Malmö fotobiennal

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MALMÖ FOTOBIENNAL 2015 | CONTEMPORARY ACTIVISM

AANNA DE BEER | ALBA ZARI AND SHARON RITOSSA | ALEXANDER KRACK | ALNIS STALKE | AMALIE SMITH | ANDERS SØMME HAMMER | ANTHONY LUVERA | ANU RAMDAS | ARNIS BALCUS | BILLIE ZANGEWA | CARL JOHAN DE GEER | CAROLINA RODRIGUEZ | CECILIA SERING | CHRISTEL LUNDBERG | CHRISTIAN DANIELEWITZ | CHRISTOFFER NÆSS | DAVID STJERNHOLM | DOREL FRUMUSANU | EDWARD FINNELL | ENRICO ABRATE | EWA BERG | EWA STACKELBERG | FLAVIA SCHUSTER | GIJS VAN DEN BERG | GISELA ERIKSSON | GRO SARAUW | HANNAH ABRAHAMSON | HELGA STEPPAN | JESPER BLOMQVIST | JOHANNA SCHARTAU | JOHANNES PERSSON | JUAN YACTAYO SONO | JULIE NYMANN | KENT KLICH | LAURENCE RASTI | LEE YOUNGBAEK | LUCAS PERNIN | MALIN SANDBERG | MARCIA KURE | MARTA ZGIERSKA | MENSMAGI | MICHEL THOMAS | MIRIAM SYOWIA KYAMBI | NAOMI SOTO | NARGIS AZARYUN | NEBOJSA SLIJEPCEVIC | PEPE VIÑOLES | ROBERT EK | SADAF FETRAT | SAHAR FETRAT | SYBILLA MARIE WESTER TUXEN | TADAO CERN | THE FREEDOM THEATRE | THE SANTXEZ CREW | THORA LORENTZEN | TOMÁŠ RAFA | TOMMY LINDHOLM | TRACEY ROSE | TUSS MARIE LYSÉN | VALÉRIE OKA | ZANELE MUHOLI | ZOULIKHA BOUABDELLAH

DIGITALISEUM | DUNKERS KULTURHUS | FOLKETS PARK | FORM/DESIGN CENTER | FOTOGALLERIET [FORMAT] | FOTOGALLERI VASLI SOUZA | FOTOGRAFISK CENTER | GALLERI DAVID HALL | GALLERI LE MOULIN | GALLERI MIVA | MOLEKYL GALLERY | GALLERI ROSTRUM | GALLERI SAGOY | GALLERI © SEVED | KULTUREN LUND | LUNDS KONSTHALL | MALMÖ HÖGSKOLA | MALMÖ KONSTHALL | MALMÖ MUSEER | MODERNA MUSEET MALMÖ | PANORA | SCANDINAVIAN PHOTO | GAMMAL BUKOWSKI | DET RULLANDE KULTURHUSET

ISBN 9789163792816

90000 >

9 789163 792816

BIEN NAL 2015


CONTENTS · Malmö Fotobiennal 2015· Contemporary Activism

MAIN SPONSOR

PARTNERS

4

MALMÖ FOTOBIENNAL 2015 Michel Thomas

7

TRANSFORMING VISUAL DISCOURSE Marcio Souza

8-12

ACTIVISM: THE POLITICS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT Anthony Downey

13-15

BOMB SPLINTERS: ACTION AND COUNTER-ACTION IN MALMÖ Pontus Kyander

16-17

THE PERILS OF INDIFFERENCE Michel Thomas

19-39

FOTOBIENNAL PRESENTS:

PUBLICATION This catalogue was produced and published on the occasion of Malmö Fotobiennal 2015. PUBLISHER Holmbergs CONCEPT Fotografi i Fokus EDITORS Marcio Souza Michel Thomas DESIGN Marcio Souza

DISTRIBUTED BY: Holmbergs Höjdrodergatan 20 212 39 Malmö Sweden Cover Photo: Zanele Muholi, Kekeletso Khena Green Market Square, Cape Town 2012 Copyright: © Malmö Fotobiennal 2015 | copyright owners of individual essays are their respective authors | copyright owners of the photographs: see photo credits (E&OE)

FOTOGRAFI I FOKUS BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND BIENNALE’S CURATORS: Michel Thomas Marcio Souza Susanna Hesselberg Jeanette Land Schou Jenny Eliasson Helena Olsson

20 26 32

Kent Klich Tomáš Rafa Zanele Muholi

41-101

SELECTED WORKS:

42 46 50 54 56 60

Marta Zgierska Naomi Soto Dorel Frumusanu Enrico Abrate Juan Yactayo Sono Laurence Rasti

66 70 74 76 80 84

Anthony Luvera Carolina Rodriguez The Santxez Crew Gijs van den Berg Alnis Stalke

Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa

88 92 96

Flavia Schuster Hannah Abrahamson Alexander Krack

103-149

LOCAL PERSPECTIVES

104 Digitaliseum 106 Dunkers Kulturhus 108 Form/Design Center 110 Fotogalleriet [format] 114 Fotografisk Center 120 Galleri David Hall 122 Galleri Miva 124 Molekyl Gallery 126 Galleri Rostrum 128 Galleri Sagoy 130 Kulturen Lund 134 Lunds Konsthall 136 Malmö Högskola 138 Malmö Museer 140 Malmö Live 142 Panora 146 Scandinavian Photo 148 Det Rullande Kulturhuset

151-157

PROGRAMME 2015

152 157

Exhibitions Film Screening


MALMÖ FOTOBIENNAL 2015 CONTEMPORARY ACTIVISM

Den fotografiska bilden har sedan långt tillbaka i tiden använts som ett kraftfullt verktyg för att väcka vår medvetenhet, för att upplysa oss om orättvisor i samhällen och för att påvisa den “lilla människans” villkor i oroshärdar. Under det senaste decenniet har fotografi också utvecklats som mediebärare inom den samtida konsten och som socialt fenomen. I år sätter vi därför ett nytt fokus. Vi lyfter fram konstnärer som använder fotografi, inte bara konstnärlig utan även i sociala och politiska kontexter. Dessa personliga uttryck har tillkommit utanför konst och fotovärlden, de är en reaktion mot orättvisor och övergrepp i samhälle. Det handlar om etik och engagemang. Årets upplaga av “Fotografi i Fokus” är den sjunde i ordningen. I och med detta kan man tro att vi har blivit en del av etablissemanget och att allt går på rutin. Så är det inte. Vår organisation arbetar på frivillig basis. Planeringen och genomförandet av biennalen är alltid en speciell utmaning som kräver ett långsiktigt personligt engagemang och med tanke på ambitionsnivå har vi en minimal budget att segla projektet i hamn. Jag vill därför passa på att tacka alla som på ett eller annat sätt har engagerat sig i projektet.

Since the early stages of the photographic medium, images have been used as a powerful tool to advocate awareness, to inform of the injustices in society and to demonstrate conditions of common people in troubled regions. Over the past decade, photography has also become fully assimilated within the art world as well as becoming a social phenomenon like never before. With this in mind we set the new focus for this year’s biennial and have chosen to highlight the work of contemporary artists who use photography not only artistically, but in social and political contexts. This kind of photography is more than personal expression; it is a reaction against injustice and abuse in society. It is work that displays ethic and commitment. This is the seventh edition of “Fotografi i Fokus”. One might think we now have become part of the establishment and the biennale can run on routine, but this is not the case. The planning and the implementation of Malmö Fotobiennal is a special challenge that requires long-term personal commitment, particularly given the high level of our ambition and the minimal budget we have to achieve our aims. I would like to thank all who are involved in the project in one way or another.

Under de 10 dagar biennalen pågår skapar vi ett forum. Breddar diskussionen om fotografiets utökade roll i samhället och främjar utbyte och samtal kring fotografi och aktivism. Trettio gallerier, museer och alternativa platser i Malmö ingår i programmet. Konstinstitutioner i Köpenhamn, Lund och Helsingborg är också representerade med egna retrospektiv. Vi välkomnar alla femtio internationella konstnärer och fotografer vars projekt utmanar oss på många olika plan. Deras utställningar bidrar till åsiktsutbyten i de ideologiska meningsskiljaktigheter som genomsyrar många delar av världen och de utmaningar som väntar. De låter oss se världen som den är idag.

During the ten days of the biennial, we aim to create a forum to broaden the discussion on the enhanced role of photography in society and to promote critical dialogue about photography and activism. Thirty galleries, museums and alternative venues in Malmö are included in the program, and art institutions in Copenhagen, Lund and Helsingborg are also represented with major exhibitions. We heartily welcome all fifty international artists and photographers whose projects set out to challenge us in many ways. Their exhibitions contribute to the exchange and understanding of the ideological differences that permeates many parts of the world and the challenges ahead. They let us see the world as it is today.

Michel Thomas Ordförande Fotografi i Fokus/Malmö Fotobiennal

Michel Thomas 
 Chair Fotografi i Fokus/Malmö Fotobiennal

Alexander Krack Mud Bath Bad Bramstedt, 2014 4


TRANSFORMING VISUAL DISCOURSE MARCIO SOUZA

There are infinitive forms of analysing a period of transition in order to understand how a change takes its course in history. Involved in a complex web of direct and indirect agents, history is a shifting process difficult to be perceived objectively as a result of causes and consequences. In addition, such transformations are performed in the fields of discourse: text, language and images, are as important as an action or an isolated event that generates an immediate response. What may not be obvious is how dangerous it can be to reduce a period of change to an empirical view because it can ignore the complexity of individual lives. In this sense consideration of the concept of activism as an action undertaken to precipitate change can be extended to the motivation that led to such actions and the circumstances of the experiences of individuals and groups in society.

Laurence Rasti Untitled There are no homossexuals in Iran 2014

6

A work of art is often questioned if it could be considered a form of activism. One could rely on the idea that the discipline of art is subjective field to be read for pleasure and that it may not have a specific agenda to contribute towards changes in society. What is more important: to take down a factory that uses slave labour or to raise awareness of the fact that the conditions we live in are possible because of this exploitation of the other? Some people may say that taking down the factory is the right solution and that the artist’s work would not change anything. The artist might not even have the intention to be an activist or change the current situation exposing the fact that we are the ones feeding this form of work. Nevertheless we are able to investigate the context and understand the importance of art modifying the way we perceive certain topics. The camera has the ability to reveal unknown realities, to uncover motifs that have been silent and to approach different cultures. It is also a

popular apparatus being a great instrument translating the transformations of visual discourse. It’s the moment when truth loses any claim to be single and unchangeable. The recent development of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights can be attributed to many factors. From transformations of the traditional family – that have proved to be adaptable to different needs, even rupturing through divorces – to the successes of a feminist agenda enabling women an equivalent position to men. In this context where the institution of family is being transformed we have been able to watch the advance of legislation that preserve the freedom of the individuals and the rights for queer people. Even though queer sexuality is still is taboo or even illegal in many cultures, LGBT* people the world over are being made more visible and are being accorded equal human rights. Photography plays an important part in the recognition of these groups of people as they fight for visual representation, and a more nuanced inclusion of their image in popular culture as something more than deviant or eccentric. Contemporary Activism attempts to explore the complexities involved in visual discourse in this particular moment of history. Is it enough to be knowing of our position in society, co-opting and resisting different situations, incorporating the responsibility of the other, being oppressor and oppressed? We don’t need to hold on to a fixed identity; we are in a state of constant change and accepting this fluid process is the challenge set to us all. The diversity of work presented in Malmö Fotobiennal 2015 is a part of all ourselves. Each project engaged with various social, political, economic and cultural circumstances contributes to raising awareness of the places we all occupy in society.

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ACTIVISM: THE POLITICS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT · Anthony Downey

ACTIVISM: THE POLITICS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT ANTHONY DOWNEY

“WHAT ARTISTIC ACTIVIST AIMS HAVE IN COMMON IS A FAITH THAT AWARENESS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD WITHOUT ANY SPECIFIC FOLLOW-THROUGH.” STEPHEN DUNCOMBE AND STEVE LAMBERT

T

he forms assumed by civil protest and political activism today, from the world trade organization demonstrations in Seattle, Washington and Genoa to the social mobilization of the occupy movement and the protests against the treatment of those deemed non-citizens, represent a complex shift in how protest and activism are currently deployed and understood within cultural and political debates. These forms of protest and agitation reveal other types of political activism, including community- and collectivebased activities, individual voluntarism, direct action, non-violent protests, ‘hacktivism’, lobbying and boycotting, propaganda, civil disobedience, and networks of non-engagement or passive non-participation. Individuals and communities are taking to the streets in unprecedented numbers, and activism, however we define its remit, is a significant feature of the contemporary political landscape. The question we need to ask here is: how does art as a practice engage with this landscape and to what ends? As we have seen, art practices are becoming increasingly involved in a variety of socially engaged, activist and community-based projects. However, the ideal of activism, broadly speaking, suggests a proactive approach to social and political change. Nevertheless, art that adopts and adapts forms of activism tends not 8

to be actively calling for such change; rather, contemporary artists, as we shall see, are more likely to explore the potential for alternative models of political engagement – for the artist, audience and public alike – to emerge within cultural practices. The clearest examples of art’s relationship to activism and protest can be observed in actual protests by artists, such as those held by the Songzhuang art colony against the demolition of an art district in southeast Beijing in March 2013. We could also include artist-cum-activists who protest against cultural institutions and their policies on the arts. Liberate Tate, a group that was founded in January 2010 during a workshop on art and activism (which, ironically, was commissioned by the Tate), objects to the Tate’s continued involvement with British Petroleum and its sponsorship of major events. Interestingly, the group style their pro- tests as ‘performances’; these include, on 7 July 2012, the installation of a blade from a wind turbine in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.1 For other artists, however, the activist element of their work is often implicit in the work itself and its mode of production. In Anri Sala’s Dammi i Colori (2003), a 15-minute video about a public renewal project in the city of Tirana in Albania, the subject of social change was explored through a community-based form of activism that involved tenants repainting a housing block in brightly coloured geometric patterns. The project was conceived by Edi Rama, the then mayor of Tirana and a one-time artist himself. It was hoped that by injecting colour into the tired-looking streets of Tirana, the attitudes of its people would improve and with them the city’s prospects for infrastructural change. A similar attempt at rejuvenation was behind Chemi Rosado-Seijo’s project El Cerro (2002), in which the artist encouraged residents of the eponymous settlement

in Puerto Rico to have their houses repainted in different shades of green. The intention was to bring a sense of unity to what had been previously been a run-down and declining economy. As a social practice, art is able to generate a common visual language capable of engaging the broader political realm. Moreover, in the act of engaging a constituency (of spectators, say, or participants), it can generate forms of political community. In the summer of 2013, and with the assistance of local residents, Thomas Hirschhorn constructed a ‘monument’ to the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) in Forest Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development in the Morrisania area of the South Bronx. Composed of a series of temporary structures, including a stage, a workshop, an ‘Internet Corner’, a lounge and a bar (all of which were overseen by the local residents), Gramsci Monument offered workshops, lectures and open-microphone events coordinated by the residents of Forest Houses, alongside lectures on Gramsci and field trips organized by the project’s ‘ambassador’ and curator, Yasmil Raymond. The work also has a dedicated website, which contains texts, notes, pictures and videos documenting the life of the project, from the preliminary sketches to the final installation and the eventual dismantling. Gramsci Monument, which followed Spinoza Monument (1999) in Amsterdam, Deleuze Monument (2000) in Avignon and Bataille Monument (2002) [68] in Kassel, is typical of the community-based, activist practice that underwrites Hirschhorn’s projects, many of which take place in areas marked by social and economic inequality. This sense of art giving shape to political values and engaging communities in a common realm of visual experience resonates with

Downey, Anthony. “Activism”. Art and Politics Now. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. 78-96.

an individual and community-based understanding of how public space can be used as a location for rethinking (as opposed to enforcing) political and social values. Nonetheless, it is often the case that political activism and artistic activism are understood to be indistinguishable – a point of concern for some and celebration for others. Speaking of Gramsci Monument, Hirschhorn has observed that his projects are not about helping communities as such; rather, they are about ‘showing the power of art to make people think about issues they otherwise wouldn’t have thought about ... I tell them, “This is not to serve your community, per se, but it is to serve art, and my reasons for wanting to do these things are purely personal artistic reasons.”’2 The conundrum here is that in taking a stance as a political or social activist, an artist can often disavow the aesthetic intention behind their work in the name of politics.3 Artistic practices can thereafter be co-opted by political rhetoric, and further discussion of art’s relationship to the political is reduced to a question of how effective it is at calling for and initiating social change – an ambition that is often absent from both the artist’s and the artwork’s avowed intentions. While works by Sala and Oda Projesi, as well as such projects as Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, advocate activist forms of social change through engagement, they do not do so with the clear objectives traditionally associated with activism, nor should their work be held to account by the degree to which it effects change. This is to acknowledge a number of further concerns that arise in any discussion of art and activism. For one thing, art can often co-opt activist practices for its own (often ironic or playful) ends. Make Art Not War, by Bob and Roberta Smith, is a text piece from 1997 that reworks a popular

political slogan. Bob and Roberta Smith’s DIY approach to making art, with its protest-like and symbolic system of representation, which is often more humorous than political, encourages the viewer to question the intentions – avowed and repressed – behind political and activist-based sloganeering. This work, and others like it, such as Off Voice Fly Tip (I wish I could have voted for Obama) (2009), further promote debate about the impact of artistic practices within the public and political sphere – the latter being a key element in many of the works currently under discussion. A similar intent to play with the historical slogans of political activism can be found in Sharon Hayes’s Yard (Sign) (2009), a homage, in part, to Allan Kaprow’s Yard (1961). To create the work, Hayes collected scores of banners featuring disparate political messages, including ‘Ron Paul, President ’08’, ‘Kirby Sheriff’, ‘McCain Palin’, ‘Sanchez, Counsellor’, ‘Re-elect Conway’ and, more amusingly, ‘You Stole Our Obama Sign, We Bought Another Sign’. Hayes’s work offers an insightful analysis of the language of protest and activism by rein- scribing historical signs into the present and therefore reassessing their potential to mean something to someone, or indeed anyone. In the Near Future (2005–9) saw Hayes stage performances on the streets of, among other cities, London, New York, Vienna and Warsaw. In locations associated with specific public demonstrations, and among placards bearing slogans from historical protests (including ‘We condemn U.S. aggression in Vietnam’ and ‘I Am a Man’), Hayes interspersed her own banners featuring such invented slogans as ‘Nothing will be as before’. In this work, as in Yard (Sign), Hayes investigated individual and collective memories of activist protests and questioned what historical

resonances activism produces over time. Julia Meltzer and David Thorne’s FREE THE, DEMAND YOUR, WE WANT, ALL POWER TO THE, WE MUST ... (2002) is a collection of political stances and slogans taken from an archive of political posters. The work was produced following three months of research at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. In a three-sided space measuring roughly 2.5 × 3 metres (8 ×10 feet), six posters display well-known political slogans – ‘Silence = Death’, for example – while a voice utters some of the archive’s other slogans through a bullhorn. In collating and deconstructing the nomenclature of protest, Meltzer and Thorne render it abstract, if not politically ineffective. Described by one critic as ‘passive activism’, Carsten Höller’s The Baudouin/ Boudewijn Experiment: A Deliberate, Non- fatalistic, LargeScale Group Experiment in Deviation (2001) took place in the Atomium in Brussels.4 The work, in which 100 people remained inside the Atomium for twenty-four hours, was not documented and would seem actively to deny any role in activism or indeed politics. Nevertheless, the experiment stems from the personal dilemma faced by King Baudouin (reigned 1951–3), who, as a staunch Roman Catholic, opposed the parliamentary bill intended to legalize abortion in Belgium. Thanks to a constitutional loophole, however, the Belgian parliament declared him unfit to rule for one day in order to pass the law without his signature.5 This instance of exception, a key feature of political modernity, would also appear to offer an apt metaphor for art that engages with the symbolism and methods of activism: it remains an expectant bystander on the margins of protest and yet is still fully able to engage with the issues from that often overlooked, if not surreptitiously ironic, position of potential interaction.

Downey, Anthony. “Activism”. Art and Politics Now. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. 78-96.

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ACTIVISM: THE POLITICS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT · Anthony Downey

Artists who engage with activism, such as those noted above, tend to employ the aesthetics of activism, including placards and slogans, gatherings and marches, while simultaneously excluding any didactic intent, instructional ambition or, indeed, overt form of advocacy from their work. This abstraction of protest and activism is present in Seulgi Lee’s BÂTON (2009), a collection of seventeen long sticks wrapped in colourful silk and positioned against a wall. Given the size of the sticks, there is a suggestion that they should be used in some functional manner. On further investigation, we find that the objects have been taken from everyday situations and are indeed intended as tools for public use. Perhaps, the artist seems to imply, they could be used to hold up banners during a parade, a protest or even a ritualistic ceremony. In 2006 the Russian collective Chto Delat?, or ‘What is to be done?’, invited local activist groups and, to use their term, ‘engaged’ low-income workers to commemorate the Russian revolution of 1905 in Stachek Square in St Petersburg. Co-opting workers who normally wear sandwich boards advertising local businesses, the collective had them wear signs printed with the words of a Bertolt Brecht poem. This theatrical protest, titled Angry Sandwich People or in Praise of Dialectics, focused on grass-roots political movements that have their own aesthetics of protest, one based in pickets, fliers, political pamphleteering and a recurring sense of the importance of public space in activist practices. For the Vienna-based collective Buuuuuuuuu, the act of smiling carries with it the potential for protest and activism. One minute smile against Berlusconi (2012) was a web-based project that asked people worldwide to record themselves smiling in silence for one minute as a sign of protest 10

against the then Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi. In many of Buuuuuuuuu’s projects, the act of protest takes the form of members of the public being encouraged to perform simple, often ironic actions online. In the case of One Minute Smile Against Berlusconi, the Internet played an integral role, simultaneously empowering the individual and politicizing their private sphere. The collective’s website offers a window on to political protests and activism of the intimate kind, while offering itself as a tool, as in Lee’s and Bob and Roberta Smith’s work, for participation in such protests. Conceived by the Yes Men, Dow Chemical (2004) was an elaborate hoax aimed at Dow Chemical, the multi-national corporation whose subsidiary Union Carbide was responsible for the Bhopal disaster in 1984. This tragic event killed thousands and left more than 120,000 people requiring lifelong care as a result of exposure to methyl isocyanate and other deadly chemicals. On the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum, purporting to be a Dow Chemical spokesperson, appeared on BBC World News and announced that the company planned ‘to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal site’.6 The impact was immediate, wiping $2 billion off Dow Chemical’s market value – a clear indication that corporate responsibility does not necessarily sit well with the neo-liberal demands of investment and accumulative-based models of capital. Within two hours the hoax was discovered, eliciting a press release from Dow Chemical in which the company denied any intention to compensate the victims. This, however, merely served to generate further negative publicity.

ACTIVISM: THE POLITICS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT · Anthony Downey

Produced for the Manchester International Festival, Jeremy Deller’s Procession (2009) involved a collaboration between the artist and various community groups in a celebration of the use of public space. The community groups, none of which necessarily represented a particular political stance, walked through the city holding aloft banners that read, variously, ‘The Unrepentant Smokers’, ‘Joy in People’, ‘Carnival Queens’ and ‘Here We Are Now, Entertain Us’. While the event was largely festive in mood, it also highlighted the civil nature of society and its constituent parts, from non-governmental and community organizations to men’s and women’s groups, private voluntary organizations, sports groups, environmental activists, cultural groups, religious organizations and community- based art projects. Such bodies not only make up civil society but also, by definition, occupy a space beyond governmental control and corporate interests.

reconstructed placards, flags, teddy bears, photographs, defaced images of Tony Blair and devout Christian messages that had accumulated during Haw’s residency on Parliament Square (from 2001 until his death in 2011), Wallinger’s State Britain effectively re-made everything that the Metropolitan Police had confiscated from the camp in 2006. The location of Wallinger’s reconstruction is key here: displayed in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain, a public institution that straddled the exclusion zone (a radius of 1 kilometre/0.6 miles from Parliament Square) placed on protest camps in Westminster as a direct result of Haw’s protest, the work existed in defiance of that zone and, while it could be understood as a law-defying act, points to the potential of visual culture to reinvigorate debates about the rights of the individual to protest in both public and private spaces.7

It is here that we can observe not only how protest and activism co-opt communities but also how activism has in turn been co-opted into institutional programmes. For the 7th Berlin Biennale in 2012, the two curators, Artur Zmijewski and Joanna Warsza, invited members of the various Occupy movements to take up residency on the ground floor of the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in the Mitte district of Berlin. The resulting project was criticized in some quarters for institutionalizing activism and thus containing it, but praised in others for offering a staging post of sorts for considering the relationship between art institutions and various forms of protest and conflict.

The events surrounding the invasion of Iraq by allied forces in 2003 have produced a variety of reactions from artists. While some overtly disagreed with the politics of the war, others have explored how it polarized people. In the same year as Wallinger created State Britain, Yinka Shonibare hung a white flag, a symbol of both peace and commemoration, at half mast in Jubilee Gardens on London’s South Bank. White Flag at Half Mast (2007) was the inaugural commission for the Jubilee Flagpole, and, in defiance of the scheme’s intention to enliven the 8.5-hectare (21-acre) site, Shonibare’s contribution was a simple white flag. More significantly, perhaps, it could also be seen from the Houses of Parliament, the very building in which parliamentary approval to invade Iraq was given on 18 March 2003.

Such issues were central to Mark Wallinger’s State Britain (2007), which recreated the camp set up by peace campaigner Brian Haw opposite the Houses of Parliament. Consisting of

Paul Chan’s Baghdad in No Particular Order (2003) is the second singlechannel video in the artist’s ‘Tin Drum’ trilogy.8 The impetus for the work was Chan’s participation in the Iraq

Downey, Anthony. “Activism”. Art and Politics Now. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. 78-96.

Peace Team, an initiative of the Iraqi activist group Voices in the Wilderness that was set up to challenge the US campaign for war using nonviolent means (the efforts of Voices in the Wilderness were subsequently recognized when it was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003). In Baghdad in No Particular Order, we are given a glimpse of every-day life in the city just months before the US-led invasion. Scenes of children dancing merrily, a caged monkey dozing in a hotel lobby and a Sufi poetry performance, as well as the quotidian activity of the local cafe, play out over time, their subjects apparently oblivious to the coming war and the devastation about to befall the city. A later work by Chan, On Democracy by Saddam Hussein, edited by Paul Chan (2012), consists of a small publication containing three speeches delivered between 1977 and 1978 by the then vice president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein (Chan had been jokingly given a copy of Hussein’s book from which the speeches are taken by a colleague). Given Hussein’s death in 2006 and the devastation in Iraq, the speeches take on a relic-like quality that is at once politically perverse and eerily familiar in tone. In Get Rid of Yourself (2003), the Bernadette Corporation – whose core members include John Kelsey, Bernadette Van-Huy and Antek Walczak – explored the activist narrative of anti-globalization alongside the militant-intellectual approach of the Black Bloc anarchist group and the thinking of the founders of Tiqqun, a French philosophical journal launched in 1999.9 Containing footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the antiglobalization protests in Genoa in the same year, Get Rid of Yourself also features actress Chloë Sevigny distractedly recounting, among other things, a recipe for a Molotov cocktail. As a film-essay, Get Rid of Yourself

appears to question the efficacy of left-wing activism in the face of an allconsuming culture of capital. In turn, it also appears to advocate a movement that would anonymously embody newer, more selective forms of political activism in order to subvert both statecontrolled agendas and certain forms of self-surveillance. Conflict has an immediate effect on those involved in it. Ahmed Basiony’s 30 Days of Running in the Place (2010) was a performance piece in which, over the course of thirty days, the artist ran on the spot for one hour every day in a specially constructed room outside the Palace of Arts in the gardens of the Cairo Opera House. This work proved to be Basiony’s last: on 30 January 2011, while filming the events of the Egyptian Revolution, he was shot dead. Following his death, his artistic work was shown alongside footage he had taken of the protests in Tahrir Square, raising questions about the extent to which his political views and activism were being prioritized over his artistic output, and, in turn, to what degree the emotional reactions to his untimely death pro- scribed further forms of interpretation. The conjunction here between art and activism is indicative of the manner in which art can often be co-opted for political ends or subsumed into its often narrow agenda. If art is indeed increasingly being positioned as ‘political’, capable of potentially altering opinion and reconfiguring engagement with various communities and our sense of our place within them, then one question remains urgent: is it now the case that art, by utilizing elements of activist practice, can not only effect social debate but also offer unique ways of engaging with such debate? In their appeal and broad reach, can artists engage constituencies beyond the art world and mirror, in part, the appeal of activism to a wider audience without

Downey, Anthony. “Activism”. Art and Politics Now. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. 78-96.

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ACTIVISM: THE POLITICS OF NON-ENGAGEMENT · Anthony Downey

BOMB SPLINTERS: ACTION AND COUNTERACTION IN MALMÖ PONTUS KYANDER

necessarily advocating a clearly definable or quantifiable outcome, political or otherwise? In the following chapter, we shall examine further evidence of how art embodies and interprets political forms and values and, in so doing, reconfigures forms of engagement with some of the most pressing issues of our time: conflict, history and the politics of terror. Anthony Downey is an academic, editor and writer. Recent and upcoming publications include Art and Politics Now (Thames and Hudson, 2014); Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practice in North Africa and the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2014); Slavs and Tatars: Mirrors for Princes (JRP Ringier, 2015); Archival Dissonance: Contemporary Art and Contested Narratives in the Middle East (forthcoming, I.B. Tauris, 2015). He is currently editing Future Imperfect: Art Institutions and Critical Practices in the Middle East (forthcoming, I.B. Tauris, 2016) and The Matter of Critique (forthcoming, Third Text, 2016).

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NOTES: 1. For further information on these performances, see http://liberatetate. wordpress.com/ performances/ (accessed November 2013). 2. Thomas Hirschhorn, quoted in Randy Kennedy, ‘Bringing Art and Change to Bronx: Thomas Hirschhorn Picks Bronx Development as Art Site’, New York Times, 30 June 2013. 3. For a fuller discussion of this issue, alongside a debate on participative practices, see Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London and New York, 2012. 4. Claire Bishop, ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents’, Artforum, February 2006, pp. 179–85, p. 183. 5. Intrigued by the question of what King Baudouin might have thought or done on that day, Höller wrote to Baudouin’s widow, Queen Fabiola, but his letter was ignored. Crucially, however, it resulted in the project being withdrawn from an exhibition celebrating Brussels’ status as European Capital of Culture in 2000, so it took place the following year. No visual documentation of the work exists, and any interpretation put forward is based on the accounts of the participants.

6. Founded by Jacque Servin and Igor Vamos, The Yes Men pride themselves on correct- ing the activities of ‘big-time criminals’. To date, their activities have targeted such corporations as Dow Chemical, the World Trade Organization, Exxon Mobil and the New York Times, among many others. The Yes Men have also produced two films, The Yes Men (2003) and The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), both of which explore their activist projects in greater detail. 7. In reference to the venue for State Britain, Wallinger has noted that ‘There are dif- ferent ways of enacting protest and there are various platforms and media to do that. But really this museum was the only way of making this work. I think it neatly side- tracked any issues to do with authenticity, and also the “is it art“ thing, because there was an urgency for people to have a close look at this, and the only place they could do it was there.’ Quoted in Martin Herbert, Mark Wallinger, London, 2011, p. 182. 8. The other two videos in the trilogy are RE: The_Operation (2002) and Now Promise Now Threat (2005). 9. Tiqqun is also the publisher of, among other titles, The Coming Insurrection (2007), a book that theorizes the ‘imminent collapse of capitalist culture’, and Introduction to Civil War (2009), which proposes that society is not so much in crisis as at an end.

Downey, Anthony. “Activism”. Art and Politics Now. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. 78-96.

For activism to appear, it needs a culture to counteract. Activism goes beyond just manifesting an opinion. It takes opinions into action. These actions in turn take place in a manner and in a sphere, which are not the controlled debates of political or management boardrooms, or the organised party politics of a general election.

effects of explosives, or that due to the heat many of the British ‘blacklegs’ were sleeping on the deck. That was where the bomb proved to have its worst effect. It killed one worker and injured 23, seven of them badly. The perpetrators were soon arrested, as one of them had dropped his salary slip during the escape from the crime scene.

This makes the activist potentially dangerous. Activism is ambiguous, as the activist tends to be uncompromisingly right, while his/her cause may vary. It might be animal rights, it might be anti-nuclear weapons and power plants, for peace and disarmament, for women’s rights, or the preservation of old city centres or buildings. But it might also be Fascism, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, antigay, anti-democracy. The term ‘direct action’ is at the core of the forming early Fascism. We have seen all these varieties not only in history, but also in recent time. The activist might be a peaceful hero, but potentially he/she is also a social threat and an a gent for destruction. The energy of activism comes from this position between the tolerable and the intolerable.

The three young men were socialist activists, who in the heat of events became actual terrorists. But they also became heroes of the workers’ movement in Sweden, and their death sentences were paroled due to the massive protests and activism sparked by the event. They were finally set free by Sweden’s first Labour government in 1917.

*** They never intended to kill anyone. The bomb assault in the clear summer night of July 1908 on the schooner Amalthea anchored in Malmö harbour was only intended to scare off the strikebreakers. They had been hired from Britain by the employers and were kept for the sake of security away from the outraged striking harbour workers. On an anchored ship out in the Malmö harbour they wouldn’t be assaulted, was the thought. But three young socialists, who were not part of the strikers but sympathised with their cause, made a simple bomb, and one of them rowed out to the ship and placed the bomb on its hull. They had very little knowledge about the

In popular opinion, the three activists were first considered terrorists, before being hailed as heroes. Also these shifts in opinions show the ambiguity of activism. Generally, the whole workers’ movement in Sweden was in its early manifestations an activist movement, only slowly developing into organised party and union structures. It started in fact in Malmö, with the agitation of the tailor-turned-socialist August Palm in 1881, albeit it must be added that Social Democracy in Sweden found its first organised forms in Gothenburg and Stockholm, following August Palm’s constant movement through the country. The mistrust from the official Sweden is illustrated by its founding members’ frequent imprisonment. August Palm was repeatedly jailed, as was for instance the later Prime Minister Hjalmar Branting and the journalist and leading Young Socialist Axel Danielsson (soon to start the Social Democratic paper Arbetet in Malmö). August Palm was in many ways the ultimate activist. He agitated, started papers, tried to organise unions, was intent on starting popular movements

but did himself care more about causes than of popularity. His wide array of activism estranged him in effect from the rest of the workers’ movement. He was fiercely for democratic socialism, for unions, free press, but against militarism, royalism, the ‘intelligentia’ of the workers movement, and against (!) temperance. As the ‘intelligentia’ was the actual leadership of the Social Democracy, and teetotallers were in a majority among its founding leaders, it can be easily concluded that August Palm lacked the ability to pick his fights. Only his role as the actual pioneer of Social Democracy in Sweden prevented him at one point from being excluded from any official role in the party. August Palm fought everything he disliked with the same uncompromising vigour. He was the quintessential activist, focused on the cause, not on the politics of success. From Malmö and from August Palm, we can learn that activism might aim at the masses, but it is not in itself a mass movement. It does not need to come from the grass roots, even if it wants to reach them. To the masses, the activist is like the spark that either sets the grass on fire, or fails. There are similarities between August Palm and for instance Mahatma Gandhi – non-violence for instance, and a total rejection of compromise. Both started mass movements, but neither of them ever became the leaders of a nation. Both preached and practiced nonviolence, but could not prevent violence from actually becoming a part of the means used by their followers – as with the bomb assault on Amalthea in 1908. This is yet again due to the ambiguous nature of activism: it works against the system, whatever this system is. Activism generally invites for individuals and small cells to ‘self-organise’ their struggle. As some cynics say: you have to break an egg to make an omelette. This can be used as an excuse for anything between peaceful squatting and mass murder. *** 13


BOMB SPLINTERS: ACTION AND COUNTER-ACTION IN MALMÖ · Pontus Kyander

Malmö is in many ways a city of counter-action, but I would not stretch it as far as saying it is a city of activism. Much counter-action here has been basically against change, not about advocating positive alternatives. The dismantling of the shipyard in Malmö – at its height one of the biggest in the world – caused surprisingly little resistance among the workers who ultimately lost their jobs. Maybe it was considered a lost cause from the start, but it also shows how the workers’ movement in Sweden had removed itself from its activist roots. It had become organisational and corporativist, it trusted authority, and with the Social Democracy sitting in government, and the state ending up owning the shipyard – who would there then be to support you? But when the building crane of the shipyard that had dominated the Malmö skyline för decades was sold to South Korea and finally removed in 2002, some strong emotions were stirred. It was the death of a symbol, of the image of Malmö as a workers’ city. True enough, the new university area developed here instead, and not far away the Turning Torso by Santiago Calatrava provided a new high rise profile to Malmö. But these edifices tell a story very remote from that of the early days of workers’ movement activism. Much debate and resistance was stirred in the 1980s and 90s by the process of building the bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen. There were a lot of us on the left who thought the bridge would be the end of many things: it would bring on an environmental disaster, the destruction of infrastructure, and end the merry times when you crossed the water peacefully on ferries. But there was also activism directed at the project, even though this activism never was very widely embraced. The methods were from the classical repertoire of civil resistance: activists chaining their 14

bodies to construction sites, or driving boats to prevent work from being done at sea. But the dominant struggle was public and political, locally as well as nationally, and a minister even resigned in protest against the decision to actually build the much debated bridge. The success of the bridge killed the protests almost instantly when it was opened in 2000. The activist expression had in this context developed into a form of commentary on the political debate, rather than being an instrument of change. Other activism has dominated the scene in Malmö lately, and there is no doubt that while the early 20th Century was an age of activism from the left, the early 21st Century has been a period of activism from the right. Swastikas sprayed on mosques and synagogues, pigs let loose in the Malmö Mosque, windows crushed on the synagogue. Arson directed at Roma camps was almost endemic for a while in the country including in Malmö, attempted as well as successful. These are activist protests as well, even if most of us reading this text might not sympathise with them. These different acts are not purported by the same people or groups, and they might be motivated by quite different ideologies (but not totally, as intolerance lies at the root of them all). The traditional “Swedish” extreme right is these days focused on anti-Muslim and anti-Roma activism, while Jewish centres are apparently attacked by activists with roots in the Middle East. Activists also recruit young men and women for a Holy War in Syria and Iraq, where religion, race, secterism and male pride is mixed into a lethal concoction. There is a logic at play here: political activism takes place on a scene outside the regular and accepted political debate. You could say that it takes a radical change of political paradigm for any of these discourses

BOMB SPLINTERS: ACTION AND COUNTER-ACTION IN MALMÖ · Pontus Kyander

to be expressed in the open. Their only possible expressions are on shady websites and in the form of direct actions.

images. It drew the attention to the activists, and in effect ended the exhibition. The action can still be seen in a home edit of aged video footage on social media.

*** I witnessed first hand some of this activism, or the effects of it, in the autumn of 2007. The American photographer Andres Serrano, who had stirred the US art scene in the 1990s with his Piss Christ (a photograph of a crucifix placed in a jar filled with urine) and shown a large retrospective at Malmö konsthall in 1996, had an exhibition in the nearby city Lund. A selection from the series of photographs A History of Sex was shown at Kulturen, the museum of cultural history. The artist had asked people, individuals as well as couples, to express their own ultimate images of sexuality. These fantasies were staged in photographs by people of a wide array of gender, colour, age and bodily shapes. In often very classical compositions and with all the skills of Serrano’s photographic techniques, the series displayed quite a variety of sexual practices, all based on mutual consent. I had already written an appreciating review when I was suddenly called to revisit the show, or what remained of it. Four young men from a Nazi organisation had entered the show late in the afternoon the previous day. With blunt weapons they battered many of the images, and ripped some of them down from the walls. They showed particular aggression towards images of interracial and non-heterosexual practices. The action expressed a high level of testosterone as well as a surprising dose of male anxiety – the action could just as well be understood as an act of fear, and specifically fear of homosexuality by a group of men involved in an excessively male community. The exhibition was a mess of shattered glass and demolished

It certainly was activism, it had most of the intended effect in regards of media attention. At the same time, you could also see how it allowed a reverse perspective. In 2007, the exhibition in itself did not cause a public debate any more. Neither did the action raise any sympathies from ‘upset citizens’. It seems that bashing sexual or gender minorities is not a success recipe for the extreme right any more. At least in our part of the world, there is already far more acceptance for a variety of gender and sexual expressions – maybe not to the point of making History of Sex popular among a general audience, but neither was the content that upsetting any more. In that sense, the action was logical, but also extremely impotent. Its general effect was limited to destruction, and quickly passed into oblivion. *** My perspective on activism is as ambiguous, ambivalent, as the ideas of activism and direct action themselves. In Anno Domini 2015, where is the field for activism in a strong sense? At the same time there is a paradox: some of the opinions that only a few years ago were exclusively expressed outside of public debate and approval, through ‘direct actions’ on Muslim, Jewish or Roma presence, or on the number of refugees driven to the shores of Europe by conflicts in the Middle East – these are now moving into the public and open debate. Currently, we see a wave of support to populist and extreme right parties and movements across Europe. Malmö is at a crossroad of debates, having all the benefits of a multicultural society, as well as struggling to find solutions to issues related to strong

flows of migration. Malmö is a city where extremes are made visible, between ideologies, between those who have and those who don’t have. We meet forms of activism most of us don’t wish to be exposed to. How do we counteract this counter-action, and prevent it from forming the attitudes of our society? The debate is shifting, attitudes are shifting. People are shifting. Does this mean democracy is shifting and embracing what was previously unthinkable in our debate and our particular society, and are we approaching a point of new paradigms in politics? If so, what are the new areas of activism in the name of human values, equality, of human dignity? And what are the means and goals of activism in a democratic society? The mode of activism – positively interpreted – has today to be about protecting human values and the rights of individuals and groups threatened of persecution or unfair treatment by government authority, corporations, other communities and individuals, and to generally advocate the rights that a good society should grant all its citizens. This means also, that activism should not turn against democracy, but against the powers trying to reduce democratic and human values. Activism should not be a means to replace open discussion, but to keep the discussion open, while still preventing the dehumanising effects of the populist and far right politics that we can expect to have a present role also in the near-future Malmö. If we recently have faced activism in the service of forces we do not want to dominate our society, constructive activism now must be about making also this dark side visible, not supporting it but fighting it, by exposing its devastating effects and point at alternative futures.

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THE PERILS OF INDIFFERENCE MICHEL THOMAS

“Indifference is always the friend of the enemy” Elie Wiesel. Seventh White House Evening, Washington, 12 April 1999 Since I moved to Malmö, I have been able to experience the engagement of the local activists; from young politically involved feminists to massive grass roots antifascist rallies. These are underground movements of resistance against harsh capitalism and against injustice. The independent artist in this year’s Biennale are displaying projects highlighting a deeper understanding of our societies’ multifaceted realities. LOCAL AND PERSONAL ENGAGEMENT Anthony Luvera’s project Not Going Shopping and Naomi Soto Grow Heathrow are two photography projects illustrating the associative undertakings involving the communities. It is also a fight for life, for the environment, for the LGBT community, for the minorities and for human rights. In her work We Live in Fear, the South African visual activist Zanele Muholi brings light on the situation of black lesbian women in South Africa. Through her artistic approach she captures the journey of the African queer community. ”(…) I´m using visuals as a way of creating awareness (…) through those truths and realities, the world will learn about our cultures. I mean I have to write that part of history.” In conjunction with Malmö Fotobiennal 2015, Moderna Museet Malmö is highlighting the activist project Walls of Sports by Tomáš Rafa. In collaboration with people living in the Roma settlements and with other local residents and volunteers, Rafa has organized actions in which largescale murals have been painted 16

onto the walls that separate the Roma community from the rest of the population. The documentation of the project shows that a better way is achievable. VIRAL MESSAGES In the latest years, photography and the Internet have become inherent ingredients in the course of historical events. The “social network photographer” is taking full advantage of the mobile applications and social media to reach a broad audience and involve the viewer. This interaction between the author and the audience, instant upload and photo and film sharing is creating new links between social activism and artistic practice. We have convinced ourselves that we are making a difference by protesting only on social media. We are removed from the real individual in need that we regard changing our profile pictures in rainbow colours as doing our part. In 2014 the “I am Charlie” images spread like fire on the Facebook profile picture space. Activism has become transnationalism. We have all been able to experience the wave of demonstrations and civil unrest at Euromaidan in Ukraine, or the widespread protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square through first hand information on the web. Another example is the feminist group Femen, communicating mainly through photography and film documentation of the activist performance. Alba Zari and Sharon Ritosssa’ project Places is decomposing and paraphrasing the selection of technology gestures in ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) communication strategies: “(…) It is viral, like in the Hollywood movies, it speaks the enemy language and it spreads on computers and smartphones, using special effects

and hectic editing. The starting point of the project is a attempt to explain the media impact of ISIS (…)” Alnis Stakle project Melancholic Road and Gils Van Den Berg’s work TV Toes are ironically disclosing the mislead activism going on in social media. THE MIST OF WAR Our societies are increasingly polarized and the first casualty of war is said to be truth. On one side, photography, an art commonly known as “truth bearer”, is being misused through manipulated images and government propaganda is spreading disinformation and maskirovka (i.e: military deception) On the other hand, photographers are on the ground, reporting facts and gathering photo evidence documenting the geopolitical tensions. One example is Laurence Rasti´s photography project There are No Homosexuals in Iran laying bare the mechanism of authoritarian government. Another significant project is Kent Klich’s Black Friday, on display at Malmö Konsthall, depicting the attack on the city of Rafah on the 1st of August 2014, and its aftermath on the civilian population. The project is made in association with Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture, a research centre based at Goldsmiths, University of London. The project is assembling a team of architects, artists, filmmakers, activists, and theorists to undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums. The investigations provide evidence for international prosecution teams, political organizations, NGOs, and the United Nations. Additionally, the project undertakes critical examination of the history and present status of forensic practices in articulating notions of public truth.

Kent Klich Harbi Mohammad Al Zamle Sheikh Al Eid, 63 Mohammad Harbi Mohammad Sheikh Al Eid, 37 killed by tank. Abu Yousef Al Najjar crossing, Rafah, Gaza, 1/8-2014

WE ARE IN PRESENCE OF GREAT DESPAIR During that whole process I examine my own commitment. My hope is that the biennale will contribute to the debate. Not acting in all time is similar to indifference. In his speech at the White House in 1999, Elie Wiesel declared: “Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a beginning it is an end. Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -never the victims, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry child, and the homeless refugee - not to respond to

their plight, not to relieve their solitude is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.” Activism is the work of individuals who want to make a difference and who are even willing to lay down their lives for the cause they believed is; they are fighting against the perils of indifference. The personal engagement of the artist, photographer through the lens of culture and communication is close to that resistance movement. Let us not forget that we are in presence of great despair. Follow the pathway. There is an urge to act now. This is fundamental and vital! 17


MALMÖ FOTOBIENNAL PRESENTS KENT KLICH TOMÁŠ RAFA ZANELE MUHOLI

Together with Malmö Konsthall , Moderna Museet Malmö and Fotogalleri Vasli Souza, Malmö Fotobiennal 2015 has the honour to present three exhibitions for this year’s biennale with three acclaimed artists activists: Kent Klich from Sweden, Tomáš Rafa from Slovakia and Zanele Muholi from South Africa, . 18

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KENT KLICH

BLACK FRIDAY MALMÖ KONSTHALL (C-SALEN) Photographer Kent Klich’s new project Black Friday is the third part of his ongoing depiction of life in Gaza. The two previous ones are Gaza Photo Album (2009) and Killing Time (2013)*. His pictures can be seen as a reaction to all the photos of catastrophic scenes from the area that reach us via the mass media – the constant press photos of acts of violence. Klich portrays in a more low-key way the conditions under which people in Gaza live. We often only encounter the setting – the place where something has happened – the traces of the events, after the violence. Or we meet the people before the moment that changed everything, in their everyday life that exists despite it all. The photographs’ strength lies in what they leave out – that which we cannot see but still know about. The Gaza Strip is one of the world’s most densely populated places. Some 1.8 million people live in an area about as big as one-quarter of Öland. Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which this year enters into its ninth year, affects the Palestinian people’s freedom of movement, trade with the outside world, educational opportunities and hopes for the future. From 2008 until today, Gaza has been subjected to three attacks. The latest, Operation Protective Edge, occurred in the summer of 2014, when more than 2,100 Palestinians were killed (the majority of which were civilians, according to the United Nations), plus 66 Israeli soldiers and 7 civilians in Israel. Black Friday depicts the attack on the city of Rafah: 01/08/2014, and its aftermath. At eight o’clock in the morning on Friday 1 August 2014, the sky over Gaza goes silent when a 72-hour-long ceasefire goes into effect. But the ceasefire quickly ends. In its blog, the Israeli military (IDF) writes: “We suspect that a group of Hamas terrorists, including a suicide attacker, kidnapped 2nd. Lt. Goldin at 9:30AM & dragged him into a tunnel.” Israel’s defence authority activates the Hannibal directive, which refers to the Israeli belief that it is better to kill a captured soldier than to let the enemy have him. In the following hours the residents of Rafah are attacked with more than 2,000 aerial bombs and grenades. More than 130 Palestinians are killed that day, the majority of them civilians.

Black Friday bears witness to the events of these intensive hours. Taken after the event, Kent Klich’s photographs depict the places where Palestinians were killed and the searched tunnel area where the Israeli soldier was captured. The photos are framed by Amnesty International’s timeline of the event. The empty places are juxtaposed with photos of ID, passport and family photos of the Palestinians who died on 1–3 August. The exhibition also includes a presentation created by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture, which is a London-based research project that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums. Kent Klich was born in Sweden in 1952 and has lived in Denmark since the early 1980s. He studied psychology at the University of Gothenburg and photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in the USA. He has produced a number of projects in the form of books, video works, films and exhibitions in many parts of the world. He was a member of the Magnum photographic co-operative from 1998 to 2002. In 2009 he won the Swedish Association of Professional Photographers’ award for the Swedish photographic book of the year for his book Picture Imperfect. This exhibition is part of Malmö Fotobiennal and Nordisk Panorama – Short and doc film festival. * Gaza Photo Album (2009) and Killing Time (2013) Gaza Photo Album depicts private homes in the cut-off and isolated Gaza Strip after the Israeli attack during the winter of 2008 to 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead. The photos do not deal with claims to the truth, but rather with time and space, delays and dislocations. In the pictures, people are physically absent but still present, because the human aspect, that which is common to us all, the deeply private – in this case represented by the home – evokes a sense of closeness and identification. Killing Time was created in 2013 and is divided into five chapters: Gaza 2001– 2002 (black and white photos), What Life Looks Like (pictures from private photo albums in Gaza), Homes 2009 (photos of homes in Gaza destroyed during Operation Cast Lead), From A Distance, 2012 (landscape photos taken from the Israeli side looking into Gaza) plus the video installation Killing Time. The video installation depicts totally everyday sequences that people from Gaza filmed themselves with their mobile phone cameras before and during Operation Cast Lead. Most of the participants in the films died during the attack, and the survivors entrusted these “video diaries” of their nearest and dearest to Kent Klich so they could live on in his work.

Kent Klich Sadia Rizeq Abdul Razzaq Abu Taha, 40 02.08.2014 20

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Kent Klich Mousa Ibrahim Mohammad Gazar, 40 01.08.2014

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Kent Klich Ilham Mohammed Mahmoud Okal, 33 03.08.2014 Kent Klich Rafah, tunnel destroyed by the Israeli Army after 2nd Lt.Hadar Goldin was taken hostage by Hamas soldiers the first of August 2014. 23


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TOMÁŠ RAFA

WALLS OF SPORTS and other projects MODERNA MUSEET MALMÖ Tomáš Rafa’s short and intense documentaries render the Roma’s extremely perilous situation in today’s Europe palpable. Throughout this spring, in conjunction with the exhibition THE NEW HUMAN: You and I in Global Wonderland, Moderna Museet Malmö has shown nine videos from Rafa’s continuously growing body of work tracing the growth of nationalism and neo-fascism in Central Europe. In conjunction with Malmö Fotobiennial 2015, Moderna Museet Malmö is highlighting yet another side of Rafa’s practice, namely a politically loaded art activism with revitalizing and therapeutic ambitions that is also pervaded by lots of love. The best known of these projects is Walls of Sports, which so far has been carried out in four (out of fourteen) Slovakian communities where the local authorities since 2009 have erected massive concrete walls to separate and hide the Roma population from view. In 2012, for instance, the city of Ostrovany built a 150-meter-long and 2.2-meterhigh wall to separate the Roma community from the rest of the population. In collaboration with people living in the Roma settlements and with other local residents and volunteers, Rafa organized actions in which largescale murals were painted onto these walls of segregation. The murals have had the three-fold purpose of bringing the construction of these walls to the attention of the surrounding world, making them less brutal for the people who live near them, and creating a dialog between different communities living in the same town or village. The title of the project refers to a bizarre statement by local authorities in the city of Michalovce, who

tried to justify the construction of one such wall by claiming it would serve as a facility for sports. Rafa’s other activist projects include engaging Roma settlers in painting murals to improve their homes, a workshop in which Roma children together painted a huge canvas (10x10 meters) for their house, and an art therapy project in which a Roma family used painting and dancing to work through the traumatic memories of their children being tortured by the Slovakian police. Rafa comes from Slovakia himself, and in his work he has focused on his homeland and the neighboring countries of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Intense and deeply moving, his videos present us with societies severely marked by racist discrimination, poverty, prejudices, fear and hatred. One of his most recent videos documents a protest against refugees and Islam by far-right activists in Bratislava, supported by Czechs, Slovaks and Poles. At the end of the protest some of the demonstrators attack an Arab family in the public space. Against the background of this outburst of aggression directed at immigrants and minorities, Rafa’s activist projects stand out as inspiring examples of the will to help a stranger in need, and to extend a hand to someone who lives under entirely different conditions than oneself. The moving documentation of these projects shows us that another, much better way is in fact possible.

Joa Ljungberg Curator, Moderna Museet Malmö

Tomáš Rafa Painting workshop with children and inhabitants in Romany settlement in Sečovce. Revitalisation of common space (corridor) of the block Slovakia, August 2015 26

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Tomáš Rafa Painting workshop with children and inhabitants in Romany settlement in Sečovce. Revitalisation of common space (corridor) of the block Slovakia, August 2015

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Tomáš Rafa Painting workshop with children on 10x10 meters canvas in Romany settlement, Sečovce, Slovakia, August 2015

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ZANELE MUHOLI

WE LIVE IN FEAR FOTOGALLERI VASLI SOUZA Muholi works as a human / lesbian rights activist with members in LGBTI community, raising the many issues facing black lesbian women living in South Africa. In 2002, she co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organization based in Gauteng, dedicated to provide a safe space for women loving women to meet and organize. My work is a visual exploration of making/mapping/ preserving radical black lesbian and queer (LGBTI : lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) visual history in post-Apartheid South Africa. I explore how visual activism can be employed by socially, culturally, politically and economically marginalized individuals to create sites of resistance as well as to develop a critical gaze from our own perspective.

Faces and Phases ‘Remember me when I’m gone …’ - Busi Sigasa When I started capturing Faces and Phases eight years ago, I did not anticipate that the project would involve much more than documenting my community. The first person I photographed for the series was Busi Sigasa (1982-2007), whose photograph was taken at the old Women’s Gaol at Constitution Hill, Braamfontein, in 2006. She was my friend and colleague. She was a poet, an activist and a survivor of the hate crime of ‘curative rape’. Eight months later, in March 2007, she died at the age of 25.

Confronted by the realities of loss and pain, I began a long journey of photographing black and white portraits of the mostly black lesbians and trans men around me. What was initially a visual project became the creation of an unprecedented archive of photographs for my community and our country. I wanted to fill a gap in South Africa’s visual history that, even 10 years after the fall of apartheid, wholly excluded our very existence. However, as I began to photograph friends, comrades, neighbours, the lovers of lovers, I became curious. I asked questions and looked into the eyes of black lesbian mothers, sisters, daughters and sons, wives and husbands. I was invited into their lives and I learned of their individual joys, hopes, longings, scars, suffering and endless love. Faces and Phases was thus born and grew year after year from a process of my own struggling with and processing what I was privileged to hear and capture, as often torn apart by the courageous stories shared with me as built up by them. Faces and Phases is both highly personal and deeply political to me: an act of searching, resisting, transgressing the boundaries of oppressive racial, sexual, class and gender power structures. Personally, I do not have a documented family tree, and sadly I do not have photographs of my maternal and paternal grandparents. Although this erasure was deliberate and is true for many black families across the globe, this commonality does not negate my feelings of longing, of incompleteness, believing that if I could know their faces, a part of me would not feel so empty. [continue on page 39]

Zanele Muholi Liza Mokae Duduza Faces and Phases Johannesburg, 2013 32

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Zanele Muholi Gazi T Zuma Faces and Phases Umlazi, Durban, 2010

Zanele Muholi Musa Ngubane Faces and Phases Johannesburg, 2010

Zanele Muholi Sharon ‘Shaz’ Mthunzi Daveyton Faces and Phases Johannesburg, 2014

Zanele Muholi Charmain Carrol Faces and Phases Parktown, Johannesburg, 2013

Zanele Muholi Manucha Muizenberg Faces and Phases Cape Town, 2010

Zanele Muholi Ricki Kgositau Faces and Phases Melville, Johannesburg, 2013

Zanele Muholi Stesh Gonya Faces and Phases Parktown, Johannesburg, 2013

Zanele Muholi Mbali Zulu Faces and Phases Kwa Thema, Springs, Johannesburg, 2010

Zanele Muholi Kekeletso Khena Faces and Phases Green Market Square, Cape Town, 2010

Zanele Muholi Kuruman, Murder Isilumo Siyaluma 2012 34

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Zanele Muholi Hammaskraal, Murder Isilumo Siyaluma 2014 36

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In each photograph that I take, there is a longing and looking for ‘me’. I am capturing the black, beautiful portrait of my young self. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, many African countries were still fighting for their independence from European colonialism, and black nationalism was at an all-time high. While Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia were slowly winning independence, South Africa’s fight for freedom against racialised oppression was quashed with brutal force by the apartheid state. It is so unfortunate that, in most of those countries that gained independence before South Africa, homophobia, queerphobia, transphobia and lesbophobia are deeply entrenched, with African leaders criminalising homosexuality and publicly projecting hate speech. Those decades were times of high alert, as wars and violence and killings spread throughout my country and my township of Umlazi; brutality in different forms pervaded every media image I was exposed to. Parallel to these political wars, another kind of war was being waged, an internal war against our own black, African beauty. Africans were bombarded with commercial images peddling the use of skin bleaching creams that promised to lighten and brighten our complexions, give us a sense of self-worth and satisfy a longing to be less African even as we fought against white oppression. I remember that many of us conformed and bleached and put our health at risk, even as we resisted and fought against racial hierarchy. And it felt like a two-edged sword because we also knew we were African women. Bleaching is self-inflicted but it is society that sometimes deliberately erases one’s race or skin colour due to prejudice. The same thing applies when a lesbian’s sexuality disrupts the homophobe’s space. The results of both encounters can leave permanent scars. Our current struggle, as we commemorate 20 years of democracy in South Africa, is that black lesbian women and trans men continue to suffer ‘curative rapes’ and the brutal murders of our lovers and friends. Looking back now and comparing our current struggle for our rights to exist not just legally but visually in our families and communities, in our nation, I can see that resistance is never a linear process. Often even before the organising starts, merely existing and living is the ultimate beginning of political consciousness, an act of resistance and transgression. As black lesbian women and gay men today we are resisting homophobia, queerphobia and transphobia simply by living our lives. We put ourselves at risk in the townships by coming out and being seen, but we refuse to deny our own beauty and existence. My photography is a therapy to me. I want to project publicly, without shame, that we are bold, black, beautiful/

handsome, proud individuals. It heals me to know that I am paving the way for others who, in wanting to come out, are able to look at the photographs, read the biographies and understand that they are not alone. That is an elixir for me.

Isilumo Siyaluma Isilumo siyaluma is a Zulu expression that can be loosely translated as “period pains/periods pain”. Additionally, there is an added meaning in the translation that there is something secretive in and about this blood/“period in time.” At one level, my project deals with my own menstrual blood, with that secretive, feminine time of the month that has been reduced within Western patriarchal culture as dirty. On a deeper level then, my menstrual blood is used as a vehicle and medium to begin to express and bridge the pain and loss I feel as I hear and become witness to the pain of ‘curative rapes’ that many of the girls and women in my black lesbian community bleed from their vaginas and their minds. Between March 2011 and December 2014, 23 young black lesbians, gay men and trans person aged between 19 and 36 were brutally murdered in various townships. As we continue to live and survive in troubled times as black lesbians in South Africa and within the continent, where rampant hate crimes and brutal killings of same gender loving women is rife. This ongoing project is an activist/ artist’s radical response to that violence. The passage in which we bleed The passage where we are/ were born The passage through which we become (wo)men? The erotic passage meant to be aroused, is raped The passage we love is hated and called names The sacred passage is ever persecuted I continue to bleed each time I read about rampant curative rapes in my ‘democratic’ South Africa. I bleed every time queer bodies are violated and refused citizenship due gender expression and sexual orientation within the African continent. I constantly bleed when I hear about brutal murders of black lesbians in our townships and surrounding areas. I’m scarred and scared as I don’t know whose body will be next to be buried. I bleed because our human rights are ripped. I cry and bleed as mothers, lovers, friends, relatives lose their beloved ones, let alone the children that become orphans because of trans/queerphobic violence. We bleed, our life cycles invaded, we bleed against the will of our bodies and beings. Each patterned piece in this series represents a ‘curative rape’ survivor or a victim of hate crime, the physical and spiritual blood that is shed from our bodies.

Zanele Muholi Manucha Muizenberg Faces and Phases Cape Town, 2010 38

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SELECTED WORKS MARTA ZGIERSKA NAOMI SOTO DOREL FRUMUSANU ENRICO ABRATE JUAN YACTAYO SONO LAURENCE RASTI ANTHONY LUVERA CAROLINA RODRIGUEZ THE SANTXEZ CREW GIJS VAN DEN BERG ALNIS STALKE ALBA ZARI AND SHARON RITOSSA FLAVIA SCHUSTER HANNAH ABRAHAMSON ALEXANDER KRACK

For this edition of Malmรถ Fotobiennal we have selected 15 works from up and coming artists that represents the theme of Contemporary Activism. These works are exhibited in different parts of the city and it was curated by the members of Fotografi i Fokus. 40

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Marta Zgierska Untitled, from the series Post, 2013

Post Marta Zgierska Initially, the project was intended as an incantation of fear in an esthetic image, an attempt to build a set in which everyone can find their punctures – exhausting dreams, paranoia, anxiety. Extremely painful nowadays, even more visible in the context of cultural trauma and entity crisis.

Marta Zgierska Untitled, from the series Post, 2013 42

In 2013 I survived a serious car accident. This misfortune brought about another. A tangled web of consequences meant that with time everything that seemed to have been tamed, became wild and returned in a new version. My own corporeality and pain become a source of images. Because of this, the series of works has become more personal, direct and substantial. Behind every photo there is a story that does not in fact need to be told. GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

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Marta Zgierska, Untitled, 44 from the series Post, 2013

Marta Zgierska, Untitled, from the series Post, 2014

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Naomi Soto Grow Heathrow Untitled #9 2013

Naomi Soto Grow Heathrow Untitled #10 2013

Grow Heathrow Naomi Soto The long-term debate around London’s aviation capacity was reopened in October 2013 when the government resurrected the unpopular Heathrow’s third runway project. Four months later Grow Heathrow, a self-sufficient community established by environmental activists, celebrated its third anniversary as a symbol of the local resistance against the airport’s expansion. The Berkeley Nurseries site is located in Sipson, one of the three villages that would be affected the most by the third runway. When members of the action group Transition Heathrow “swooped on” the abandoned market garden, it was a derelict plot that had been used as dumping site. It had attracted anti-social behaviour and, for a long time, had been a source of problems for both the neighbours and the local authorities. 46

FOTOGALLERI © SEVED · Sevedsgatan 6, 214 45 Malmö

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Naomi Soto Grow Heathrow Untitled #11 2013

Naomi Soto Grow Heathrow Untitled #6 2013 48

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Dorel Frumusanu Untitled #24 Cochin, 2015

Lovers in India Dorel Frumusanu In India, public canoodling is not only frowned upon but punishable by law, with snogs and embraces deemed obscene by passersby eliciting fines or as many as three months in jail. In a culture where four fifths of marriages are arranged and women are only to be embraced by their husbands in the seclusion of home, the stolen kiss is a rare sight. During his months-long stay in Kalkata, Bucharest-based photographer Dorel Frumusanu observed such endearments only on one day of the year: Valentine’s Day. As the photographer made his way through the parks bordering the Victoria Memorial, he found the bushes trembling the unexpected frissons of love, glancing young couples sequestered by the knotted branches or pieces of fabric. Setting his wide angle lens on the clandestine lovers, he preserved these small yet significant moments of defiance and courage. Valentine’s Day and the public displays of affection that come with it, notes Frumusanu, have attracted threats of violence from Hindu extremist groups who see the holiday as a Western celebration that degrades the faith of young people. This kind of violence is often gender-based, targeting women whose actions have been perceived as immodest. In some ways, these amorous pairs, though their identities are obscured, are ushering in a new era and marking a generational shift. Ellyn Kail 50

FOLKETSPARK (JAKTPAVILJONGEN) · Amiralsgatan 35, 214 37 Malmö

Dorel Frumusanu Untitled #1 Kolkata, 2014 51


Dorel Frumusanu Untitled #5 Kolkata, 2014

Dorel Frumusanu Untitled #13 Kolkata, 2014 52

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At work #2 Enrico Abrate This project was developed in Yiwu, the largest city market of wholesales in the world, located in the Zhejiang Province of the People’s Republic of China. Most cheaper goods available in stores around the world are manufactured and sold here in thousands of small stores, same size next to each other on different floors in various buildings around the city. At the heart of my research I want to explore the interaction with the metamorphosis that’s affecting society in the current stage of economic development. The process of urbanization is a large-scale phenomenon in China with important transformations leading to the development of satellite towns, at times creating a single territory that knows no boundaries and identity changing communities and everyday living. 54

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

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Juan Yactayo Sono Untitled, from the series Invisible, 2014

Juan Yactayo Sono Untitled, from the series Invisible, 2014

Invisible Juan Yactayo Sono Around Lima´s most unsuspecting areas exist a number of places exclusive for gay males such as bars, saunas, darkrooms, video clubs, etc. most of which are completely underground and even illegal. These places exist in the limit of what exists and what isn’t supposed to in the city, being both a reality but also completely invisible to most of the population. With this photo documentary I meant not to expose and condemn the existence of such places, that are already burden with all the prejudice that peruvian society associates with sex and homosexuality, but rather to explore the subject in a more personal way, becoming just another man using the services they offered. 56

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

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Juan Yactayo Sono Untitled, from the series Invisible, 2014

Juan Yactayo Sono Untitled, from the series Invisible, 2014

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Laurence Rasti Untitled There are no homossexuals in Iran 2014

There are no Homosexuals in Iran Laurence Rasti September 24, 2007 at Columbia University, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in your country.” While today some Occidental countries accept gays and lesbians marriages, in Iran, homosexuality is still punishable by death. This sanction prohibits homosexuals to live their sexuality. Their only options are to choose transsexuality, practice tolerated by law but considered as pathological or to flee. In Denizli, a small town in Turkey, hundreds of gay refugees Iranian transit: they put their lives on pause waiting to join one day, a host country where they can freely live their sexualities. In this context of uncertainty where anonymity is the best protection, this work questions the fragile identity and gender concepts. It tries to give back to those people a face that their country has temporarily stolen. 60

PANORA · Friisgatan 19 D, 214 21 Malmö, Sweden

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Laurence Rasti Untitled There are no homossexuals in Iran 2014

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Laurence Rasti Untitled There are no homossexuals in Iran 2014

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Laurence Rasti Untitled There are no homossexuals in Iran 2014

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Documentation of Not Going Shopping by Anthony Luvera. 2013 - 2014

Not Going Shopping Anthony Luvera

Anthony Luvera Collaborative Portrait of Raphael Fox 2013 - 2014

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Not Going Shopping is an exhibition of collaborative work created by Anthony Luvera and lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* people living in Brighton & Hove. In response to an open call, eleven participants came forward work with the artist over a nine-month period to take part in discussions, meetings and workshops to create photographs that articulate their points of view about what it is to be queer. Taking inspiration from photo booth portraits – images usually associated with official identification – they recreated their own photo booth, queered it, and then exploded out of it with a final portrait made
on the streets of Brighton. The final Collaborative Portraits were then originally exhibited as large-format posters in outdoor public spaces across Brighton & Hove, and collectively they charted the process of their work together on the Not Going Shopping blog http://notgoingshopping.blogspot.co.uk and in 3,000 copies of the Not Going Shopping newspaper which was distributed free throughout the city. P-HUSET ANNA · Kaptensgatan, 211 41 Malmö

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Anthony Luvera Collaborative Portrait of Kelly McBride 2013 - 2014

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Anthony Luvera Collaborative Portrait of Edward Whelan 2013 - 2014

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Elections Carolina Rodriguez They stare at us, embrace us, always smiling. Feeling with us... for us. Being a candidate is acting out a character that has been constructed. Looking like a president; a governor; a suitable candidate, more than being one. “Elections” shows the brightness of the appearance, what we need to see in them: their eternal smile, that gesture saying that everything will be alright... over and over again. After all, that glitter we want to see in them is nothing more than a reflection of our whishes and uncertainties. “Elections” is a series produced between 2011 and 2014 covering several elections held in Argentina, as a documentation of campaign posters, poses and messages in political propaganda. This series has been reworked showing the different stages that we have gone through, every time. The approach to the texture and its decomposition, reveals the deterioration of the images and political messages at election time. 70

RAOL WALLENBERGS PARK · Lilla Nygatan, 211 38 Malmö

Carolina Rodriguez Untitled #02 2014 71


Carolina Rodriguez Untitled #01 2013

Carolina Rodriguez Untitled #04 2012 72

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The Santxez Crew Pipi Vitoria, 2015

The Santxez Crew Eye dog Vitoria, 2015

The Santxez Crew The Santxez Crew is a street art collective located in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Their work focused on questions of race, enviromental issues and political mediocrity. They intend to provoke the people offering works that use fun and irony as their main ingredients. 74

OUTDOOR EXHIBITION AROUND MALMĂ–

The Santxez Crew Bask sports Vitoria, 2015 75


Gijs van den Berg Obama 2014

TV Toes Gijs van den Berg Since the invention of television we’re able to witness events from all over the world. Amazing discoveries, natural disasters, talented performers and political failures are right there with us in our living rooms. Yet we spend most of our time watching these incredible goings on in a passive state. Television may give the impression that we engage with the world, but actually we do nothing of the sort. TV Toes highlights this inability to engage with the events that television projects at us. We can only witness and protest in passivity within safe distance of the actual events. 76

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

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Gijs van den Berg 911 2012

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Gijs van den Berg Pope 2014

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Alnis Stakle Work from the series Melancholic Road 2013 - 2015

Melancholic Road Alnis Stakle The image stands at the junction of a light which comes from the object and another which comes from the gaze, Plato. For different reasons, Russia has remained a largely unpredictable country over the course of many centuries. Westerners still tend to be prejudiced towards Russians and perceive them as weird, aggressive and irrational. I have visited Russia on a number of occasions, but so far have not managed to capture on film the true nature of Russia. In order to approach the unseen in the Russian culture, for several years already I have been studying amateur videos, which portray often trivial events largely unknown to media and the general public. Nevertheless, these amateur video messages have an existentially meaningful and irrational component, which can become a key to unlock the modern-day cultural discourse on Russia. In my work I appropriate amateur video images in order to re-conceptualise Russia in terms of technology, politics and aesthetics. Works created in 2013 (Ongoing) 80

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI 路 Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malm枚

Alnis Stakle Work from the series Melancholic Road 2013 - 2015 81


Alnis Stakle Work from the series Melancholic Road 2013 - 2015

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Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa Untitled from the series Places 2015

Places Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa The IS (Islamic State of Iraq and East) is a terroristic organization becaming a nation. A singular nation with liquid borders and an heterogeneous population, westerners and easterners at the same time, educated in the best universities of the rich west side of the world, but still exotic. A country constantly hang in the balance between revolution and reaction, the ethics against the perversion. Until now it has globally spread especially by using images: rough picture of execution showed to an incredulous western world, the same subject playing from the first side as the role of the censor and from the other side the morbose voyeur. The most brutal scenes of decapitation, the real IS trade mark, are not shown by the mass media. To avoid the “game” of the terrorists, it has been said. But is it really means something important the view of these videos? By now it is sufficient the view of a single frame with the orange and black gloomy juxtaposition to imagine the rest. These two colors define the goods and the bads, the victims and the executioners, different in respect of the point of view. IS communication is viral, like in the Hollywood movies, it speaks the enemy language and it spreads on computers and smartphones, using special effects and hectic editing. 84

GALLERI LE MOULIN · Södra Förstadsgatan 80, 214 20 Malmö

Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa Untitled from the series Places 2015 85


Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa Untitled from the series Places 2015

Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa Untitled from the series Places 2015 86

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Psychosomagic Flavia Schuster Who am I to deny the mad one that his intestines aren’t in his body anymore? Let’s reserve reason for the experts. That’s what he believes, that’s how it is. A mirror ball, reality from every point of view. Backwards, inverted, spins uncontrollably. So much reality makes you dizzy. Everything breaks through exaggerated, joy becomes euphoria, and sadness, death. These are the drugs that condemn us to a life sentence. The key to a spectral labyrinth that you roll around in a propeller. What is what? Which is which? I’m confused already. I’m not sure if we were talking about love or madness. Flavia Schuster

Flavia Schuster One happy day with Martin 2012

Flavia Schuster spent four years developing this project at Borda Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Buenos Aires. After a certain point she realised that the best form of comprehension between her and the patients was comparing her feeling of love towards the feeling of madness. 88

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

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Flavia Schuster Bernardo 2011

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Flavia Schuster Dragon lost his fire 2011

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Hannah Abrahamsson Jag är jag 2015

I am I [Jag är jag] Hannah Abrahamsson There seems to be a desire in people to put others in boxes, and that on the basis of someone’s group affiliation inheriting certain properties. In my project, I want to problematize this by portraying five randomly selected older people showing their individuality - something often taken away from them as they change and grow older. I have chosen to portray each person with anonymous images that are reminiscent of old age, contrasting with audio records of interviews with them. In the interviews, they share thoughts and short stories from their lives, giving us an opportunity to get a feeling for each person, beyond old age. 92

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

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Hannah Abrahamsson Jag 채r jag 2015

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The Treatment [morgens nüchtern, am Brunnen, zu Bett] Alexander Krack Even though modern spa towns first surfaced in 18th century Britain and spread throughout most of Europe and far Russia shortly after, the idea must have resonated deeply within Germany. There are over 300 spa towns in Germany alone. I travelled to about 40 of them, famous ones as well as little ones usually not men- tioned in a travel guide. The more I delved into this world, memories from my childhood emerged when a chronic bronchitis made me spent several summers in a spa town in the mountains. They are memories of beautiful nature, strange medical machines and elder people in white coats. To me there was always an ambivalence in those memories, aesthetically and emotionally. Almost as in a dream where one can never be sure if things are really the way they seem and where a tree can suddenly turn into a giant. 96

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI · Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö

Alexander Krack Spa Gardens Bad Pyrmont, 2013 97


Alexander Krack Heilstollen therapy Nordenau, 2014 98

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Alexander Krack Cryotherapy Bad Eilsen, 2014

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Alexander Krack Band-stand Bad Wildungen, 2013

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LOCAL PERSPECTIVES TADAO CERN | CARL JOHAN DE GEER | JESPER BLOMQVIST | SADAF FETRAT, SAHAR FETRAT, NARGIS AZARYUN, CHRISTOFFER NÆSS, ANDERS SØMME HAMMER, NEBOJSA SLIJEPCEVIC, SYBILLA MARIE WESTER TUXEN, THORA LORENTZEN | ARNIS BALCUS | CHRISTIAN DANIELEWITZ, JULIE NYMANN, GRO SARAUW, AMALIE SMITH, ANU RAMDAS, DAVID STJERNHOLM | EWA STACKELBERG | EDWARD FINNELL | JOHANNA SCHARTAU | EWA BERG, ROBERT EK, GISELA ERIKSSON, CHRISTEL LUNDBERG, TUSS MARIE LYSÉN, CECILIA SERING, HELGA STEPPAN, PEPE VIÑOLES | JOHANNES PERSSON | ZOULIKHA BOUABDELLAH, MARCIA KURE, MIRIAM SYOWIA KYAMBI, VALÉRIE OKA, TRACEY ROSE, BILLIE ZANGEWA | TOMMY LINDHOLM | MALIN SANDBERG | LUCAS PERNIN | THE FREEDOM THEATRE | AANNA DE BEER | MENSMAGI | MICHEL THOMAS | LEE YOUNGBAEK

During Malmö Fotobiennal the galleries and institutions around Malmö, Lund, Helsingborg and Copenhagen, are invited to present their own exhibitions, their perspectives over the year’s theme, contributing to the diversity of the biennale. 102

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Tadao Cern Comfort Zone 06 2013

Comfort Zone Tadao Cern

Tadao Cern Comfort Zone 01 2013 104

These photos are not staged and people did not suspect that they were photographed by me. I chose to capture images of sleeping vacationers because it accurately represents the name of the project ‘Comfort Zone’. It is only about the seaside, sunbathing and holiday somnolence that is free from a world surrounding you. I chose to showcase only the photos with hidden faces not by an accident, but to grant an observer with an opportunity to calmly scrutinize each and every detail without being distracted. It also helps to avoid empathy or connection between people in the photos and the observers. It really does not matter who they are - the details not only reveal their stories, but make us face ourselves as well. DIGITALISEUM · Lodgatan 1, 211 24 Malmö

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Ledtrådar, Carl Johan De Geer exhibition installation 2015

Carl Johan De Geer Med kameran som tröst 2004

Clues [Ledtrådar] Carl Johan De Geer Ledtrådar is a comprehensive retrospective exhibition featuring Carl Johan De Geer, one of Sweden’s most popular and distinctive artists. In his professional life Carl Johan De Geer has gone his own way and has never followed existing trends. With his genuine interest in cheap detective stories and kitschy ‘Hötorg’ art, his own work ends up in a personal sphere in which high and low meet in a style that is uniquely his own. His abhorrence of pretension is something that has inspired many of today’s younger artists. During the 1990s Carl Johan De Geer started seriously investigating his own ego – with the help of a movie camera. The idea was before its time and it confused people with its egocentric but clear-sighted approach. In films like Mormor, Hitler & Jag (2001) [Grandmother, Hitler and I] he examined his childhood and the history of his family which belongs to the Swedish nobility. 106

DUNKERS KULTURHUS · Kungsgatan 11, 251 89 Helsingborg

Ledtrådar, Carl Johan De Geer exhibition installation 2015 107


Jesper Blomqvist wabi-sabe #2 2015

On the wabi-sabi side of things Jesper Blomqvist In a time where much of the photography found in galleries has a clear sociopolitical message, Jesper Blomqvist’s abstract images speak rather by their silence; a photographic act of recovering something that has been forsaken.

Jesper Blomqvist wabi-sabe #1 2015 108

To call what Jesper Blomqvist is searching for “the sublime” would be to exaggerate, but often there is a metaphysical dimension to his images. In particular in his latest project: On the wabi-sabi side of things - a series of strange, almost picturesque images from the inside of garbage dumpsters with its titel drawn from Buddhist thoughts. A tribute to the beauty found in the randomness and imperfections surround us. The beauty of everyday activism. FORM/DESIGN CENTER · Lilla torg 9, 211 34 Malmö

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Nebojsa Slijepcevic Muski Film Croatia, 2012 Sadaf Fetrat, Sahar Fetrat, Nargis Azaryun, Christoffer Næss and Anders Sømme Hammer This is Kabul Norway/Afghanistan, 2014

Sybilla Marie Wester Tuxen and Thora Lorentzen This place we call our home Denmark, 2014

Shadows in War Sadaf Fetrat, Sahar Fetrat, Nargis Azaryun, Christoffer Næss, Anders Sømme Hammer, Nebojsa Slijepcevic, Sybilla Marie Wester Tuxen and Thora Lorentzen The exhibition Shadows in war presents three documentary short films, which in different ways portrays people who live in areas of conflict. In films from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Croatia we get to know the everyday life within the reality of war. As a dark mist, the fear of what will happen next, is creeping upon the people. At the same time life continues and war becomes part of everyday life. The films depict ongoing conflicts from different parts of the world. Shadows in war is produced by fotogalleriet [format] in collaboration with Doc Lounge Malmö and Nordisk Panorama – Nordic Short & Doc Film Festival. 110

FOTOGALLERIET [FORMAT] · Friisgatan 15, 214 21 Malmö

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Arnis Balcus Skeleton 2014

Beyond the Blue River Arnis Balcus Map 2014

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Arnis Balcus Arnis Balcus is interested in the construction of myths and actual facts, that characterizes the community of Zilupe and Latvia in general. Beyond the Blue River is partly an exploration of a visual culture in a region in which culture transgresses the legal border. Balcus portrays the Zilupe using his own photographs, newspaper images, objects and photographs found in archives and museums. RUMMET [FORMAT] 路 Friisgatan 15, 214 21 Malm枚

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Amalie Smith Untitled Stills from Screening, HD video 6 min warped reflection of a digital projection of Carl Th. Dreyer’s film on Thorvaldsen’s sculptures 2015

Amalie Smith Warp HD video still 2015

David Stjernholm Screen Dumps 2015

Young Danish Photography Christian Danielewitz, Julie Nymann, Gro Sarauw, Amalie Smith, Anu Ramdas, David Stjernholm With the focus on photography as document, we see how reality is presented through the medium of photography. Artists In the 1960’s challenged photography by downplaying its documentary properties by mixing text, images and performance. In the 1990’s, on the other hand, photography was emphasized as a cutting-edge document just through its realism. Both the 60’s and the 90’s use of photography as document are visible in contemporary art today. Today the theme is challenged in a completely new way: This is seen, among others, when photography is ‘translated’ through other artistic media and appears as a new image. In a sense the photograph is always translated as part of a three-dimensional reality to its two-dimensional surface and the six exhibiting artists shows, how this ‘translation’ in different ways can be challenged. This could be done by the photographic document planed away in a performative act as seen in Julie Nymanns work. Or when Gro Sarauw adds new digitally programmed elements to a photographic surface. Young Danish Photography is a yearly recurring exhibition that, since 1998, has as its primary aim to present, produce and promote photography among a younger generation of artists in Denmark. 114

FOTOGRAFISK CENTER· Staldgade 16, 1799 Copenhagen V, Denmark

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Christian Danielwitz Interior (Armenian Genocide Memorial). Tsitsernakaberd, Armenia. 22. december 2013.

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Christian Danielwitz Exterior (Fujichrome Velvia 100 F). Istanbul, Turkey. 18. april 2014.

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Julie Nymann Shreads of Laughter 12.16 min loop, 9:16 HD stereo 2014

Anu Ramadas Building #5 2015

Gro Sarauw Stanza della Madre, Diece Rieghe ‘85, Still photograph. Digital print on silk, wooden frame, LED, Arduino.125 x 169 cm. 2015. 118

Anu Ramadas Orbiter 1998 119


Ewa Stackelberg Photogram Red 2014

Photogram Ewa Stackelberg Ewa Stackelberg was initially a documentary photographer. An accident changed her life. Suddenly she found herself alone with two children. Then she started to make quite different images. The technique is known as photograms, a simple principle but with astonishing results. This horrific experience opened a way for me to gain artistic freedom, she says. I just followed my ideas, without rejecting or censoring anything. I gave myself total freedom to experiment. 120

GALLERI DAVID HALL 路 Davidshallsgatan 28, 211 45 Malm枚

Ewa Stackelberg Photogram Turquoise 2014 121


Edward Finnell Mick & Ronnie L.A. Forum, 1975

Every Picture Tells A Story Edward Finnell

Edward Finnell Mick L.A. Forum, 1975 122

As a rock and roll loving teenager, Los Angeles was a fantastic city to grow up in! I got to see and hear all my favourite bands and artists very often, and during many tours to California every act played various arenas, big and small, indoors or outdoors, well directed ones and totally improvisedones. The Rolling Stones, The Who, David Bowie, Jethro Tull, Rod Stewart &The Faces, Paul McCartney and Wings to mention a few. MIVA GALLERY 路 Engelbrektsgatan 18, 211 33 Malm枚

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Johanna Schartau Squattopoly Board game Work in Progress

London Calling Johanna Schartau London Calling is showing the work in progress by artist Johanna Schartau, dealing with personal experiences from the squatter-movement in London during the 1980’s.

Johanna Schartau Nina Hagen, Concord House 1986

The main focus in the project is a boardgame called “Squattopoly”, created by the artist as an anarchistic, “anti-Monopoly”, based on private memories from the time. A prototype of the game is shown at the gallery, as well as photographs taken at one of the squatts, capturing the atmosphere and glimpses of punk-singer Nina Hagen, a leading figure of inspiration from this era. The audience can play the board game and confront some of the elements of being a young art student participating in a turbulent, anti-establishment context as well as to explore the strive for loosing your money to win the game.

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MOLEKYL GALLERY · Jöns Filsgatan 18, 211 33 Malmö

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CAR Contemporary Activism Rostrum Ewa Berg, Robert Ek, Gisela Eriksson, Christel Lundberg, Tuss Marie Lysén, Cecilia Sering, Helga Steppan, Pepe Viñoles 8 artists from the artist-run Gallery Rostrum are participating in this year’s biennale, 2015. Together we have selected a pathway in Malmö, a non-place along the canal. This is our starting point. With this space as inspiration, we are performing or doing different actions. These are documented and shown as a One Day Exhibition at Gallery Rostrum. 126

GALLERI ROSTRUM · Västergatan 21, 211 21 Malmö

Google, Map data: Google, TerraMetrics, Image © 2015 TerraMetrics. Imagery Date: 9/30/2011

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Johannes Persson Robin 2014

Low-key Activism in Everyday Life [Lågmäld Aktivism i Vardagen] Johannes Persson (Photographs) Moa Goysdotter (Text) As a type of activism, everyday activism implies action that encourages change (or sometimes opposition to change). But everyday activism often takes place in the absence of a well-defined and controversial issue. Perhaps it does not even involve a clear “yes” or “no”. It is therefore often difficult to precisely formulate the message, and it is not easily generalized. Everyday activism is typically not acknowledged by society’s representatives. 128

GALLERI SAGOY· Erikslustvägen 2, 21752 Malmö

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Jens Assur Julius Nyeres International Airport. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 2013

Jens Assur Aeroporto International de Mavalane. Maputo, Mozambique. 2012

Africa is a Great Country Jens Assur The differences between the African countries are enormous. There is not one Africa – there are many. But in Jens Assur’s work it is the emerging similarities that we see. The rapid growth of the middle class, an evolving consumerism and the huge foreign investments that fund large-scale building projects, the infrastructure of the metropolitan areas. The evolution of information technology and easy access to cell phones, the Internet and social media all create new possibilities. But there are downsides to this evolution such as traffic jams, increasing social gaps and physical barriers. The real world is diverse and multifaceted. It defies every attempt to be described in just a few words or images. 130

KULTUREN LUND · Tegnérsplatsen, 223 50 Lund

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Jens Assur Vila Olimpica, Maputo Mozambique. 2012 Jens Assur Kicukiro, Kigali Rwanda 2012

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Body Talk Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Marcia Kure, Miriam Syowia Kyambi, Valérie Oka, Tracey Rose, Billie Zangewa Body Talk addresses issues of feminism, sexuality and the body, as they play themselves out in the work of a generation of women artists from Africa active since the late 1990s. Bringing together artists from different regions of the continent, this group exhibition strives to define and articulate notions of feminism and sexuality in the work of women artists whose body (their own or that of others) serves as a tool, a representation or a field of investigation. In their work, the body manifests itself, whether sequentially or simultaneously, as a model, support, subject or object. 134

LUNDS KONSTHALL · Mårtenstorget 3, 223 51 Lund

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Tommy Lindholm Banderoll 2015

Transactvism Tommy Lindholm The exhibition presents different kinds of contemporary activism in the political, cultural and artistic fields, from political demonstrations to neighborhood festivals, carnivals and multi artistic stage shows. The ambition is to highlight the multitude of activism that the contemporary world consist of as well as presenting the transformations that this activism both mirrors and creates. Tommy Lindholm works as a photographer and is also a teacher and researcher at Malmö University. 136

NIAGARA - MALMÖ HÖGSKOLA · Matrosgatan 1, 211 18 Malmö

Tommy Lindholm EU-migranter 2015 Tommy Lindholm Sammanflätade 2015 Tommy Lindholm Spring i benen 2015

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Malin Sandberg Peggy Bell 2012

Peggy Bell Malin Sandberg Malmö Museer presents the exhibition “Peggy Bell” featuring Malin Sandberg’s portraits of Peggy and texts from Peggy’s blog, “Peggy Bell of Sweden”. Peggy was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2010. After receiving treatment she was told that she would never be well again. Peggy left us on the 11th of December 2012. The pictures in the exhibition were created out of a close interaction between two good friends. They were taken after many conversations about why women often try to make life appear normal even after receiving distressing information. Is it a survival strategy? Is it due to a fear of death – our inability to accept the inevitable end? 138

MALMÖ MUSEER · Malmöhusvägen 6, 201 24 Malmö

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Photographer Unknown / Malmö Museer Sculpture ‘Honor’ by Axel Ebbe placed at Möllevång square in 1930

Gunnar Lundh / Malmö Museer Market trading at Möllan square 1949-50

Anna Gullmark / Malmö Museer Demonstration against racism and right-wing extremism 2014

Frontal Malmö Museer visits Malmö Live Frontal presents a selection of photographs from Malmö Museer’s photographic collection through the ages. The photographs show the city, its residents, work and daily life. Since photography first appeared almost 200 years ago it has changed with every advance in photographic technology. This technology has contributed to how we see our own time and how we remember our shared history. It is important to remember this fact as we create tomorrow’s view of history with today’s cameras. Do you have photographs you would like to donate to the museum to give us your visual memories of Malmö and its residents? If so, contact Lina Ålenius, curator of the photographic collections: lina.alenius@malmo.se.

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MALMÖ LIVE · Dag Hammarskjölds torg 4, 211 18 Malmö

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The Freedom Theatre Stories 2014 Lucas Pernin The Kafaala Consequence 2011

The Kafaala Consequence Lucas Pernin

Stories The Freedom Theatre

They embark on what can best be described as a migration lottery. From their home countries, with promises of money for their families, they set out for Lebanon. Most make it back, some with stories of abundance, others of abuse. Some come in a coffin if they ever come home at all. They are Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Philippine, Ethiopian and from a variety of other countries. What they do have in common is that they are women and are looking for a route to a more dignified life, for themselves and their families. Employment agents offer a steady job for 3 years with a salary that is beyond reach in their own country. 142

PANORA · Friisgatan 19 D, 214 21 Malmö

Photos and video made by students at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. The subject of these photos is an elderly generation of Palestinian refugees living in Jenin but originally from Palestine ’48/Israel. Each piece in the exhibition documents a moment in their lives, journeys, past and present. The students have captured their elders’ distant memories of land and reimagining of their history. The photos are a statement by these young Palestinian photographers that they will never forget the rich history of the Palestinian people. PANORA · Friisgatan 19 D, 214 21 Malmö

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Mensmagi Menstrual Magic 2014

Aanna de Beer Yearbook 2014

Yearbook

Menstrual Magic Mensmagi

Aanna de Beer Art & Documentary Photographer Aanna de Beer returned to her hometown after a couple years in Amsterdam where she studied photography. The pictures witness a punk scene from her perspective. The punk community in Malmö is so much more than the bands, the records, and the concerts. There is a certain notion piercing the city. The streets are filled with individuals whose dedication makes a difference – whether they stand on a stage or roam the scene. It doesn’t matter if you’re 50 years old and still hang around, or if you’re 15 and just shaved your first mohawk. we take huge pride in the fact that everything is possible, although no doors open by themselves; sometimes they need to be smashed in. 144

PANORA · Friisgatan 19 D, 214 21 Malmö

To create is to be shameless! Therefore we create and we create with our menstruation! The Menstrualmagic Manifest The menstrual blood became the foundation for our artistic expression because it’s the foundation of human life and therefore a symbolic liquid, used as a metaphor in our acts. It’s a liquid that represents all women and women’s bodies and that also generates life. But for various reasons its surrounded by shame and considered a taboo in out society. So we use it in order to challenge and break both individual and societal taboos. PANORA · Friisgatan 19 D, 214 21 Malmö

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Michel Thomas Revolution 2011

Revolution Michel Thomas The picture is staged as a remake of the 1800 century painting. “La liberté guidant le peuple” (Freedom leading the people) of Eugène Delacroix. The original painting is at the Louvre in Paris, the city I grow up. It has been in my memory all the way since my childhood when I visited the museum. At the same time they are parts of our collective awareness. Through the stage photography I want to actualize those moments and connect them to our time revolutions. 146

SCANDINAVIA PHOTO · Östra Förstadsgatan 44, 212 12 Malmö

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Angel Soldier Lee Yongbaek ‘Angel Soldier’ is a video performance in what appears to be a floral landscape, set to the calm sounds of nature. At first sight, it seems to be a still image, but upon closer inspection, the heavily florid picture separates before the eyes as an optical illusion, revealing three-dimensional flowers in the foreground and, behind, a soldier slowly creeping along, masked in the print’s camouflage. 148

DET RULLANDE KULTURHUSET · Moving screen circulating around Malmö

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PROGRAMME 2015

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PROGRAMME 2015 EXHIBITIONS MALMÖ: 01

02

08

09

9 Sep – 25 Oct

11 – 20 Sep

11 – 20 Sep

05 – 20 Sep

FOLKETS PARK (JAKTPAVILJONGEN)

GALLERI MIVA

MOLEKYL GALLERY

Gamla Väster, Engelbrektsgatan 18, 211 33 Malmö Mon – Fri: 11:00 – 18:00 | Sat: 11:00 – 16:00 Vernissage: 11 Sep, 16:00 – 19:00 www.mivagallery.se

Jöns Filsgatan 18, 211 33 Malmö Thu – Fri: 15:00 – 18:00 | Sat: 12:00 – 16:00 Vernissage: 4 Sep, 17:00 – 20:00 www.molekylgallery.com

04

10

11

Comfort Zone Tadao Cern DIGITALISEUM

Lodgatan 1, 211 24 Malmö Wed – Thu: 17.00 – 19.00 | Sat: 12.00 – 16.00 Vernissage: 9 Sep, 17:00 – 21:00 www.digitaliseum.org

03

On the wabi-sabi side of things Jesper Blomqvist 11 Sep – 25 Oct

FORM/DESIGN CENTER

Lilla Torg 9, 211 34 Malmö Tue – Sat: 11:00 – 17:00 | Sun 12:00 – 16:00 Vernissage: 11 Sep, 18:00 – 21:00 www.formdesigncenter.com

05

We Live in Fear Zanele Muholi

Lovers in India Dorel Frumusanu

Amiralsgatan 35, 214 37 Malmö Open everyday during biennale: 11:00 – 18:00 www.malmofotobiennal.com

Shadows in War Sadaf Fetrat, Sahar Fetrat, Nargis Azaryun, Christoffer Næss, Anders Sømme Hammer, Nebojsa Slijepcevic, Sybilla Marie Wester Tuxen and Thora Lorentzen 7 Aug – 14 Sep

Beyond the Blue River Arnis Balcus 7 Aug – 13 Sep

11 Sep – 12 Dec

FOTOGALLERI VASLI SOUZA

FOTOGALLERIET [FORMAT] RUMMET [FORMAT]

Every Picture Tells A Story Edward Finnell

CAR Contemporary Activism Rostrum Ewa Berg, Robert Ek, Gisela Eriksson, Christel Lundberg, Tuss Marie Lysén, Cecilia Sering, Helga Steppan, Pepe Viñoles 15 Sep

London Calling Johanna Schartau

Low-key Activism in Everyday Life Johannes Persson (Photographs) Moa Goysdotter (Text) 11 – 20 Sep

GALLERI SAGOY GALLERI ROSTRUM

Västergatan 21, 211 21 Malmö Event: 15 Sep, 17:00 – 21:00 www.rostrum.nu

Erikslustvägen 2, 217 52 Malmö Vernissage: 11 Sep, 17:00 Thu – Fri: 15:00 – 17:30 | Sat – Sun: 13:00 – 16:00 www.sagoy.eu

12

13

11 – 20 Sep

11 – 20 Sep

Grow Heathrow Naomi Soto FOTOGALLERI © SEVED

Transactivism Tommy Lindholm MALMÖ HÖGSKOLA

Friisgatan 15b, 214 21 Malmö Wed – Fri: 14:00 – 18:00 | Sat – Sun: 13:00 – 16:00 www.galleriformat.nu

Sevedsgatan 6, 214 45 Malmö Mon – Fri: 12:00 – 18:00 | Sat – Sun: 12:00 – 16:00 Vernissage: 11 Sep, 17:00 – 20:00

Norra Neptunigatan 1, 211 18 Malmö Vernissage: 11 Sep, 12:00 – 16:00 www.mah.se

06

07

14

15

11 Sep – 4 Oct

11 – 20 Sep

11 – 27 Sep

12 Sep – 29 Nov

Gustav Adolfs Torg 10B, 211 39 Malmö Wed – Sat: 11:00 – 18:00 * *Open everyday during Biennale

Vernissage: 11 Sep, 17:00 – 21:00 www.vaslisouza.com

Photogram Ewa Stackelberg GALLERI DAVID HALL

Davidshallsgatan 28, 211 45 Malmö Vernissage: 12 Sep, 13:00 -18:00 Tue – Fri: 13:00 – 18:00 | Sat – Sun: 12:00 – 17:00 www.galleridavidhall.se

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Places Alba Zari and Sharon Ritossa GALLERI LE MOULIN

Södra Förstadsgatan 80, Malmö Open everyday during Biennale: 11:00 – 18:00 www.malmofotobiennal.com

Black Friday Kent Klich MALMÖ KONSTHALL (C-SALEN)

S:t Johannesgatan 7, 205 80 Malmö Mon – Fri: 11:00 – 15:00 | Sat – Sun: 11:00 – 17:00 www.konsthall.malmo.se

Peggy Bell Malin Sandberg MALMÖ MUSEER

Malmöhusvägen 7, 211 18 Malmö Mon – Sun: 10:00 – 17:00 Vernissage: 12 Sep, 14:00 www.malmo.se/museer

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MALMÖ: 16

17

11 – 20 Sep

11 – 20 Sep

Frontal Malmö Museer visits Malmö Live MALMÖ LIVE

Dag Hammarskjölds torg 4, 211 18 Malmö www.malmo.se/museer

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There are no Homossexuals in Iran Laurence Rasti 4 – 27 Sep

Walls of Sports Tomáš Rafa

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Contemporary Activism (Selected Works) Alexander Krack, Alnis Stakle, Enrico Abrate, Flavia Schuster, Gijs van den Berg, Hannah Abrahamson, Juan Yactayo Sono, Marta Zgierska 11 – 20 Sep

MODERNA MUSEET MALMÖ (LASTKAJEN) Ola Billgrens Plats 2-4, 211 29 Malmö Mon – Sun: 11:00 – 18:00 www.modernamuseet.se

The Kafaala Consequence Lucas Pernin 11 Sep – 11 Oct

GAMMAL BUKOWSKI

Kalendegatan 18, 211 35 Malmö Open everyday during biennale: 11:00 - 18:00 Vernissage: 12 Sep, 14:00 – 16:00 www.malmofotobiennal.com

OUT IN MALMÖ: Stories The Freedom Theatre 11 Sep – 11 Oct

Yearbook Aanna de Beer 11 – 24 Sep

21

22

11 – 20 Sep

11 – 20 Sep

P-HUSET ANNA

RAOL WALLENBERGS PARK

Not Going Shopping Anthony Luvera

Outdoor exhibition Kaptensgatan, 211 41 Malmö www.malmofotobiennal.com

Menstrual Magic Mensmagi 11 – 27 Sep

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Revolution Michel Thomas 11 – 20 Sep

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The Santxez Crew The Santxez Crew 11 – 20 Sep

PANORA

Friisgatan 19d, 214 21 Malmö www.panora.se

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Outdoor exhibition Lilla Nygatan, 211 38 Malmö www.malmofotobiennal.com

2

Angel Soldier Lee Yongbaek 11 – 20 Sep

DET RULLANDE KULTURHUSET

SCANDINAVIAN PHOTO

Östra Förstadsgatan 44, 211 31 Malmö Mon - Fri: 8:30 - 18:00 | Sat: 10:00 - 14:00 Vernissage: 5 Sep, 14:00 - 16:00 www.scandinavianphoto.se

Elections Carolina Rodriguez

Outdoor interventions around Malmö www.malmofotobiennal.com

A moving screen circulating around Malmö Find Det Rullande Kulturhuset parked in front of biennale’s events.

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LUND: 23

PROGRAMME 2015 FILM SCREENING

Africa is a Great Country Jens Assur 13 Sep 2015 – 10 Jan 2016

Menstrual Magic - Rituals and Manifest

KULTUREN

12 Sep, 16:00 – 18:00 (free)

Tegnérplatsen, 223 50 Lund Thu - Sun: 12:00 – 16:00 Vernissage: 13 Sep: 12:00 www.kulturen.com

In late summer 2013 a group of women, who later was named Mensmagi, began organize meetings where they would discuss different ways to break the patterns of behavior that restricted them as women, historically, structurally and individually. Menstrual Blood became the basis for Mensmagi’s artistic expression. Inspired by Alejandro Jodorowski’s Psicomagi they started to make rituals with menstruation. (Mensmagi, 2015, 50 min, Audio in English)

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The Land of Queens

12 Sep, 18:30 – 19:30 (free)

Body Talk Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Marcia Kure, Miriam Syowia Kyambi, Valérie Oka, Tracey Rose, Billie Zangewa 30 May – 27 Sep

The promises of urbanization have called countless Swedes to abandoned their countrysides. Only a few tenacious dairy farmers have resisted and stayed behind with their struggling farms in an increasingly desperate economic climate. Mats-Åke is one of these men. He runs a family farm with the help of his wife Ampawan and her relatives who travel from Thailand to undertake seasonal work in the area. That’s the way it works for more and more farms in northern Sweden. Through “cooperative” marriages the agriculture business can continue, cultures come together, and the Swedish people can continue drinking their beloved milk. (Lars Berge & Elin Berge, 2015, 75 min, Audio in Swedish)

LUNDS KONSTHALL

Mårtenstorget 3, 223 51 Lund Tue, Wed, Fri, Sun: 12:00 – 17:00 | Thu: 12:00 – 20:00 Sat: 10:00 - 17:00 www.lundskonsthall.se

Everybody Street

13 Sep, 18:30 – 20:30 (70 SEK) EVERYBODY STREET illuminates the lives and work of New York’s iconic street photographers and the incomparable city that has inspired them for decades. The documentary pays tribute to the spirit of street photography through a cinematic exploration of New York City, and captures the visceral rush, singular perseverance and at times immediate danger customary to these artists. Shot by renowned photographer Cheryl Dunn on both black and white 16mm film and color HD. (Cheryl Dunn, 2013, 85 min, Audio in English)

HELSINGBORG: 25

Clues Carl Johan De Geer

The Salt of the Earth

14 Sep, 18:00 – 20:00 (70 SEK)

13 Jun – 27 Sep

DUNKERS KULTURHUS

Kungsgatan 11, 251 89 Helningborg, Sweden Tue – Thu: 10:00 – 18:00 | Fri: 10:00 – 20:00 Sat – Sun: 10:00 – 17:00 www.dunkerskulturhus.se

©Sebastião Salgado

For the last 40 years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed some of the major events of our recent history; international conflicts, starvation and exodus. He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of wild fauna and flora, and of grandiose landscapes as part of a huge photographic project, which is a tribute to the planet’s beauty. (Juliano Ribeiro Salgado & Wim Wenders, 2014, 110 min, Audio in French, Portuguese, English, Subtitle in Swedish)

7 Stripes

14 Sep, 18:00 – 20:00 (free)

COPENHAGEN: 26

Young Danish Photography Christian Danielewitz, Julie Nymann, Gro Sarauw, Amalie Smith, Anu Ramdas, David Stjernholm 22 Aug – 25 Oct FOTOGRAFISK CENTER

Bygning 55, Staldgade 16, 1799 Copenhagen, Denmark Tue – Fri: 11:00 – 17:00 | Sat – Sun: 12:00 – 16:00 www.photography.dk

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Related to the exhibition YEARBOOK with Aanna de Beer’s images of the punk scene in Malmö, we present a documentary about the hardcore band Hårda Tider from Malmö. Since summer 2007, Hårda Tider have played hardcore for everyone with 7 stripes of ink under their skin – graffiti writers, thiefs, punks and skinheads. From damp basements, backyards in Malaysia and large festival stages, the band members always go their own way and are always faithful to the DIY culture. The documentary 7 STRIPES / 7 STRECK tells the story of a band that unites and destroys, with love for the streets and hardcore in their hearts. (Klas Sivertsson, 2014, 59 min, Audio in Swedish and English)

Chasing Ice

17 Sep, 18:30 – 20:30 (70 SEK) CHASING ICE is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. (Jeff Orlowski, 2012, 75 min, Audio in English)

PANORA FOLKETS BIO | Friisgatan 19d, 214 21 Malmö | www.panora.se

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VI N NARE

Å R E T S BY R

158

Å 2014

N E V E R M O N K E Y WITH THE TRUTH

SOUTH COMMUNICATION, SÖDRA TULLGATAN 1, 211 40 MALMOE, + 46 40 350 340 WWW.SOUTH.NU

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finland

å p m Hitta .balder.se www 2

SKÄRPEDJUP PÅ LOKALER

MITT I CITY! Letar du m2 till din verksamhet? Vi har lediga lokaler. Kontakta oss på 020-151 151 eller www.balder.se

Svenska Fotografers Förbund företräder professionella fotografer.

Konstnär, fotokonstnär, förläggare? Mediaverkstaden är en kollektivverkstad mitt i Malmö som ger fotografer, illustratörer, konstnärer, författare och tidskriftsredaktörer tillgång till utrustning inom digital framställning och bearbetning av bild, video, ljud och trycksaker i egen regi. Vi har ca 150 medlemmar, både enskilda personer och organisationer, och väldigt många av konst- och fotoutställningarna som visas på gallerier i Malmö med omnejd har producerats hos oss. Ansök om medlemsskap du också! Det gör du enkelt på vår hemsida:

Tillsammans kan vi driva viktiga juridiska och politiska frågor som gynnar yrkesfotografer. Som medlem får du juridisk- och prisrådgivning, Fotografisk Tidskrift, teknisk support, marknadens mest förmånliga försäkring för fotografer med mera. Läs mer på sfoto.se.

www.mediaverkstaden.org 160

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040 608 3505 | INFO@VASLISOUZA.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/VALHALLAPALATSET

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MICHEL THOMAS

”REVOLUTION 2.0”

Scandinavian Photo proudly presents Michel Thomas ”Revolution 2.0” under Malmö Fotobiennal 2015. VERNISSAGE EXHIBITION

4th of September, 13.00-15.00 4th - 20th of September 2015

Östra Förstadsgatan 44, 211 31 Sweden www.scandinavianphoto.se

TELEP HO N E WE B SHO P EM AIL

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0770-771100 www.scandinavianphoto.se info@scandinavianphoto.se


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