non-confrontational platform for points of views and dialogues anchored in both the
risk-laden lifeworld as in the well known complexity.
Joar has made a third space, which houses nothing less than The Northern Pragmatisms Capacity.

Thomas Kintel