The posters is based on reworked texts from the upcoming regional plan or reports that has been produced by the Office of Regional Planning in Stockholm. The starting point for the work was the dimension of a social perspective in the planning process. By rewriting suggestions for the future society found in the material but as these suggestion already were implemented, already a fact, and juxtaposing this with images of statistic models, emptied of its original content, it becomes clear that the planning process in fact is a production of ideology.

The posters are yet to be translated, and so far only available in Swedish.

Institutions (poster 70×100cm)

The policy of distribution (poster 70×100cm)

Laws (poster 70×100cm)

Trust (poster 70×100cm)

To share/divide a society includes work also by Janna Holmstedt and Anna Högberg (collaborative) and Johan Waerndt and Monika Marklinger (collaborative)

I will also together with Anna Högberg introduce the project at the “Open Engagement” seminar at Marabouparken in the end of September. A part of the series will also be displayed in the exhibition following the seminar at Marabouparken.

There is also an opportunity to learn more about our work as well as discuss issues regarding planning and politics at the 17 of September, when we’re part of the program “verka” at Studio44

“What is your view?” is currently exhibited in the exhibition “There is no audience / an exhibition about public imagination”, in Montehermoso; in VictoriaGasteiz, Spain. The exhibition is curated by Adnan Yıldız. The project is realized with the kind support of IASPIS

The collaborative work “waiting for the demonstration at the wrong time” (with Runo Lagomarsino) has been selected for Posted 4, Cork, Ireland.

Waiting was an installation in an apartment in the area Nørrebro, in Copenhagen. A video filmed the first of may, the international workers day, was projected on the ceiling of the apartment. The video showed a sky with clouds slowly passing by. What was never said is that the video was edited frame by frame, and all bird, aircrafts etc. that crossed the sky were edited away.

A bench was constructed, and installed in front of a window, with the view towards an apartment building in front, and the street below.

Installation views from Åboulevard 12, in Copenhagen. With Christian Hillesø.

Installation view from Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
In “At fornye en by – to renew a city” a collaboration with Pia Rönicke, where we wanted to raise questions about democracy and citizens’ involvement in decision-making. The starting point was a discussion about Vesterbro, an area in Copenhagen where we both lived when the projected started. It was clear that Vesterbro was changing. The restorations and renovations of worn flats in the Copenhagen Urban Renewal Project had a great deal to do with these changes. One-room flats were joined into two-room flats. In the long term, the rents will rise. When the one-room flats disappear, families and well off singles will move into the area, while low-income, one-person households become fewer. In many ways the modernisation and raised standard are of course positive, but we ask who will carry the cost of the improved standard. We wanted to shed light on the change in the urban environment, both on what we saw as positive changes and those that we saw as problematic. At the same time, by reflecting on our local environment, we wanted to discuss the question of participation in local decision making in relation to the political situation in Denmark. In what way do the changes in Vesterbro reflect Danish society at large, in which the debates before the general election in 2001 were dominated by a rhetoric hostile to foreigners, and sometimes even by pure xenophobia?

View from the information center built up by FFF

FFF (flere folk formidler/more people mediate)
A project drifting somewhere between art and politics, was “More People Mediate” during the EU summit in Copenhagen in 2002. We tried to build an alternative information and exhibition venue. Cultural workers took the initiative to the project, but it also involved political activists who had no previous connections to the art scene.

The background was that we wanted to question the media coverage of previous summits. We believed that in the past the accounts from them had been onesided, with too great a focus on the violence at some of them. We thought that the issues that were raised in connection to the protests around the meetings were often neglected in the news. Instead the established media spread an image of violent riots that were seldom inscribed in a political context.

History, The night, video still

At various occasions since 1999, I have interviewed my grandmother. “History” takes its starting point in one of these interviews. My grandmother was born in Hungary in 1913. During the Second World War, she spent the years 1940–1944 in Finland together with my grandfather and their two children who were born in Helsinki.

History, Margit Miklos, video still

In the video, which is the starting point of “History”, she relates a few days in September 1944, when she flees from Finland, where she came from Hungary together with her husband and children. The story seems largely commonplace, and the flight is not described as dramatically as one would imagine. To a large extent the interview consists of a description of their journey, by car from Helsinki to Turku, further north to Rauma, then by fishing boat across the Baltic to Öregrund. The story is interrupted by more detailed descriptions, or memories, of events and experiences of the journey that the interview covers.

History, The photographs, video still

In addition to the interview and the video with the presentation of the photographs, “History” consists of a third video, which links the two first narratives to one another. The third video was shot on the sea between Finland and Sweden. It is night and most of the time we only see whirling snowflakes. Sometimes snow crystals land on the camera lens and begin to melt slowly. At times, the picture becomes sharper, and the lights and details of the buildings that we pass become discernible. The picture changes from the abstract to the descriptive, from the indistinct to the distinct, from the sharp to the blurred. The documentary character dissolves. What is told is only part of the story, and what we see only fragments of what was. But with the help of these fragments we might be able to interpret our own age, comment and reflect. In what kind of society do we want to live? Who do we have room for here? Do we really have a greater right to live here than anyone else?

Installation view from the Aarhus Art Building

“Some say it’s according to the stories” is a sound work made for the exhibition Minority Report - challenging intolerance in contemporary Denmark. The project consisted of interviews with people connected to refugee politics in contemporary Denmark. The interviews were installed in one of the international Eurolines busses on the route between Aalborg-Aarhus-Berlin for the duration of the exhibition. An additional version of the work was simultaneously installed in the coffeshop at Aarhus Art Building.

During the year 2004, the organisation Komitéen Flygtninge Under Jorden (The Committee Refugees Underground) together with the artists Runo Lagomarsino & Johan Tirén made a collaborative work. Their starting point is an engagement and interest in refugee politics and a will to show a multitude and a range of narratives in contrast to the plain way that the subject is usually represented in the media. The eight different stories are told by people who have been exposed to the Danish refugee politics in various ways. Some are hiding from the authorities, some are waiting for a decision on their applications and some are helping refugees with lawyers, paperwork and support. “Some say it’s according to the stories” are narratives that usually don’t get told and are therefore not heard. Stories that talk about personal courage as well as structural problems within refugee politics of today.

“No Shoes Allowed” sign produced for the Malmö Art Academy 10 years anniversary exhibition at Rooseum.

My work for the Malmö Art Academy 10 years anniversary at Rooseum was to state the rule that you was not allowed to wear shoes at the main exhibition hall, during the exhibition period. I constructed a sign, and two shoe benches that you had to pass by in order to get in to the exhibition.

Installation view, Rooseum.

Installation view from the opening, Rooseum.

By making the visitors take of their shoes I tried to challenge power structures, as well as cultural patterns. I looked at the shoes as symbols of class, power, gender etc and by making the visitors leave the shoes at the door I aimed to dismantle the value of these symbols for the period of time the visitor spent at the exhibition.

A view over the city from the roof of the local parliament

The project “Contribution to an archive” took place in the municipality of Nynäshamn south of Stockholm, as a part of SKISS*. The aim was to discuss democracy from a local point of view, with Nynäshamn of today as a point of departure. I met and had conversations on the subject with people who had different positions in the municipality. The meetings were filmed, and then included in the “picture- and popular movements archive of Nynäshamn”. I made an agreement with the participants that I should not edit the material nor would they be able to edit it after it was recorded. 

The material was submitted to the “picture- and popular movements archive” in Nynäshamn, thus it also became a part of the history of Nynäshamn. In the archive you can find a lot of material, texts, photos, sound recordings from the seventies and the eighties, but no contemporary recordings. 

My thought was also that in the archive the submitted material, or artwork gets the status of a public act. The access to the material is supposed to be open. The recordings can be viewed in the archive, or borrowed at the city library of Nynäshamn.

Ilija Batljan (Social democrat), The chairman of the municipality Nynäshamn.

The series consist of the following recordings:
Ilija Batljan (Social democrat), The chairman of the municipality Nynäshamn. Carin Bohlin Bagge, headmaster at Viaskolan, Nynäshamn. Eva Brodin, teacher as well as local chairman for the teachers union, Roland Dehlin (Moderaterna), chairman of the opposition in Nynäshamn, Carl-Henrik Timan, director of the educational administration in Nynäshamn, Bibbi Otterstad chef at the upper secondary school in Nynäshamn.

The port of Nynäshamn

Contribution to an archive, part 2
As a second phase in the project “Contribution to an archive” I decided to document six places from the municipality of Nynäshamn and add them to the previous recorded conversations. The scenes can be seen as a kind of a background, or a spacial context to the conversations.The places was filmed for one hour, and as in the interviews no editing of the material was done. What happened (or did not happened) during that our in front of the camera will be a part of the archive.

A view toward the entrance of the major supermarket (Coop Konsum)

A view from the forest Nickstaskogen

The series of places consist of the following recordings: 
A view of Centralgatan (the central street), a view over the port of Nynäshamn, a view over the city from the roof of the local parliament, a view toward the entrance of the major supermarket (Coop Konsum), a view from the forest (Nickstaskogen), separating the suburb Nicksta from central Nynäshamn, and a view from road 73 between Nynäshamn and Stockholm.

*SKISS is a project in five municipalities around Stockholm involving twenty artists. The aim is to explore how artistic practice can influence the working environment, social as well as physical, in different working places, in the municipalities taking part in the project. SKISS is initiated by Konstfrämjandet in collaboration with AF-Kultur and KRO.

—————————————-

(I can go wherever I want.)

”Quant au soi-disant dispositif martial qu’on insaura sous l’instigation d’un grand niagaud à qui la garnison avait imparti tout pouvoir, il fut d’autant plus vain qu’il aggrava la situation.”

George Perec, La Disparition *1

I live on the fourth floor in Vårgatan 10b. The building where I rent a flat is joined to many other buildings, and together they form a pentagonal backyard. A tall concrete wall divides the yard, so that each separate building has its own small piece of the yard. The yards are closed to one another. Some of these small yards in the yard are very lavish, with plantations, trees and patios, while others are just asphalted. I never understood why they have divided the yard into these closed, smaller yards.

I sit in front of my computer and am supposed to write a text, a text that actually ought to have been over several years, when the work that it covers took place. Well, I haven’t written it earlier, or at least haven’t written it down before.

“‘Writing’ is given here to an entire structure of investigation, not merely to ‘writing in the narrow sense’, graphic notation on tangible material” *2

The text is an attempt at trying to present or go through my work, and my thoughts in connection to it. Occasionally I make digressions. These parentheses do not relate directly to my work, but I still hope that they say something about my view of art, and about the issues that I work with.

We leaf through a photograph album, look at pictures of what used to be. We try to inscribe the pictures in a story. We write a story with the pictures. We place the pictures in a context: people, years, places. How important is it that everything is correct? Was it in Stavsborg School? Yes, it seems so. There’s Lasse and Ronnie, Håkan, and a few of the girls, Anna-Karin, Petra. But the others, how come I forget their names so quickly? Didn’t they make a deeper impression on me? And Petra, was she really in my class, or is it just that she lived a few houses away, in the “green”, in Älta? An out-of-the-way corner of Nacka, a small nook between Tyresö and Stockholm. Älta with the terraced houses, middle-class and lower middle-class. A few kilometres from the high-rises in Stensö, where the school was, and the gravel pitch. Downtown Stensö with the high-rises, where Ronnie moved when his parents divorced. And on the outskirts, the villas, which would have fitted other parts of Nacka better. But the really well-to-do never lived in Älta – there are other places for them in Nacka: Duvnäs, Storängen, Saltsjöbaden.

Was it in 1930 or 1929? Was it in Hungary or Romania? Does it really matter? On the video, we can see hands that turn over pages in a photograph album. Two people comment, and me asking questions. The hands turn over the pages. “No, you don’t need to include this, you don’t have to film this.” The video camera, searching, a bit shaky, moves to the left, away from the photograph album. Films the table for a while. The tablecloth is white with a raised pattern. Plastic table mats on top with printed green leaf patterns. It almost looks like real dried leafs, such that we made in the junior levels in school. Pressed between the pages of the telephone directory and then enclosed in plastic. Preserved. Pictures are taken out from an orange cardboard box. Apparently it is a box for photographic paper. Or is it just me who add this piece of information because I know that it was an orange cardboard box for photographic paper? I know because it was lying in the bookcase in our house for a long time. New pictures, new comments, new attempts to get the story to make sense. Uncertainty. Disagreement. “No, something’s not right.” A short pause. “No, he can’t have died in 1912. M. wasn’t born yet then. The picture was taken in 1912, it says. He died in 1914.” I ask how he died. Those of you who have seen the video know that this is actually another scene, another life, earlier. “How did he die?” “Let’s not take that now. Let’s talk about it some other time.” In the end, there is not much more to say about the pictures. At least not now. What remains is to make notes, to write on the backs, what was decided: years, places, names. You can hear the pen, and in the background the sound of receding steps.

The video with the photograph album was part of my graduation exhibition, which dealt with aspects of historiography. What is history? How is a personal story written into a larger historical context? What is the place of a more subjective observer in relation to a more general historical account?

In the school edition of “Bonnier’s Swedish Dictionary”, with the subtitle, “Meaning, spelling, pronunciation, inflections”, the word historieskrivning (historiography) is not included. Instead we have to make do with the following explanation of the word historia (history/story):

Historia 1, (the narration of, the science of) what took place in the past, and the contexts of what took place. 2, story (or, joke), 3, event.

And the following explanation of the word skrivning (writing):

Skrivning to write.

But maybe it is in between the two explanations that art can have a function. Perhaps art has a place in the gap between “history” and “writing” in an incomplete dictionary.

At various occasions since 1999, I have interviewed my grandmother. My exam project takes its starting point in one of these interviews. My grandmother was born in Hungary in 1913. During the Second World War, she spent the years 1940–1944 in Finland together with my grandfather and their two children who were born in Helsinki.

In the video, which is the starting point of my exam project, she relates a few days in September 1944, when she flees from Finland, where she came from Hungary together with her husband and children. The story seems largely commonplace, and the flight is not described as dramatically as one would imagine. To a large extent the interview consists of a description of their journey, by car from Helsinki to Turku, further north to Rauma, then by fishing boat across the Baltic to Öregrund. The story is interrupted by more detailed descriptions, or memories, of events and experiences of the journey that the interview covers.

(Margit Miklos, born in 1913 in Hungary. For me she is grandma, or when I was a child, anyu. For a long time I thought that her name was Anyu, the same way as my name was Johan. Miklos comes from my grandfather. Now it strikes me that I have never tried to find out what her name was before she met grandfather. Her name is connected to him, to his name, Miklos. Anyu. Granny. Margit?)

In addition to the interview and the video with the presentation of the photographs, my exam project consists of a third video, which links the two first narratives to one another. The third video was shot on the sea between Finland and Sweden. It is night and most of the time we only see whirling snowflakes. Sometimes snow crystals land on the camera lens and begin to melt slowly. At times, the picture becomes sharper, and the lights and details of the buildings that we pass become discernible. The picture changes from the abstract to the descriptive, from the indistinct to the distinct, from the sharp to the blurred. The documentary character dissolves. What is told is only part of the story, and what we see only fragments of what was. But with the help of these fragments we might be able to interpret our own age, comment and reflect. In what kind of society do we want to live? Who do we have room for here? Do we really have a greater right to live here than anyone else?

In his novel “The Question of Bruno?” Aleksandar Hemon provides us with yet another interpretation of the word “history” by quoting the first edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1769–1771):

”History, a description or recital of things as they are, or have been, in a continued orderly narration of the principal facts and circumstances thereof. History, with regards to its subject, is divided into the History of Nature and the History of Actions. The History of Actions is a continued relation of a series of memorable events.”

In the exam project, the relation between memory and historiography is a pervading issue. What situations do we remember, or what do we choose to tell, to remember? What pictures do we show, and what stays in the drawer? “The History of Actions is a continued relation of a series of memorable events.” But what events do we regard as memorable? What makes something worth remembering? What years, what names, what events are never noted down on the back of photographs?

(I guard an exhibition. Outside the gallery window I see people passing by. Naturally there is much that is more important and more interesting than an art exhibition. What would the world look like otherwise?)

Later, I look at old photographs of myself. I get the feeling of looking at a dead person – someone who does not exist anymore, other than as a picture. The subject transforms into an object. Or with Roland Barthes’ words in Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography:

”I can have the fond hope of discovering truth only because the Photography’s noeme is precisely that-has-been, and because I live in the illusion that it suffices to clean the surface of the image in order to accede what is behind.”

Or with Barbara Kruger’s words in an interview with Jeanne Siegel:

“I think that the exactitude of the photograph has a sort of compelling nature based in its power to duplicate life. But for me the real power of photography is based in death: the fact that somehow it can enliven that which is no there in a kind of stultifyingly frightened way, because it seems to me that part of one’s life is made up of constant confrontation with one’s own death.”

Perhaps this feeling has something to do with the moment that has disappeared. The moment when the picture was taken is gone and will always be gone. Only the picture of what was remains. And soon this picture will have replaced a memory, become a memory.

There is a black-and-white photograph that my mother must have taken. I sit on my father’s shoulders. It is winter and father has fallen through the ice on a marsh and only the upper part of his body can be seen above the ice, and then me sitting on his shoulders. I don’t remember this event other than as a photograph. When was it? Where was it? I think that many of my memories exist as similar pictures, as memories of photographs. The photograph has become the memory.

(I’m getting a new passport. I’m sitting in the photo booth, and turn my head at an angle according to the instructions so that I can see my ear reflected in the black windowpane in front of me. In my last passport I looked straight into the camera. It was not necessary to turn one’s head like this. But times have changed.)

(I come home late. I watch Eurosport. It’s snooker. Kim Hartman comments. O’Sullivan wins. It’s a fantastic game. I zap between channels, and via BBC World and CNN I come to stop at Fox News. The broadcasts are surprisingly alike. On Fox News some expert comments on the development in Iraq with the words, “If they’re nasty with us, we’ll be nasty with them”. At the bottom of the screen, the latest news run as text: three Japanese kidnapped, one chopper missing, terror alert elevated.)

In this way we are presented with photographs and texts, or filmed stories for that matter, in the news, as if they were objective accounts of reality, as a kind of facts or vehicles for truth. There is, of course, something that has to be questioned, or as Barbara Kruger further notes with respect to photography in the interview with Jeanne Siegel:

“And also the thing that’s happening with photography today vis-a-vis computer imaging, vis-a-vis alteration, is that it no longer needs to be based on the real at all.”

Barbara Kruger’s comments refer to the technical possibilities of manipulating a photograph, that, today, there does not have to be a link between a photograph and some kind of reality. Possibly, in this connection, one might ask what makes a photograph a photograph. However, I believe that even if we imagine a photograph that has not been technically manipulated, it can still not be said to be the bearer of objectivity. The picture will always be stamped by the conditions at the time it was taken and the choices that the photographer made. Moreover, our reading of it will always be coloured by the context in which it is presented and the experiences that have formed us as receivers of the pictures.

To critically analyse and examine the sender, to be sceptical about the images that are shown to us in various contexts, is thus possibly more important now than ever before. I think that we must find alternatives to the established news services in order to get different perspectives on the same event. I also think that we have to try to see some of the stories that are not being told. We must ask ourselves what stories will never be running across the bottom of the screen on the BBC, CNN or Fox News.

(We’re in Denmark. I’m taking part in a demonstration. I’m not completely comfortable in this situation. The slogans are inconceivably one-dimensional. Someone is making a speech that I don’t sympathise with. I find myself between signs and banners with simplified messages. This is how it is, and such is still the form of manifestations and demonstrations. Yet, I argue, it was better to take part than to stay at home. The demonstration ends. People return home. Has anything changed? We could have been so many more. Diversity would have been a strength. Why weren’t you there, with or without signs).

Occasionally I have taken part in events where the line between politics and art has been indistinct. Some might have seen these projects as art, while others have seen them as political actions. On these occasions the question whether it was politics or art has not been very important to me. For me, the content, the issues, the reflections and discussions have been central. At the same time, I cannot disregard the fact that form and content depend on and affect one another. Our reading of a project is affected by its look. The form becomes a tool to use. A means to communicate with.

One of these projects, drifting somewhere between art and politics, was “More People Mediate” during the EU summit in Copenhagen in 2002. We tried to build an alternative information and exhibition venue. Cultural workers took the initiative to the project, but it also involved political activists who had no previous connections to the art scene.

The background was that we wanted to question the media coverage of previous summits. We believed that in the past the accounts from them had been one-sided, with too great a focus on the violence at some of them. We thought that the issues that were raised in connection to the protests around the meetings were often neglected in the news. Instead the established media spread an image of violent riots that were seldom inscribed in a political context.

(Runo and me are being searched by the police again. This is the third time in two days, but never in connection to a demonstration. From our perspective it is incomprehensible. This time we have to take out all our stuff from our bags and put it on the street in front of us in a long line. Clothes, notepads, wallets. They flash their torches in our eyes. Write down the colour of our eyes. Write down how tall we are. Write down our addresses. Write down our names. They check the phone numbers that Rune has called on his mobile. Passers by look on interestedly.)

Our idea was that during the EU summit the information centre would be a place where people could find information about demonstrations, actions and lectures, but also about the official program of the summit. To this end we also set up an archive with background information in the form of press cuttings, books and films. The archive grew as anyone who wanted could hand in anything that they thought was relevant. In the course of the summit, people continuously provided the archive with information of what had been going on during the week. We didn’t reject anything that was handed in. The archive was based on the subjective contributions of the participants, and contrasted with the so-called “objective” picture of the summit in the established press. In one perspective, the information centre worked as a meeting point, where discussions and lectures were held. Another aspect was that by attempting to give as many-facetted a picture as possible, without in any way claiming that it was complete, it shed light on and questioned the notion of objectivity in news reporting. By constructing an alternative information centre we wished to problematise the official picture of these meetings and the reports from them.

It is impossible for me to see an image, or a text for that matter, as something objective. Objectiveness is an impossibility. How could we hope to see everything?

(I’m asked a question, something about how I see art and politics. I say that for an artist today it is impossible to be neutral. I say that it is impossible to be neutral, in the sense that one will always support one political direction or position through one’s neutrality in one way or another. And it is very probable that it is the prevailing power structure that one will support. Remaining neutral is also taking a position. In this sense, all art has a political side, whether the artist admits it or not.)

Perhaps the politics in my work have been most evident in various collaborations with other artists, such as the project with the information centre, or a project I did with Pia Rönicke, where we wanted to raise questions about democracy and citizens’ involvement in decision-making. The starting point was a discussion about Vesterbro, an area in Copenhagen where we both lived when the projected started. It was clear that Vesterbro was changing. The restorations and renovations of worn flats in the Copenhagen Urban Renewal Project had a great deal to do with these changes. One-room flats were joined into two-room flats. In the long term, the rents will rise. When the one-room flats disappear, families and well off singles will move into the area, while low-income, one-person households become fewer. In many ways the modernisation and raised standard are of course positive, but we ask who will carry the cost of the improved standard. We wanted to shed light on the change in the urban environment, both on what we saw as positive changes and those that we saw as problematic. At the same time, by reflecting on our local environment, we wanted to discuss the question of participation in local decision making in relation to the political situation in Denmark. In what way do the changes in Vesterbro reflect Danish society at large, in which the debates before the general election in 2001 were dominated by a rhetoric hostile to foreigners, and sometimes even by pure xenophobia?

I have also worked with the experience of coming to Copenhagen. Copenhagen was a new city to me, and Denmark a new country. Perhaps it is easier to notice problems such as xenophobia and homophobia when one comes from the outside to a new environment, where the conventions are partly different than what one is used to. It is very probable that it is easier to notice other people’s prejudices than one’s own. By saying this I want to say that xenophobia and homophobia are of course not specifically Danish phenomena, something that becomes obvious if one considers the political development in several European countries in the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 21st century with the successes of right-wing extremist parties. But it was still obvious to me how plainly this spirit manifested itself in the rhetoric of the political parties, from the social democrats on the left, via liberal Venstre and the conservative party, to Danish People’s Party on the extreme right. I saw how this rhetoric was used unreflectingly in the press, and how it found its way into the everyday jargon in the pubs and cafés as jokes about homosexuals and immigrants. From my own situation in Copenhagen I thought a lot about notions such as integration and segregation. Now, a couple of years later, I think that I can see similar formulations becoming accepted and used in the Swedish debate. Perhaps it is time to ask what kind of society we live in when the ruling party introduce a term such as “social tourism” and propose that refugees be DNA tested. Perhaps it is time to ask if this is a society in which we want to live.

Allow me to end by returning to historiography for a while with a scene that comes back several times in Theo Angelopolus’ film Ulysses’ Gaze. The scene shows a dismounted statue of Lenin being transported on a barge. It has had its day. Other statues will be raised in its stead. Angelopolus’ film is a journey through the Balkans and shows the search for another film, the first film shot in Greece and the Balkans by the Manakis brothers. Their film shows working women weavers, but this fact seems to be of less importance; what is important is that it was the first film, the first gaze. But was it really the first gaze, or are there other film reels, other pictures that have never been mentioned in history, never shown, never seen? Perhaps the search is more important than the answer.

Meanwhile other statues in other countries fall. We see it on television. Live on the BBC, CNN or Fox News. But the screen is so limited and we can’t see what is happening beyond it, beyond what is considered worthy of a place in history.

This is the result, a reconstruction after the event and a retrospective. Fragmentary and full of gaps. But aren’t all flashbacks, all memories a form of construction, reconstruction. A way of ajusting what was to what is. A way of telling a story so that it becomes intelligible in today’s society. At the same time, history is a way of making reality intelligible, a way of inscribing the present in a context.

(Now I have my new passport. I try to find my old one to compare them. It turns out that my ear shows just as much in the old one. The angle of my head is roughly the same, just facing the other direction.)

(I’m in a bar. Perhaps Katarina is there, Magnus or Elena or Emma and Runo, maybe Luca. If it is in Stockholm, Fredrik and Jenny are there instead. In Copenhagen, Mia, Tarje, Christian, Kristina and Danh. I tell a story. Add or take away. Widespread laughter.)

I sit on the train between Malmö and Stockholm. It’s winter and dark outside. We pass a burning farmhouse. It lights up the night. The snow around it is tinged with yellow, orange, red. The farm disappears behind us. It is as if nothing has happened.

(Malmö 12 April 2004)

Notes:

”La disparition” is written without the letter e, and is thus extremely hard to translate, although it has been translated to Swedish. In my Swedish text I quoted the translation by Sture Pyk, which is slightly different from the French original used in the English translation printed here. Here is the Swedish translation of the quote: ”Att utlysa undantagstillstånd som man nu gör på inrådan av nån dårfink som lyckats samla all militär bakom sig omöjliggör naturligtvis alla tänkbara förändringar”

From Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s preface to On Grammatology by Jacques Derrida.

Sources:

Angelopoulos, Theo, To vlemma tou odyssea, 1995, Swedish distribution Triangelfilm, 1996

Barthes, Roland, La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie, 1980

Hemon, Aleksandar, The Question of Bruno, 2000

Malmström, Sten, Györki, Iréne (red.), Bonniers svenska ordbok, Skolupplagan, 1982

Perec, Georges, La disparition, 1969, Swedish translation Sture Pyk, 2000

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, tranlators preface, from Of grammatology by Jacques Derrida, 1974

Stiles, Kristine, Selz, Peter (red.), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, a sourcebook of artists’ writings,
1996

By Frans-Josef Petersson

Freedom and Self-Instrumentalization
In the Swedish election 2006 the Sverigedemokraterna, a right-wing, extremist party got 2.9 percent of the votes and is currently represented in half of the municipal councils in the country.(1) As I am writing this, the latest polls would grant them a place in the national parliament in the next election.(2) At the same time, a new feminist party, Feministiskt Initiativ, attracted a lot of attention but got a mere 0.7 percent at the ballots and no representation anywhere. And of course, the Social Democrats lost the election to the Alliance for Sweden, a right-wing coalition of four parties who, ironically, won the required votes due to a strategic use of political nostalgia and basic social democratic jargon. I mention this to portray a political situation permeated by anxiety and uncertainty, where belief in progressive social politics has been replaced by nostalgic sentiments about a glorious, and supposedly lost, welfare society. This mode of government is characterized by an apparently contradictory belief in limiting state intervention in the field of economy on the one hand, and the use of political institutions to control communication and cultural practices — the lives — of citizens on the other. Whether regarded as an effect of, or a reaction to globalization, such policies of economic de-regulation paired with an increased cultural regulation seem to be increasingly accepted across the political spectrum. While the role of the nation-state is changing, its influence over our lives is not necessarily weakened.

What interests me is what kind of art, and what kind of artists, are produced under such circumstances, characterized by a severe displacement of a historically constituted balance between autonomous individual and sovereign state. What are the consequences on the aesthetic and political sensibilities permeating artistic practice? Viewed as a general tendency the situation is obviously not particular to Sweden, but this is the context I will deal with here. I will address these issues through practices coming out of a generation born, like myself, in the seventies - most of them raised in a culture permeated by a strong faith in the benevolence of the state while also having witnessed the continuing deterioration of the Swedish welfare system. With no ambition to form general conclusions, I will focus on a particular set of artists that were all educated in Nordic academies from the mid-nineties onward, when post-modern pluralism and relativism had supposedly “freed” art from the oppression of modernist compartmentalization. The period saw the still ongoing process of professionalization, institutionalization and internationalization of the contemporary art world, where a generous national support-system not only provides reasonable working conditions (for some) but also opens up doors to the global art scene (for a selected few). By all liberal standards, this generation must be considered to be made up of supremely autonomous individuals: free from oppression and provided with the social, economic and above all artistic means to be at liberty to do “whatever they want”.

When Johan Tirén attended the Art Academy in Copenhagen some years ago, he witnessed how the rise of a relatively small actor such as the populist Dansk Folkeparti displaced the entire political spectrum — something which has undoubtedly informed his interest in the relationship between the surface of established culture and the darker undercurrents flowing beneath it. In his three-channel video-installation Vi säger vad du tänker (We’re saying what you’re thinking) from 2005, he investigates the changing ideology and political practice of the right-wing extremists in Sverigedemokraterna. The work consists of two interviews, or informal talks, with leading representatives from the party, Jonas Åkerlund and Jan Milld, who are given the opportunity to present their political views. This is contrasted with a third interview with Daniel Poohl, a journalist who has been reporting on present and past strategies of extremist groups for many years. The work was shown this winter in the lobby of the city hall of Lund in southern Sweden, under the auspices of Creative Manifestations of Public Dissent, an ongoing curatorial collaboration between artist Luca Frei and curator Marianna Garin. The screening was a direct response to the election — where Sverigedemokraterna had huge success in this particular part of the country — in an act that arguably transgresses the line between art and political activism, through its use of this existing artwork as a form of protest, or with the instrumental purpose of awareness-rising. However, Tirén’s work was finished one year earlier, for an exhibition at Konsthall C in Hökarängen outside of Stockholm, and it is this context that I am primarily concerned with here. At the time, the Sverigedemokraterna was still a small and fairly insignificant party and at Konsthall C, the work was a bit different, presenting more complex, political connotations. To appreciate this work requires an understanding of the particular historical environment of Hökarängen, as well as the conceptual underpinnings of Konsthall C.

Initiated in 2005 by artist Per Hasselberg, this institution deals explicitly with the heritage of the Swedish welfare state as manifested in the meticulous planning and building of Hökarängen. This was a model for accommodating citizens in small-scale, neighbourhood units that was later implemented in the planning and construction of Stockholm and other cities around the country. Hasselberg quotes the architect and social democrat Uno Århén in saying that the aim of these structures was to “create social-minded individuals, with an active interest in common matters, with ability for critical thought and collaboration with other people. In short, to facilitate the growth of democratic citizens, for whom liberty and autonomy is combined with a sense of social responsibility”. An important aspect of this was to integrate natural meeting places in the built environment, and in Hökarängen a central laundry room was designed to also function as a local community centre — a place for people to perform their daily chores but also socialize with their neighbours. Konsthall C is situated in this very space, with only a glass wall dividing it from the still functioning laundry room. One could describe this institutional practice as trying to engage productively with a certain form of political nostalgia, by creating a space where invited artists work site-specifically with projects that in different ways use contemporary issues to reactivate this historical model.

Tiren’s exhibition effectively turned this space into a metaphorical echo-chamber, bouncing past and present notions of what constitutes a good life and a just society on and off the walls. His conversations with Milld and Åkerlund lays bare the emptiness of notions of culture and identity integral to SD ideology, but here it also compels the audience to question what notions of culture, history and identity are integral to the historical welfare system permeating this particular context. How present notions of nationalism, conservatism, and racism are in the ideology of the so-called Swedish model — and how this presence affects our understanding of the transformation of this particular form of government — remains a matter of contestation. Although his questions are critical, the fact that Tirén lets Åkerlund and Milld publicize their political message can be considered controversial. However, I understand this as consistent in Tirén’s views, which are also expressed by Poohl. In his interview, it is stated that the success or failure of SD and their ideology depend entirely on how they are met by the political establishment. To marginalize such forces, while at the same time letting their populist ideas permeate one’s own message is after all a well-known political strategy. Tirén’s practice requires trusting the viewer to react as a moral subject rather than as a passive consumer of political ideas. I view the exhibition as a clear argument for the aesthetic sphere as a valid form of critical publicness — where artists and institution not only stage themselves as objects for public discussion (i.e. art criticism) but also take an active part in constructing a sphere for critical thought and debate.

Let me clarify that while the practices I consider in this text encompass documentary and journalistic strategies, as well as political activism and grassroots campaigning, I regard them under the normative of category of autonomy. By this, I mean that as far as they constitute political statements, they do so under the heading of aesthetics, understood as an alternative mode of political agency that aim to constitute a privileged sphere of autonomy within the political. In other words, I consider these practices not as statements about politics from an aesthetic point of view, but as acts that are both political and aesthetic, i.e. containing within themselves specific ideas about art, politics and society. Tirén’s exhibition at Konsthall C can thus be considered as taking a critical stance towards state-power, in an ambition to construct de-centralized civic structures where citizens can engage in critical debate independently from the various experts and technocrats governing them. At the same time, it must be said that such practices depend on a centralized power to articulate their supposedly autonomous position — a state that incorporates within itself, and supports, such an autonomous sphere of participation and debate. I have noticed that a common feature for artists situated in the sphere of post-relational and activist-oriented practice — including the ones featured in this article — is an emphasis on art as facilitating a particular form of “freedom of action”, as well as a desire to use this supposed freedom for a particular political purpose.

On this topic I would stress that there is nothing natural about the freedom of art, and that autonomy is always a matter of negotiation within a more or less clearly defined framework. The autonomy of the aesthetic sphere is not just about the government allowing (and providing financial support!) space for art and culture. This is made particularly clear by the case hitherto described, which emphasizes precisely the role of social engineering in producing individuals who wilfully subjugate themselves under the “common good of society” as defined within, and by, the centralized power of the state. In other words, one must entertain the notion that this system tends to produce self-governing individuals (i.e. artists) who desire to be subjugated under such a centralized power, and that such desire permeates the very act of pursuing freedom under the auspices of art. At the same time, the transformation of the welfare system can be described in terms of a neo-liberal political rationality increasingly integral to western liberal democracies, which, in effect, undermines the independence of institutions in relation to one an other and to the market. Earlier, this independence upheld a certain amount of tension between the capitalistic economy and the democratic political system. This transformation of the welfare system is leading to a situation where the values of the market permeate the same institutions as well as the social and cultural practices they circumscribe. In other words, this expansion of economic rationality to earlier non-economic spheres and institutions include the way we relate to each other. While liberal democracies have traditionally been built upon a distinction between moral, social and economic practices, it is often stressed that this new rationality produces individuals that are entrepreneurs in all aspects of life. Supposedly, this creates a tension within the state, between traditional forms of social engineering and present forms of neo-liberal governmentality, i.e. between the centralized engineering of democratic citizens and the informal production of rational and market-oriented subjects. When interiorized, this undoubtedly produces ambivalent sentiments that may sometimes be articulated in the form of nostalgia, and where the dictate of freedom, of being expected to “realize one’s own potential”, is often met with strategies of self-instrumentalization.

I will go on to consider this topic in relation to a set of recent practices that depart from the idea of the benevolent state, while retaining its defining power by addressing verily confronting it in a way that entertains a certain unresolved conflict: Föreningen JA! /The Association YES! (Johanna Gustafsson, Fia-Stina Sandlund, Malin Arnell, (Karianne Stensland-remove this name) Line S. Karlström and Anna Linder) and Anna Eineborg. The former criticize patriarchal structures in the art world from a feminist perspective, and has also devised a specific strategy to enable public art institutions to achieve equality in terms of gender and ethnicity. The latter criticizes state policies on surveillance by informing people of new legislation and taking upon herself to “supervise” government institutions through various ways. A common feature of both practices is that they do not settle with articulating a general critique but rather involve themselves in actively addressing the state with the explicit aim of affecting its policies and/or practices. They are both critical of a discrepancy between the official and actual practice of government institutions, but seem to retain some kind of faith in the possibility of democratic processes and organize themselves according to traditional grassroots models like forming an association (JA!) and setting up a mobile information office Eineborg. There is also a difference between their respective practices, in that the feminist goal of equality is actually in line with official state ideology (though hardly implemented), while the issue of surveillance is situated at the very core of the government’s desire to control its population and monitor potential threats to national security.

JA! stands for Jämlikhets Avtal (Equality Agreement) and is basically a contract to be signed by Föreningen JA! and a museum or an art hall, stipulating that the staff, the exhibiting artists and the purchases of the said institution have to be perfectly balanced in terms of gender and ethnicity. The idea of devising a contract and trying to implement it arose when the artists Johanna Gustafsson, Fia-Stina Sandlund and the performance group High Heel Sisters (Malin Arnell, Karianne Stensland, Line S Karlström and Anna Linder) were invited to Konstfeminism (Artfeminism), a historical exhibition of feminist art that toured four institutions in Sweden 2005-2006. When the artists met up for a conversation to be published in the catalogue, they ended up formulating a critique of the context they were in, where the exhibition was seen as a way for the participating institutions — Liljevalchs Konsthall, Dunkers Kulturhus and Riksutställningar — to polish up their image on equality and gender issues. The huge scale of the enterprise, with over a hundred participating women artists, was seen as a convenient way to balance bad statistics while in effect de-politicizing the included practices by compartmentalizing them according to historical/anthropological perspectives.

To re-politicize this context, the artists decided to work together and their participation in the exhibition consisted in forming Föreningen JA!, and calling a press conference/performance at the opening at Dunkers Kulturhus. After presenting the unsatisfying statistics of the participating institutions, they confronted the directors with the contract, the Equality Agreement, and offered them to sign it. They all declined. It must be stressed that the objectives stipulated in the contract would by no means be in conflict with the policies of the institutions. On the contrary they coincide with what is already recommended by the Ministry of Culture, and JA!´s incentive is precisely this gap between these recommendations and institutional practice. As I understand it, JA! view their action as trying to help the institutions to live up to their publicly funded mission, and it should also be said that they were not merely trying to prove a point but were actually intent on convincing the directors to sign the contract. However, the result was a conflict where the institutions felt humiliated, and accused JA! of using patriarchal strategies, of hiding behind the auspices of an art-project, of being more interested in protest than communication and so on. Moreover, someone pointed out that it would not be legally possible for a public institution to enter into such an agreement with a private association.

I would say that it is precisely because of their failure to get the contract signed that JA! were successful in articulating a critique that was not institutionally assimilated, which could be described as a success rather than a failure, since their action will potentially have more profound and interesting consequences in the long run. It is not, as the art-critic Dan Jönsson would have it, because JA! were able to point to the limits of contemporary art to politics (“where the apparently all-inclusive artworld could not reach”), but on the contrary because their practice doesn’t allow for demarcations to be drawn between art, politics and society. (3) Writers who criticize JA! for subsuming politics under art (Jönsson), as well those who claim that they subsume art under politics (Boel Gerell)(4) presume an initial division between these dual spheres which, in effect, treat political issues as something external to art. But approaching politics as the other, which must be either repressed or extrapolated from the sphere of art, in itself constitutes a de-politicizing of aesthetics. In other words, even the common practice of treating politics as the necessary external reference point of critical discourse actually tends to reinforce an artificial opposition between l´art pour l´art and l´art engagé, which in contemporary criticism has often meant exorcising aesthetics from the politicized sphere of art (ironically leaving artistic practice without aesthetics as a perfect correlative of the post-political practice of “politics without politics”).

As I understand it, what JA!´s action does is, quite on the contrary, to politicize the aesthetic sphere precisely by pointing out its potential limits towards state-power, here in the guise of publicly funded art institutions. Rather than engaging in antagonistic resistance of the kind that is easily assimilated, JA! make a strategic use of their identity as artists by incorporating representatives from government institutions into a performative scenario that might destabilize preconceived roles and attitudes. If the supposed freedom of art is met with this tendency to instrumentalize one’s own identity, this must clearly be understood in relation to an increasingly institutionalized artworld characterized by a professionalization of the role of the artist as someone who wilfully subjugates her-or himself under a system structured by particular interests. Such a system requires its subjects to be exceedingly sensitive to the desires articulated within specific contexts, and the general integration of institutions and markets will, undoubtedly, result in an increasing particularization of the commercial art market and government funded practices. As is already evident, the former will become increasingly integrated with the expectations of the commercial sphere and the latter with expectations articulated by, and within, government institutions.

The much debated issue of instrumentalization is thus relevant not primarily because art tends to be subsumed under the specific agendas of market, state or other interests, but, above all, because artistic labour is subsumed under a rationale that facilitates for, or even requires, art to be evaluated according to “professional standards”, i.e. how efficiently it meets the demands and interests of a particular context. A political understanding of autonomy can thus never be a question of freedom from commercial, state or other interests for the simple reason that what one desires may very well coincide with these specific interests. Therefore I find it interesting that even though JA´s aims in this case do not diverge from official policy, they show that art is not always and necessarily subservient to the centralized power under which it is subjugated. There remains a difference, a conflict, between the sphere of aesthetics and the state — within which, and by, it is constituted — which JA! reinforce in their very attempt to transgress. This has aroused both enthusiasm and antipathy, with already mentioned Boel Gerell describing JA!´s action as “totalitarian”. To me, it rather seems that the artists are asking to be treated as citizens in a democracy and understanding artistic practice as an integral sphere of such a society. Although no-one would deny that art is integrally a part of society, there is obviously nothing self-evident about how society is integral to art, i.e. how it is in art.

This scenario of institutionalization and professionalization can also be described in terms of art adopting the role of service-provider in a dual motion of integrating and distancing itself from the institutional sphere under which it operates. The question of autonomy in relation to this discourse of art-as-service must, in other words, be understood as artists being increasingly integrated (economically, socially etc.), which is giving rise to the need of establishing a distance between practice and the system in which it is integrated. While JA! offer a traditional form of institutional critique directed against a particular set of art institutions, Anna Eineborg expands the field of critique to incorporate government institutions, such as the Security Police, as a site for her practice. Having initially trained as a lawyer, but finding the institutional framework of jurisprudence too narrow, she enrolled in the Art Academy in Stockholm from which she graduated last year. In works like Citizen Profiling and The Errand she explicitly addresses what she describes as an “increasingly oppressive government”, using basic democratic rights as her instruments.

Citizen Profiling, which was recently shown at this year’s spring salon at Liljevalchs Konsthall, is a kind of mobile office that provides visitors with information about state policies, current legislation and new propositions. It also contains literature and commissions of inquiry from government institutions, as well as information about directories — such as the PKU-directory containing DNA-information and the files of the Security Police — that contain, or may contain, vital facts about individual citizens. Eineborg also provides pre-printed application forms for those who want to request to be removed from a particular directory, or be informed about what it says about oneself in a specific file. Furthermore, the artist is present in the office herself to engage in dialogue with visitors, some of whom have even approached her for legal counselling.

The Citizen Profiling-office also displays documents from another of Eineborg’s projects called The Errand. This work consists of the artist’s ongoing attempt to get the Security Police to provide her with the names of their personnel, and is comprised of mail correspondence between her and the government as well as documents from the court proceedings she has been involved in during the project. After appealing to the highest level, Eineborg has still not received a single name (even though several are actually published on the Security Police´s own web-page), while she herself has had to reveal her identity to the counterpart (when forced to take the matter to court, she no longer had the possibility of being anonymous). The principle of free access to public records — granting public status to every and any document received or produced by a government institution — is considered a cornerstone of Swedish democracy, but The Errand suggests how spuriously this is actually implemented.

I have discussed a set of contemporary practices in relation to what has been described as a transformation of a particular form of government, namely the deterioration of the Swedish welfare system apparently resulting in a permanent state of anxiety, paired with a sense of meaninglessness associated with a (artistic) desire for freedom. Citizen Profiling / The Errand by Anna Eineborg certainly fulfils the conditions of a successful projet engagé in providing visitors with information, application forms and thus being useful in the sense of having a notable (though small) effect on society. I am less interested in how Eineborg uses the supposed freedom of art — how she instrumentalizes her identity as an artist for a specific purpose — but am more interested in how her practice stages this freedom as coinciding with the limits of her sovereignty as a citizen, in something I would describe as a dual motion of incorporating and delineating the state and the sphere of aesthetics. Contrary to JA!, Eineborg is explicitly interested in investigating these limit, and while doing so, giving the abstract procedures of government bureaucracy sculptural qualities, making them intelligible, even physically tangible. This process can also be described as defining different positions in the ongoing struggle of delineating the world, where surveillance is increasingly integral for the transition to a mode of government operating through the managing of risk rather than through a specific set of ideas about the future. The issue of surveillance exemplifies a culturalization of politics, where the lack of ideological differences puts all emphasis on how matters are talked about: instead of discussing surveillance in terms of its political and moral implications, and instead of discussing security in terms of progressive foreign policy, these issues are transformed to a matter of avoiding potential and undefined threats. In this kind of society, there should be ample room for artists as self-styled entrepreneurs with professional expertise in a particular form of, potentially useful, risk management (i.e. art). But perhaps the practices here described point to the possibility of another role for aesthetics, besides that of being immediately subservient to such rationality.

Language editing by Anne-Sophie Cardinal. The writer is a freelance curator and art critic living in Stockholm. His latest publications —The Marcel Broodthaers Displacement Trick (Uri Förlag 2006) and The Belfry. An Anthology of Bat Poetry (Oei 2007), both written and edited together with Karl Larsson — deal with issues of conceptual writing and editorial practice on the fine line between literature and art.

(1) See the web-page of the Swedish Election Authority (www.val.se).
(2) With 4.3 percent according to a poll published in Aftonbladet March 2007, and 3.5 percent according to a poll published in Svenska Dagbladet April 2007.
(3) Jönsson, Dan. (2006) Kritik och konservatism. Samtidskonstens alternativa teater, Hjärnstorm # 88-89.
(4) Gerell, Boel, ”Konst: Lede Fi”, Expressen 21 October 2005.

The video work “We’re saying what you’re thinking” is a critical investigation of the core concepts behind the fundamental ideology and the history of Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats), an ultranationalist party mainly concerned with immigration and how this issue affects Sweden.

Lunds stadshall - Installation view from the interview with Jonas Åkerlund, the press secretary of the right wing extremist party Sverigedemokraterna

The work is an attempt to understand the strategies and the thoughts behind Sverigedemokraterna’s ideals, a party that received wide support in Skåne (the south region of Sweden) during the last elections in September. In Sweden we are not so far from the reality of other European countries where extreme right parties have managed to build a parliamentary platform.
The three projections that form the work was presented in the foyer of Lund’s City Hall, a building designed by modernist architect Klas Anshelm to be used for and by the citizens of Lund. The building’s glass façade could be seen as a reference to the idea of a democratic transparency, where different questions on society can be discussed openly.

Lunds stadshall - Installation view from the interview with Daniel Poohl, journalist who for several years has covered right wing extremist movements and organisations.

Lunds stadshall - Installation view from the interview with Jan Miild, the party secretary of the right wing extremist party Sverigedemokraterna.

View from the talk at Lunds stadshall.

Read also the conversation between Marianna Garin and Johan Tirén in the text section of this site.

*Public Manifestations of Creative Dissent is a series of exhibition projects in which work is presented that questions and sheds light on the political systems, injustices and oppression that exists in our society. The intention is to contextualise each project in a specific situation, to create an open structure for a meaningful dialogue and exchange. Public Manifestations of Creative Dissent is an initiative conceived by Marianna Garin and Luca Frei.

Visit the blog of Public Manifestations of Creative Dissent at this adress: http://publicmcd.blogspot.com

The work reflects different positions of power and the space separating these positions. Some of the pictures point at the gap between the official power and the demonstrator, (”force”, “waiting for the demonstration at the wrong time” and “still life”), while we in the coast guard pictures rather focus on the distance between the official power and “the other”. What is common for the pictures in the exhibition is the layer of violence, although never apparent as an action, but rather as a structure.

memories of a city, (lambda print various size)

without title, (lambda print various size)

without title, (lambda print various size)

waiting for the demonstration at the wrong time, (lambda print various size)

still life, (lambda print various size)

force, (lambda print various size)

without title, (lambda print various size)

In the video A.M.A out of sight, also included in the exhibition, the same form of repression is present through the story of a refugee living in Copenhagen. He is basically describing his everyday life, A life were the living conditions are heavilly restricted and controlled. 

The image of the video is a filmed projection of the image of an empty DVD-player. There’s just the symbol of the DVD-player, repetedly bouncing agianst the borders of the projection area. A common, and understandable reaction is that there is no image, that something is missing. This is of course not correct, the image is there, it’s just not the image expected. The system is there, as well as the structure. 

Although one could also look at this piece as an image of a non image, an image so covered by layers of systematic controll that it alwyas seems to be out of reach.

A.M.A out of sight (video still)

This collaborativ work was presented at the gallery Verkligheten in Umeå.

In the work I raise questions about the relations between authenticity, fiction and facts. I focus on how the readings of the collected texts is changing according to what context they are put in to.
The installation consists of two DVD projections, one with twenty-two of the texts collected and then written down by Erik Svensson, and one with a film from the Stockholm archipelago, shot at each location referred to in the texts. 
When showed at the exhibition *”Deep Search” at Göteborgs Konsthall a third element was also added, a photography of me working with transferring the positions of the assumed wrecks from a sea card from the sixties to a contemporary one. The photography was shown in another part of the exhibition as a note to the DVD installation.

Punkt 31 sjökort nr 714 lat N 59 6;7 Long O 18 26;8

Ahlman uppgiver att han sökt med ekolod i Ornöström efter ryskt galärskepp som sjunkit något av åren 1719 eller 1736 den blev sänkt av kanonkulor som avlossades vi Dalaröskans.
Ahlman har i den uppgivna positionen med all sannolikhet påträffat galeären, enligt utslag på ekolodsremsan var föremålet på sjöbotten c:a 15-20 meter långt och ganska smalt med en höjd av c:a 4 meter. Vattendjup 28 meter. Position i sjökortet djupsiffra 30. C:a 2-300 meter från land.

Punkt 42 sjökort nr 715 Lat N 59 4;45 Long O 18 20;4

Oxpellesgrund, Mysingen har fått detta namn med anledning av, att skepparen ombord på skutan kallades Oxpelle och körde där på grund. Fartyget bärgades och därmed finns inget vrak kvar vid Oxpelles grund.

Punkt 55 sjökort nr 715 Lat N 59 1;35 Long O 18 18;4

Ehrensky har ett minne av en förlisning eller grundstötning mellan Utögruvor och Dalarö. Platsen kunde vara norra delen av Mysingen, möjligen Stålbådan och fartyget gick på grund i slutet av 1800-talet. Båten var engelsk, stod på grund c:a 3 år varefter den bärgades och avhämtades av engelsk besättning.

Note

Göteborgs Konsthall’s group exhibition Deep Search presents six young artists who all pursue an investigative approach to their art. The title of the exhibition, Deep Search, suggests inquiry and underlines the ability of art to raise hidden aspects into view.
Art’s investigative strategy can take different forms both in content and expression. It can range from the documentary starting from a concrete set of questions or something closely allied to reality, to a penetration of more abstract and indefinable elements. In Deep Search a cross-section of these various approaches is displayed.
Using inquiry as their tool the participating artists illuminate fresh perspectives and ways of viewing their surroundings. They obtain inspiration from the documentary and from the domain of fiction and dreams. In the stress field between the concrete and the poetic these art works touch upon historiography, representation and isolation, and on today’s media world and consumer society. 

(information from Göteborgs Konsthall)