Social democracy has
given Scandinavian countries the world’s highest living
standard. The Nordic system is
nevertheless full of paradoxes, which over the last decade
have offered artists a large reservoir of material for investigation:
What do we do when the system turns from treating us all equally
to making us all equal? And, what do we do with our longing
for the metaphysical, for risk, for transgression, in a super-rational
system designed to reduce the possibility for all this?
The
economic crisis of the 1970s marked the end of hegemonic
social democracy in Europe. But social democracy as a more
general term prevails as a
justifiable description, at least if you look at the Nordic
countries. More and more often, however, social
democracy is talked of in terms of a crisis. Some even talk
of the death of social democracy, forgetting
perhaps that three dominant European countries – Sweden,
Germany and England – are run by social
democratic labor governments.
The fact, however, remains that
the homogenous and prosperous European democracies of the
post-war era have changed radically.
Globalization and multiculturalism are quoted as two main
factors in this development, but also the inner pressure
against the
strongly regulated, semi-socialist tendencies of the 50s
and 60s is part of the process which started the downturn.
The
exhibition Social Democracy Revisited proposes that the Nordic
discourses on the subject may have a value in the
current international political climate. At the same time,
the exhibition
highlights artworks that seem to contest this kind of purposefulness.
Ultimately then, the exhibition intervenes into the realm
between art and politics with the same ambivalence which
is so prevalent
in the Nordic system.
Cathrine Evelid's work is marked
by a struggling relationship to the genre of relational aesthetics.
In 2004, on the island
of Lofoten just off the coast of Norway, Evelid and the London-based
DJ Sophie Brown staged a full-scale rave party during a storm,
for an audience of – none. Mocking the whole idea of
participatory art practice, Evelid also made a parody of
the idea of sisterhood, a subject prevalent in almost all
her work.
The performance 17 May, originally executed in 1995,
was one of Evelid’s first works along this line. The
Norwegian leaving-college-celebration consists of a month
of heavy
drinking and often violently wild partying, a ritual which
is largely
accepted as a last youthful excess before adulthood. For
her piece, Evelid hired two graduating college girls and
staged
their rite of passage as a failure, symbolically depriving
the two girls of their "rightful" way of finishing
school, thereby capturing them in the drama of female adolescence.
Matias
Faldbakken is perhaps most known for two
novels written by his alter ego, Abo Rasul, under the heading
"Scandinavian Misanthropy." His training, however, is as
a visual
artist, and he has been showing extensively in Europe, both
together
with his sometime partner Gardar Eide Einarsson and by himself.
The
subjects of Faldbakken's books and his art are closely
related. He investigates the gap between the comfortable
middle class and the desire or necessity to transgress the
limits
imposed by the system. In the video installation Getaway,
Faldbakken is using a visual
ready-made, an amateur video showing a subjective view from
the seat of the Swedish motorcyclist-come-underground-cult-star
"Ghost Rider.” The motorcycle
is speeding at 200 mph and upwards, thus tripling the speed
limit in a Russian roulette-style activity that is becoming
popular among motorcyclists also outside of Scandinavia.
The police can never catch them; the only possible outcomes
are
success – which means completing the video – or
disastrous failure.
Two of Katja Høst’s early
works carry the same title as Erving Goffman's 1959
social psychology classic, Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life. This phrase still sums
up the character of her work, but in the photographic series
Marienlyst Public School, the spaces
are – atypically – deprived of all human activity.
The school is empty, leaving the hallway, the gymnasium,
the wardrobe, the staircase, etc., open for the artist's
stringent investigation. Høst photographs the place
in a classic manner, almost as if the school was new and
she was doing the job for the architect who had just completed
the building. The images describe the school as a model,
underlining
the efforts made at making light flood through the building,
a typical feature of rationalist, social democratic architecture.
On a closer look, Høst’s images also reveal
the wear and tear of a fifty year old building, but the work
does
not seem to dwell on this sentimental level. The images remain
analytical, addressing the issue of institutionalized childhood
without prejudice or disregard.
Jakob Kolding's use
of traditional collage techniques has given him a do-it-yourself
kind of edge, similar to the
style of the sub-, pop- and fan-cultures he frequently quotes.
Kolding’s work takes its strength from two opposing
experiences. Firstly, it relates to his childhood upbringing
in the totally
planned new town of Albertslund outside of Copenhagen. Secondly,
Kolding relates to a contemporary, international urban experience
marked by a heterogeneous environment developing as a by-product
of capitalist realities. One of the interesting elements
in Kolding’s work is his constant interest in the idea
of class and class structure. This almost Marxist approach
to
society has been anathema even among political artists during
the 90s, but has returned lately in the work of the emerging
2000-generation of activist artists in Europe. Kolding appears
to be a connecting
figure between the two generations, never leaving his retro/low
budget style, but keeping it very fresh, just like the changing
city itself.
Ulf Lundin has been deeply concerned with the
legacy of the Swedish Folkhemmet, the equality-based
Swedish society so
heavily promoted by the Social Democrats during the first
decades after
the Second World War. In several photographic works and video
pieces, Lundin has investigated the patterns of Swedish social
life. Using the
camera in the manner of a paparazzo, he
has confronted his fellow countrymen with their own behavior,
making the model country look remarkably like Orwell's
1984. In the video Work in Progress,
Lundin turns the camera on himself but sticks to the subject
of the everyday. He uses the digital technology of morphing
to create a continuous representation of
his own face as it changes over the years. Ongoing
since 1999, the project now consists of nearly a thousand
unique images constituting a 25 minute video of the artist's
aging face.
Aleksandra Mir works with subjects as diverse
as an expedition to the Antarctic, a project under the title
Keep Abortion
Legal and the installation of a Hollywood-type walk
of fame with
names of newborn children to list only the three most recent
works published on her extensive website. Mir approaches
all these subjects with a kind of open and process-oriented
attitude,
using the opportunities offered by relational art practice
as a kaleidoscope or a magnifying glass through which she
rediscovers the world each time she looks at it. In Social
Democracy Revisited,
Mir presents a reprint of the publication Danes in The
Sun,
which was originally made as part of the Danish art biennial
Socle du Monde in 2004. Mir collaborated with a
communications bureau to create a 32 page publication with
images culled
from various local sources (the local historical archive,
the local
newspaper, private responders to an ad) and Mir’s signature
style of offhand conversations with the people behind the
images. The result is a feather light portrait of a happy,
wealthy
and slightly disconnected community, telling not only about
their lives but also about their relation to images.
Ketil
Nergaard's Tilted Arse was first shown at the exhibition
Performer which the artist himself curated in 2000.
This exhibition consisted predominantly of media art,
but the
curator's contribution was different. He lived in the
space for the duration of the exhibition dressed up as a
fat, Kafkaesque character in striped pajamas, having conversations
with the audience and playing castrato songs on a CD player
at his platform bed. This impersonation of otherness worked
as a filter through which each member of the audience was
introduced
to the otherness of the art space. Transferring this performance
from a wooden barn in Oslo to a gallery space in New York
City radically changes its meaning. But the simplicity of
the gesture
remains, and Nergaard’s figure can very well be seen
as the protagonist of this exhibition, marking the connection
between the social history at issue and the real-time of
the viewer in New York City.
Jonas Ekeberg
©
2005
Jonas Ekeberg is Director
at , Preus Museum, Horten, Norway, and was
selected by Ute Meta Bauer, Curator, Germany, for our International
Program.
A full color brochure containing an essay by Jonas Ekeberg
will be available free of charge.
Please contact apexart for further information. Gallery hours
are Tuesday to Saturday, 11-6.
apexart's exhibitions and public programs are supported
in part by The Kettering Family Foundation, Altria Group,
Inc., and with public funds from the New York Department
of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the
Arts through the Fund for Creative Communities, administered
by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
This exhibition received support from Office for Contemporary
Art Norway. |