Apetor

   Here we are, in a watery Scandinavian afternoon from years ago, waiting for some gleeful stranger to throw himself into a frozen lake. We, unseen video-watchers of the internet, gawking from varied distances of time and space through the transmuting eye of the camera, are expanding our experience through a captured vista of yesterday. As we become a society (and world) of fragmented, unconnected people, we can at least have this experience of empathy by looking through the logged video record. This icy weirdo at least seems happy to see us, running up to the camera like it's an old friend. We are pulled into a careful embrace, so his wide unguarded face, bright with amusement, fills the screen. He foists a long silvery bottle of vodka, taking a deep overhead pull and exhaling in blissful release after the frosty sluice. His glance suggests everything is important, and that nothing has ever had meaning. Suddenly he is in the distance, clad only in dark underwear, trundling across a frozen lake: a flushed pink manimal fool moving across the ice in an exaggerated bobble, the kinetic body language possessing the mania of an old a silent film actor. He writhes. He skates.

   Cut to a world in motion from his point of view: rosy feet below us clomping across untouched snow with the muffled crunch and drag of body across tundra. He takes us down into the rough, slushy water of the winter coast, among the groaning echoes of marine pressure and the faint teacup tinkling sound of floating debris. Shambling like an ape, sliding in and out of watery holes, our hero is projected across earth and ice in a frozen plank position like a human sled or taxidermied seal. This hyperactive body is wordless, limited to animal grunts and squeaks, no discernible purpose to his actions except enactment of a spirit of primeval play. His wants and concerns are giddy and inscrutable; he is a god of his arctic world, eternally juvenile and impervious, bending and chopping and nibbling the landscape around him like man possessed with fairy enchantment or extra-terrestrial control.

   Parading with a garland of frozen lake water, grasping jellyfish in the sea, rubbing himself with plants and mud, licking mushrooms, springing from beneath inhospitable terrain, smashing ice over his head, shattering tree and ground with industrial toys and vehicles wielded with a wild, joyous hand, Tor Eckoff is a treasure of Youtube. A Norwegian paint factory worker responsible for videos produced for a decade under the name Apetor, he brings a unique style and consciousness to his video diaries, which track his life through the seasons as he experiences a solitary world in a specialized drunk clown style. Eckoff's work is a record of escalating frolics that tap into a world of unique rules and objectives, where time is disjointed and repeating, where language is visual, wordless, and silly. The frenetic journaling forms loose stories, often darting away into flights of fancy or abrupt conclusions, but always builds on the unique tradition Tor has created.

   We see the true beginnings of the distinctive Apetor style in the spring of 2007, with a video of Tor making bug-eyed faces at the camera and walking to a car to kiss and lick it intensely. In the fall of 2008, Eckoff released the first installment of the On Thin Ice series, a minute long video of Eckoff skating a frozen pond and falling through into water, than slowly dragging himself out and sliding away on his belly. Just a month later, with On Thin Ice 2, we see a more successful combination of the two motifs, silly beast and impervious cold swimmer themes intermingling. Eckoff's wide-eyed stare is there, familiar and alien, contacting us through time and space. It's part of the way Eckoff's videos exploit the power of empathy. There is charm in the friendly way we are invited to share his humble life. We lay down to sleep with him on the mountainside, peer through his foggy windshield, and thrash around with him in his frozen backyard tub. His happiness is contagious, and his world is without danger. He presents a carnival of visceral sensory information to pull the viewer into his world: static-like carve of skates, the trickling, fuzzy bubbles as he peers from below the illuminated surface of ice, the crushing pops of moving weight on snow, the sound of empty vodka bottle rattling along the frozen surface of a lake like a dampened bell: gifts from a faraway exporter of sublimity.

Christmas 2014