The Museum of Forgetting is a space for reflection, debate and exhibition of contemporary issues with a focus on social, political and cultural forgetfulness. By borrowing the name of ”The Museum” we adopt a critical approach to the construction of collective memories, and highlight its unavoidable costs, and revenues, in terms of forgetting. Our projects, exhibitions and events, are not tied to any one traditional form of expression or genre, but come together in the ambition to look critically at contemporary issues in the crossfire between memory and forgetting.
PRESENT:
ON THE BORDER
SATIRICAL DRAWINGS FROM THE ARABIC WORLD
Teckning: Amjad Rasmi
The current exhibition from The Museum of Forgetting shows political cartoons from the Arabic speaking part of the world ( and Iran). The exhibition will simultaneously be set up at the Unesco Palace in Beirut Lebanon and at Campus Norrköping in, Sweden. The exhibition will be open to visitors in Norrköping between November and December 12, 2010.
In Beirut the show opens on November 13 and closes on November 19, 2010.
The tradition of the arabic and Middle-Eastern political and satirical cartoon deserve attention in its own right. But it can hardly be shown today without an eye also toward the discussion around political drawings, freedom of speech and oppression that lately has swept across the world in the wake of the conflicts around the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed, published in 2005 in the xenophobic Newspaper Jyllandsposten in Denmark, or the turmoil around the Swedish artist Lars Vilks follow-up contribution in the form of a drawing of the Prophet as a dog.
The discussion quickly got locked into manichean simplifications, where freedom of speech and tolerance was posed against oppression and fundamentalism, West against Islam and demonizing images of the other were set in global motions.
The drawings made by some of the leading contemporary contemporary Cartoonists of the region with some historically important artists show great variation in style, themes and expression. They display different temperaments and senses of humour. The exhibition challenges any simplified understanding of political comment and resistance in the region.
Political drawings live on and off borders. Borders between the mundane and the elevated, the burlesque and the sophisticated, between art and daily comment, yes, even between freedom and oppression.
This project will be continued, at the moment we are discussing with the Charicature Museum Al Fayoum Art Center in Cairo about a way to go forward. More info will be posted here.
The Exhibition is produced by
Sahar Burhan
Saad Hajo
Kosta Economou
Erik Berggren
Artists:
Issam Hassan – Syria
Naji Al-Ali – Palestine
Khalil Abu Arafeh – Palestine
Ahmad Higazi – Egypt
Ali Farzat – Syria
Amjad Rasmi – Jordan
Amro Selim – Egypten
Armand Homsi – Lebanon
Bahgat Osman – Egypt
Abdulkarim Beneddine – Algeria
Hussain Boukella – Algeria
Abdellah Darkaoui – Marocko
Fares – Sudan
George Bahgori – Egypt
Karuri – Sudan
Hassan Hakem – Sudan
Ihab Shaker – Egypt
Khalid Al-Hashimi – Bahrain
Mohieddine Ellabbad – Egypt
Muayad Nehmeh – Iraq
Mustafa Hussain – Egypt
Nabil Elsulami – Egypt
Nabil Taj – Egypt
Omar Dafalla – Sudan
Saad Hajo – Sweden
Sahar Burhan – Syria
Abdulhadi Shammaa – Syria
Talal Nayer – Sudan
Abdulrahim Yasser – Iraq
We thank, for assistance, financial and spatial support,
Linköping University, Willian Napoleoni, Sara Scaglione, Linda Samuelsson, Denise Laxén Di-Zazzo, Marie Österling , Lina Johansson, Hedvig Solvik , Yvonne Olofsson, Frida Öst, Stiftelsen Framtidens Kultur, Norrköping Municipality, KSM, Lars Bergwall, Hamid Gharakani, Yakob Ram & Reklam, Louie Balko, AS-Safir Newspaper, Unesco Palace, Magnus Lindblad (LOKE), Mehrdad and Mikael (Akademiska Hus), Universitetsbiblioteket – Campus Norrköping.
PAST
Tiduret (The Timer) by Karin Broos (2009)
Our Broken American Hearts
Hope is once again tied to the USA. Hope of a re-emerging order, some kind of decency and maybe just the hope of a new hope. After eight years with George W. Bush and his warring administration an alleged secterian and unrealistic minority of critics has turned into an overwhelming global majority. That´s hopefull. But what will happen now? A restart?
The Museum of Forgetting’s next project – Our Broken American Hearts – is a reflection on our relationship with USA, focusing on the mixture of love, disappointment, critique and re-born passion. Previously we have worked with the Iraq war, and media’s coverage of this war. A starting point for our engagement, work and creativity was a critical view of the US war politics, propaganda and the failure of the media industry to critically cover the ‘war on terror.’ Now we are interested in how ‘we’, Swedes, Europeans, people, you name it/us – in spite of our indignation and outrage also hosts a lot of love for USA. many have been fed, and eagerly taken inside its steady outflow of popular culture. Intellectuals and academics around the globe have for long had American output as their dominant source of inspiration and confrontation.
The hegemony is deep in all areas. So is the love and the criticism, as well. It is as if a US-critical part falls out from every generation, like out of a chemical solution. It is a matter of coming into consciousness as well as a crisis. In any case, the falling out, falling away, from USA, rooms beside the joy of critical awareness and articulation, also a sting of disappointment.
Our project is thus, not at first hand a project about USA or ‘America.’ It is rather about us (everybody are invited) and ‘America’ in us, and now, after Bush, about our broken American hearts.
Participating artists: Johanna Billing, Kalle Brolin, Karin Broos, Dror Feiler, Gonzalo Frasca (UY), Maria Friberg, Coco Fusco(USA), Björn Melhus (TY), Erik Pauser, Ride1, Åsa Sjöström and Gunilla Sköld Feiler.
See images from the exhibition
During the fall 2009 we will open with an art exhibition. While the exhibition is open, and later on, more events will take place within the project. Information will be posted on this site.
PAST
Lets have another war
Soon after the start of the war in Afghanistan a new war began with the invasion of Irak, and soon after that arose the discussion about a possible war against Iran.
The title of the exhibition, “Lets have another war”, quotes a piece by Israeli artist David Reeb. These lines capture an aspect of war that seems actively forgotten in todays celebratory rethoric of international ‘peace keeping’ campaigns: that each war is born out of a previous war and is pregnant with yet another war.
Swedish daily life takes place in the shadow of war, yet at a safe distant from it. However, now Swedes may have to become more and more mentally accustomed to the idea of the next war. The swedish armed forces shall no longer merely deterr and prevent attacks, but, it is said, more actively participate in international conflicts. Maybe it is so that when the Swedish defence goes out in to the world, the reality of war comes home to roost.
Exhibiting artists: Dror Feiler, Karen Land Hansen (DK), Kalle Brolin, Martin Etherton Friberg och Mats Nordahl, Gunilla Sköld Feiler, Mariadele Arcuri, Dan Brännwall and Maria Heimer Åkerlund.
Production: Museet för glömska/Erik Berggren.
See images from the exhibition
Thanks to: Norrköpings kommun and 2014, Lars Andersson/Kraftsstationen, Framtidens kultur, Michala Eken/Kabine, Ståhls fastigheter, Hamid Gharakhani, Thomas Rydell/The Interactive Institute – NVISION, KSM, Martin Arwidsson.
3m3 of Fame
3m3 of Fame is a project that took place the 31st May 2008 in the Museum of Oblivion. The museum opened its doors in an event that gave the opportunity to artists, established or not, to showcase a work of their choice. The only rule was that it could be contained within 3 cubic metres. The exhibition was visited by many citizens of Norrköping and will reappear again some day.
If God Was a Woman
Photography, sculptures, drawings and interactive installations by several Norrköping-based artists: Pernilla Andersson, Mariadele Arcuri, Adisa Handzic, gruppen Hej&Gonatt, Nolwenn Gerard, Jimmy Rosén among others.
We live our lives with strong ideas about how the normative woman and man should be, act and look. Like most norms, the norms of gender have little to do with reality. Images are like norms, they both portray and distort reality. Gender related norms are maybe never as obvious as in photography. They enhance some details, but also erase and forget others. In this process the subject becomes object. Women, and men, are turned into stereotypes that remain embedded in our collective unconscious, and thus, in reality itself.
“If God Was a Woman” explores with a critical eye the double edge of photography, on the one side its communicative power, on the other its distorting qualities. Can a subject be photographed?
Private Parts
Private Parts was a group exhibition that took place 16th November 2007 and showcased works from swedish and french art students working with the artist Per Hüttner. The works revolved around the theme of democracy and desire, and were realised in many different media – photography, photomontage, installations, sculpture, interactive sculptures, film and performances. The theme democracy and desire turned out to be a starting point for resistance and conformism, both in the form of introspective personal fantasies as well as critical reflection on society.
Artists: Martin Bladh, Moa Frisk, Maud Olsson, Beata Holmgren, Tobias Örberg, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Jean-Francois Robardet, Marie Husson, Guagjuan Zhang.
Theme: Falluja, reporting and resistance
The evening’s program consisted of two movies, “Caught in Crossfire” and “Control Room”. One movie depicting the horrendous reality of the “war against terrorism” and what it led to in Falluja, where thousands of civilians were killed and a whole city destroyed, twice the size of Norrköping. The other movie being an intensive documentary from inside the “control room” of the arabian news agency Al Jazeera. This documentary was shot during the beginning of the war, at a time when the media circulated around the US army’s press service to get a picture, or rather a ‘striking image,’ of what was really about to happen.
These are two movies that reflect the impossiblity of objectivity and impartiality of the massmedia, and their difficulty in communicating any meaningful information
