“Emil’s Diary” listen and read
Astrid Gjesing and Anne Neimann Clement
“Emil’s Diary” podcast on the contemporary art portal Art Matter and www.gjesing.org
When Astrid Gjesing first went to the State Library to see and read Emil’s Diary, she was deeply captivated by it. Emil Kjærsgaard, “Østergaard,” Løvel, was a man of few words. He was a farmer, a farmhand in Løvel north of Viborg, with a daily life limited by work, but evenings and Sundays filled with time spent with close and distant family, with neighbors, and with a wide circle of acquaintances. He wrote every day in the period from January 14, 1944 to April 15, 1951. For example:
February 3. The weather quite good with light frost. Work on various small tasks in the morning. Visited dairy manager Mikkelsen’s in the evening.
April 15. The weather quite good. Work. Jævnet Kule. The weather in Viborg for the funeral with Uncle Chr. Jensen’s wife.
Emil’s Diary appears simple, repetitive, stagnant, dull—but almost a kind of haiku. It grips you. It is a life lived. It is time. This experience sparked an idea. Astrid wanted to write to a number of Emils and ask them if they would keep a diary for her for one month. She chose to write—by hand—a letter to 105 Emils spread across the country and from rural areas to the city. From them she obtained a rich trove of material consisting of nine diaries. Of them she has visited five diary-writers and had them read their diary aloud. She recorded it, and out of that came a remarkable and rich material.
Anne Neimann Clement is a cultural mediator and audio producer who in the last ten years has specialized in conveying art through sound. We have collaborated on “Emil’s Diary” in a podcast. It consists of an interview with Astrid about the idea and execution of the project, with audio examples from the five readings. The podcast is produced in collaboration with the contemporary art portal Art Matter, which each month is visited by 55,000–60,000 unique users, and highlighted in their newsletter, which is sent weekly to 15,000 recipients.
The diary is a very democratic art form. Many people have at some point in their lives kept a diary themselves. Everyone knows what a diary is. In the diary, the day is frozen, otherwise it would disappear into oblivion. The small things gain significance. They carry weight. The diary invites us to be observant and to pause for a moment. As the pages fill, the diary becomes the documentation of a life lived. It shows connections, shifts, highlights meaningful events, and lets other things lie between the lines. In “Emil’s Diary,” the universal is elevated to art and the private becomes public. It is a process that requires gentleness and care for the people who have agreed to participate, and openness from the people who see and listen.