læs bogen her - Den Frie

urg. Also, with the tradition of this building and the Danish
art world of cutting away all text and explanation, it can
be really difficult to enter the exhibition and an empty art
space. The emptiness that is provided for the art somehow
reduces its accessibility, and I think that if you think of yourself
as a political artist, that is something you really struggle
with: how to do something that reaches out to the world. I
do not think that this exhibition does that. I see it as an art
exhibition, and it struggles to reach out. It also has to do
with what Henrietta said about learning and feeling. This is
really a learning exhibition; it is like going to school.
HL: When you work in a large institution as I do, you get
to think about what it is that you are doing for the future.
What are you giving to the future? You somehow want to
channel the current discourse or the political discussion.
Those works of art that are able to achieve this are those
which encourage the viewer to identify him or herself as a
witness to something that happened. For instance, the work
by Jinoos Taghizadeh is about her being in a café and how
through practising her art she changes the nature of the social
dynamic. She creates circumstances where people join
her in her acts and there is empathy. That is also seen in
the Vyacheslav Akhunov piece with “when we see Lenin, we
think about Stalin, and when we see Stalin we think about
Lenin”. He is not saying that this is false consciousness or it
is the past. No, this is where we all live. It is not so far away
that we do not recognise it; it is all still there in the back
of our minds. Also the Belgrade collective who gathered the
tea towels are differentiated from contemporary Western
conceptual artists (who have used the same devices) in that
their work is not confessional. They are witnessing and exploring
their current situation, not making art about themselves
as individuals.
MNR: You say that the museum is taking the approach of
invoking memory rather than teaching history: I very much
think of the contemporary art institution as part of society.
Thus, I think we are producing history, but not in the obsta-
cles of memory and history. But I think that this institution is
just as much part of society as the street outside and I think
it would be interesting to discuss the different roles of being
in here and being in the museum.
HL: The traditional division between galleries and museums
is that you wander into a gallery and you see the canon of
Western art, for instance. And when you wander into a museum,
you typically require greater interpretation. You may
need guidance from others to tell you what you are looking
at, what the natural world looks like, what ethnography
looks like, what archaeology looks like etc. Whereas when
you go into the art museum, you have a less mediated relationship
because you walk in with more baggage.
All of these artists might reject being in a museum rather
than in an art gallery. There are lots of shifting agendas
about who wants to be where and who does not want to
be labelled in a certain way. And the artists in this show
are positioned; they are not trying to exceed where they
come from, but they are actually saying “this is the place
we come from, this is our experience, and this is what we
are witnessing” and they are creating a critical dialogue
around it.
FJ: Is the idea with Ground Floor America not that some
years ago it would always be us from the West looking at
them from the East? And now they are trying to return the
gaze and say it is actually us who are looking at you?
HL: I do not think that they are looking at us. I think that
they are ignoring us. As viewers we are immaterial.
MT: The exhibition is presented to us as a unit, but actually
it is individual works and views from various places in the
world, but also specific places, and I do not think you can
avoid the relationship with us being the others. Can we ever
escape that? Like Edward Said (Edward William Said, 1935
– 2003, Palestinian-American literary and cultural critique)
also says, and which the tourist guide by Ilf and Petrov that
109