Andri Snær Magnason receives KAIROS award
Sagenhaftes Island interviewed the author on the occation of the ceremony in Hamburg 28 February.
Author Andri Snær Magnason will be presented with the Kairos Award in Hamburg, Germany, on 28 February. “You could say it's a sort of certificate of authenticity in the arts world – it makes you more respectable, and draws attention to what you are doing,” comments Andri Snær. “I was told I was receiving the award in October or November last year. The award is made by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation. People in many different branches of the arts have received it: Harold Pinter and Pina Bausch, to name but two.”
Presumably you have been selected for the award at this time because of your work with Draumalandið/Dreamland, which started out as a book, then became a documentary film, and finally a series of lectures. And the award is more than just a piece of paper: 75,000 euros!
“Yes, it certainly makes a difference. The award comes at a good time for me as an artist: not too soon, not too late! It's good for artists to receive such awards when they need them. The Nobel Prize for Literature, for instance, is rarely awarded to writers until their old age.”
You've written many and diverse works since your Bónusljóð/Bonus Poems was published many years ago. Where are you now as a writer?
“Isn't one always at square one? After two volumes of poetry, a poetry CD, two non-fiction books, short stories, a children's book and a science-fiction novel! Maybe I've always been letting my readers down by going from one genre to another. I have never been able to meet the readers' (and publishers') natural demand that I continue in the same genre. It's a form of artistic resistance. My publisher wanted another children's book, but instead I wrote a sci-fi novel, which even adults didn't understand! Maybe it's time to start again, go round again. I'm writing a play at the moment, with director Þorleifur Örn Arnarsson. And I've made a good start on a children's book, and maybe even the bones of a novel, which could end up as a collection of short stories.”
Dreamland, and projects relating to it, had nothing to do with fiction. Was it a conscious decision to get involved in the political debate?
“The effort to save Icelandic nature was quite simply more important than fiction. It's a bit difficult to see now what our role was in the Dreamland project. Were we campaigners? Artists? It's difficult to change the world, even with a documentary film and lectures. So we decided to make a good work of art, called Dreamland. You can't create anything unless you're true to your convictions. And thus I found it a more important cause than, for instance, writing a story of a man with a broken heart in Reykjavík old town.”
Do you think there's a risk for artists in doing too much, diversifying too much?
“That may well be so. It may undermine one's credibility to be involved in too many things. But when I heard about the award, I thought: Hell, I AM doing the right thing! The Kairos Award is made in recognition of some specific activity, rather than for a single achievement. So the diversity of my work hasn't been a waste of time, after all.”
See more about Andri Snær Magnason here.