Häng dom Högt / Hang them High

This is a video document from an art exhibition made in
Stockholm, Sweden in 1985.
The artists Max Book and Per Glembrandt made this extraordinary show
at a place called BarBar, an alternative art-space in Stockholm at that time.

In the exhibition there were big acid-paintings, that were destroying
themselves in a two-week period.
Small, minimalistic but mobile sculptures were running around the pools of
acid on the floor, until the batteries inside them merged, hopelessly in love
with the acid.
Chemical romance or what ?
An irreversible statement to end the discussion about the death of painting,
and turn it into an indolent comedy.
The beauty of the exhibition stems from the notion of romantic decay.
However, this feeling was confused by a raw, damp and stinking reality.
A world of acid isn´t very suitable for human beings, neither for a lot of
materials used in house fittings.
In fact, two persons working at the location got very sick, and all metal
parts in the place became corroded and rusty.
This was the third and last project where we (the artists), were aiming
to make the cultural projections of control and chaos into something
obsolete. Well, at least into something not very applicable.
The first paint project, was to make outdoor live painting in the dusky blue-
gray light in the Swedish forest, during a half-lit summer night.
It was possible to control the forms, but hardly the colors of the paintings.
The second project, Förstaelningen, introduced chemical reactions on
metallic and sulphur pigments.
It was painted in the fat, brown-yellow light of Stockholm´s biggest highway
crosspoint. This light turns every color into grey, and if you tried to keep
some kind of form in the paintings, the chemicals played a joke on you.

This third project, Häng dom Högt, was the most elaborate and also
dangerous painting project.
We did the paintings on a big field outside Stockholm.
It was during a winter night and freezing cold in January, -24° Celsius.
These were perfect conditions, because the chemical reactions between the
pigments and the acids would be slowed down.
When we made the paintings with big brooms, the field was filled with a
heavy, low creeping smog, that seemed to be stuck to the ground.
We had prepared a big isolated box for the paintings.
It was filled with carbonic acid ice, to keep the temperature and
the chemical reactions down. There were almost two months until
the actual exhibition opened.
When we opened the box just before the exhibition, it was like opening
a tomb from the future.
And it came to Live !

As a conclusion on why we did these projects, I think that we were looking
for some kind of meta-instrumentalism, that could gain the formation
process of creativity in general and as for painting, in particular.
The end station was, just as it´s said, a different station.
Maybe it seems a bit pessimistic, but then aren´t all end stations sad ?
At least this one was strange and beautiful, with odd decorations of
choked laughter.

Max Book

SvenSverigeSvensk

This is a documentation of an art installation made Max Book and
Anders Ljungman at a place called Vy, in Stockholm SWE, 1991.
It was a temporary place for art, run by C.Fredrik Hårleman.
A shop had moved out and a few big windows towards the street were empty.
Nice and neat to show some exprimental art installations through.
And for ordinary people too…
The installation was made like a mirror. A bit like changing the situation of
outside looking in, to inside looking out.
The people outside on the street were looking out when they peeped through
the letters on the window. On the other side they saw this clumsy bright-lights/
big-city landscape, made out of white cell-plastic blocks that you can find in
consumer-electronic packaging. Complicated forms made just to fill out space
between the coveted valuables and the cardboard box, considered to be pure trash.
If you were looking too close to the window, there was a risk to be exposed to
a retinal shock. There were two very bright strobe lights, that went on at random.

The situation in Sweden at the start of the 1990´s, was quite turbulent.
Both car tanks and people´s heads were filled to the rim with gas.
What they didn´t know, was that just around the corner some bombs were
going to detonate. The Persian Gulf war, and then the world economics got
to know bungy jump for the first time, with blindfolds on.
There is a cultural identity crisis going on in Sweden, that started in the 1980´s.
It can be seen as an omnipotent confusion, where the mid-upper classes and
the cultural elite in society, project themselves as cosmopolitans and (western-)
world-citizens, whereas low-class people and workers, yes even foreign
immigrants, tend to identify themselves with nationalistic romanticism from
the beginning of the last century.
It doesn´t seem to matter, that these were ideals invented and appropriated by
the cultural and economic elite in society, at that time.
What is even more confusing, is that these ideals, if you see them as pure ideas
and movements, originated from cultural movements and intellectuals that
were world-citizens at that time (i.e. Europeans).
What then was left for the Swedes to do, was to invent and refurbish
some folklore aesthetics.
We tried to create some folkwar aesthetics.

Lögn och inbillning

Detta är en konstvideo, gjord av den legendariska Kransen/Wallda-gruppen,
i Midsommarkransen, Stockholm 1984.
Man kan nog karaktärisera den som en spöklikt realistisk thriller,
med ett sidospår av en chockartat saktmodig och udda humor.
Kort sagt en dbhriller.
Hur som helst börjar och slutar den med en DiaBildsvisning..

An art-video made by the legendary Kransen/Wallda group,
in Stockholm 1984.
A spooky kind of thriller, with an odd sense of humour.
It might be more adequate to call it a dbhriller.
Anyway it starts and ends with a dia picture show..
(dialogue in Swedish. ca 17 min.)