NOTES FROM THE LIVING DEAD MUSEUM

Föstudaginn 1.mai kl 20:00 munu listamennirnir Ylva Westerlund, Runo Lagomarsino og Olivia Plender kryfja hugmyndir sínar og velta upp marglaga spurningum varðandi sýningu sína Notes from The Living Dead Museum sem opnar í Nýlistasafninu laugardaginn 2. maí kl 15.00.  Spurningarnar lúta m.a að áhrifum sértækrar klíkustarfsemi í Bretlandi kringum 1930, hlutverk listasafns í umhverfi sínu, hvort stofnun á borð við safn geti verið uppvakningur, almennt um söfnun og safnkosti, kreppu og áhrifum hennar á menningu í öðrum löndum eins og Argentínu, sögulega endurtekningu fjármálakreppna með tilliti til nýlendustefnu og þjóðernislegrar upphafningar fortíðarinnar.

Notes from The Living Dead Museum samanstendur bæði af eldri og nýrri verkum sem unnin eru sérstaklega fyrir þær aðstæður sem Nýlistasafnið býður uppá. Myndbandsverk, kolateikningar, innsetningar og áhugaverðan viðsnúning á ímynd Nýlistasafnsins. Sýningin er í sterkum tengslum við þá safneignarvinnu sem safnið lagðist í á seinasta ári og hefur það að markmiði að endurskoða og endurmeta hlutverk Nýlistasafnsins í samtímanum.
 Sýningin stendur í óákveðinn tíma fram á sumar í bland við aðra viðburði, uppákomur og skrásetningu safneignar í Nýlistasafninu.

RUNO LAGOMARSINO

All of them must go!

In December 2001 Argentina entered one if its deepest economical and political crisis. As a reaction people took the streets and demanded the governments resignation. One of the most common slogans was Que se vayan todos! (All of them must go!) It’s interesting to see that the same phrase has been reused in the aftermath of the current financial crisis. Maybe it’s time to reintroduce the Upside Down Map by the artist Torres Garcia (1943), not just as a symbolic gesture but as
a tool of rearticulating history writing and inspiration.
The talk will give an introduction to the contingency  of neoliberal politics in Latin America from the 1970 to the crisis of 2001. But also give example of the variety of organizations and artist groups etc. that produced resistance to this development.

’Videostill from Untitled (Extended Arguments)
DVD loop, black/white, sound(2005)

YLVA WESTERLUND

Lecture: Pro Death

The Living Art Museum has a collection of over 1000 works by both Icelandic and international artists. The project of collecting and the collector has a history connected to sometimes murky ideologies and Nation building. But what is it today, what does it represent? And how can one rethink aspects of the collecting and presentions of collections without doing reflexive readings?

Ylva Westerlund will introduce art works and thoughts of for example German theorist Boris Groys, and adress different notions around the collection, the museum curator, bird watching, feminism and death.

Screening, after the lecture:

"Thinking in loop”, a video work that consists of 3 videos: "The Immortal Bodies", 29 min., "Iconoclastic Delight", 20 min., and "The Religion as Medium", 24 min., by Boris Groys, 2002-2007. Each of the videos combines a theoretical text that is written and spoken by the author and film footage and fragments taken out of different movies and film documentations.

works for the exhibition:

"THE IMMORTAL NEOBIOCOSMONAUT-ASHES TO ASHES", 2009, wall drawing in charcoal by Ylva Westerlund.

TUEZ LE FLIC EN VOUS, 2008, 1 min., video loop/animation by Beata Fransson and Ylva Westerlund.

In Ylva Westerlunds work entitled “Ashes to Ashes”, 2009, a comic strip in charcoal will cover the walls of the exhibition hall. The work deals with issues on how the concept of “death” is perceived in politics and philosophy.

Westerlund will also, in collaboration with Swedish artist Beata Fransson, show the video work “Tuez le flic en vouz”, 2008. The grafitti ”Tuez le flic en vous” –Kill the pig inside – appeared as a slogan on walls all over Paris during the student protests of 1968. The action in the video perhaps could be seen as a bodily consequense in a society of surveillance and policing of its citizens.

OLIVA PLENDER

Olivia Plender is an artist based in London. Her recent practice has focussed on research into an early twentieth century British youth movement called the Kibbo Kift Kindred (1920-1951) led by an artist and novelist named John Hargrave, in order to explore parallels between the events of the 1930s and the global financial crisis unfolding today. Originally part of the Boy Scouts, the Kibbo Kift split from Baden Powell’s conservative organisation in order to establish a socialist youth movement, in collaboration with veterans of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage and the Co-operative Movement. However the leadership style of ‘Head Man’ John Hargrave soon became autocratic as he became an increasingly charismatic figure and camping was elevated to a ritualised spiritual activity. During the economic crisis of the 1930s, the Kibbo Kift became the the Social Credit Party of Great Britain, known as the ‘green shirts’; a uniformed group who participated in the hunger marches in London in the 1930s advocating a now discredited monetary reform theory. Parallels can be drawn with the German Lebensreform movement, as Plender explores the dangers of a recurring dream of returning to a pre-industrial golden age in the face of economic and social crisis, a romantic and potentially nationalistic idealisation of the past, personified by figures such as Robin Hood.