Public Manifestations of Creative Dissent

Projekt #3

WORK BOOK
by Runo Lagomarsino

Work Book is a publication realised in collaboration with artist Runo Lagomarsino (born 1977, lives and works in Malmö) with a focus on his practice. The publication includes a cross over of materials from finished works to documentations of works in progress, from sketches to unrealised projects. The publication includes a text by curator Natasa Ilic and an introduction by Marianna Garin and Luca Frei.

To be published in Fall 2007

Juan Manuel Echavarría

Juan Manuel Echavarría, born 1947 in Medellín, Colombia, lives in Bogotá. Before becoming an artist, Echavarría was a writer who had published two novels: La gran catarata in 1981, and Moros en la costa in 1991. In 1996 he photographed his first series, Retratos (Portraits), images of battered mannequins in the streets of Bogotá. Echavarría described this experience as if “waking up from a prolonged coma, from a deep sleep. The mannequins were like the stone that shatters the tranquil waters.” Since then Echavarría has continued to work with the media of photography and video, investigating and documenting the endless violence and horror that has affected Colombia since the early 1950’s. His work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, South America, and the United States.

Juan Manuel Echavarría (Press release)

Within the project Public Manifestations of Creative Dissent, Juan Manuel Echavarría’s video works Bandeja de Bolívar: 1999 / Bolívar's Platter: 1999 (1999), Bocas de Ceniza / Mouths of Ash (2003-04) and Guerra y Pa / War and Peace (2001) are shown. The work of Juan Manuel Echavarría is strongly connected both to the history of Colombia and today’s complex political situation where violence has become a part of daily life, something that is reflected in his aesthetic and metaphoric visual language.
Bandeja de Bolívar: 1999 / Bolívar's Platter: 1999 (1999) consists of ten photographic stills of a porcelain tray, running in sequence and accompanied by a shrill sound. They are transformed into a simple act of destruction. The tray, with the inscription “Republica de Colombia para siempre” (Colombian Republic forever) is a replica of the service commissioned by the freedom hero Simon Bolívar for the memorial day of the independence from the Spanish colonial empire. Symbolically the Colombian republic is smashed to pieces picture by picture until all that remains is a small pile of white powder, resembling cocaine. The year 1999 gives a historical reference to the previous regime (Ernesto Samper, 1994-1998) who financed his campaign with the help of drug trade. During a couple of minutes the past is interlaced with the present, the dream of liberty with the destruction of the nation and broken ideals.
In his highly aesthetic works Echavarría chooses not to show blood and violence, the pain is instead reflected in the healing process, as in Bocas de Ceniza / Mouths of Ash, which describes the suffering that the population of Colombia has endured during fifty years of civil war and drug wars. We meet Afro-Colombians singing in their rich oral tradition, songs about false accusations, oppression, murder and massacre, as a way of overcoming the pain and the fear. They sing straight into the camera about their destiny in the hands of the feared paramilitary AUC forces and the FARC guerrilla, of how they survived and how they died.
In Guerra y Pa / War and Peace two parrots are in focus. The male has been trained into saying the word “Guerra”, war, and the female “Paz”, for peace. But because of the parrot trainer Bonifacio’s Colombian-Caribbean pronunciation, where the s-sound often is dropped, the word “paz” is transformed into something that sounds more like gunshots, pa'- pa'. In this the artist finds another dimension of the word peace as an unfinished concept. The parrots fight each other, change their positions and now and then stops to look back at us. It becomes a parody of the countless peace talks between politicians and guerrilla leaders where this pair of concepts is discussed in eternity, but can at the same time reflect a more immediate social conflict between individuals. The church is another component, symbolized in the form of the cruciform perch on which the two combatants cling, a power factor that has played a significant role in the Colombian wars.

Johan Tirén (Press release)

Johan Tirén’s 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. Tiréns 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 manage to build a parliamentary platform. The three projections that form Tirén’s work will be 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.

Public Manifestations of Creative Dissent

Runo Lagomarsino

Juan Manuel Echavarría

Juan Manuel Echavarría (Press release)

Johan Tirén

Johan Tirén (Press release)

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