| dc.date.accessioned | 2016-01-07T08:00:45Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2016-01-07T08:00:45Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2015-09-20 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2077/41428 | |
| dc.subject | History | sv |
| dc.subject | Public memory | sv |
| dc.subject | Enactment | sv |
| dc.subject | Liberal democracy | sv |
| dc.subject | Bureaucracy | sv |
| dc.title | 1985 – Monument to a Revolution | sv |
| dc.type.svep | artistic work | |
| dc.contributor.creator | Ejiksson, Andjeas | |
| art.typeOfWork | Performance | sv |
| art.relation.publishedIn | Baggensnäs, Värmdö, Sverige | sv |
| art.description.workIncluded | 1985 – Monument to a revolution. Printed booklet that was handed out as part of the performance. | sv |
| art.description.project | 1985 – Monument to a revolution is the first of a series of enactments that aims at investigating the rhetoric of embodiment of history in a political construct. The investigation centres on the development of the social democratic version of the liberal democracy from the late 1970s throughout the 80s and 90s and is based on questions about how these histories are mediated. In the historical context addressed, bureaucracy and its mechanisms were a central scenery and a driving force of politics. The intention of the research is to stage and recapture the workings of bureaucracy in this transition, through enactments. This means to raise questions about how the historical materialisations (processes, events, etc.) of the transition are implemented, or not, in the “public memory”. The term addresses a form of memory that occurs in the open and together with others, which forms the horizon of publics and is thus part of the formation of societies. When speaking of public memory, the focus is generally major symbolic, often tragic or dramatic events—a sort of affective understanding of history. Here, I am searching for a quite different form and object of public memory—the mostly slow and gradual reformist processes of the liberal democracy that mainly develop through changes in policy.
In formal terms the core approach in the project regards the meaning and forms of historical enactment in artistic practice – the knowledge and forms of understanding produced in such a process. What makes the enactment particularly interesting is that it is common in popular culture and political movements as an embodiment of history. Most often it is a way of framing and experiencing historical battles or other major events. One of the more outstanding examples of this is the 1920 enactment of The Storming of the Winter Palace, directed by a group led by theatre practitioner Nicolai Evreinoff. It took place in front of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. The arrangement was massive with several interconnected scenes, military vehicle, boats, and cannons, and also the palace itself played a crucial part as it was activated with light effects as though it was performing its own history. Among the participants were professional performers and members of the revolutionary guard. The enactment was of course highly symbolical and had little to do with the actual storming of the palace three years earlier. This discrepancy between political process and event and the celebration of history raises historiographical questions: What meaning and narrative structure is projected on the process or event in such an enactment? What repercussions does the enactment have on the understanding of the political change? And redirecting these questions to the historical context of this research: What are or would be the forms and expressions of a political structure which is reformist in nature?
The intent of 1985 – Monument to a revolution was to make an interpretation of The Storming of the Winter Palace but through a different time and a different political historical situation. In this case, a revolution that manifested itself in a new regulatory framework for the Swedish finance- and credit markets in the mid 1980s. This marks the beginning of a political shift whereby society’s institutions came increasingly to be regulated through systems of self-surveillance. Central to this process was a market driven model that suddenly seemed applicable to just about any structural problem. 1985 attempted to examine and affirm the idea that this was a paradigmatic shift that might be understood as a revolutionary process but with different attributes than what is commonly associated with a social or political revolution.
The monument involved an audience and a circus company and was enacted in and around a villa on Värmdö in the Stockholm archipelago, which was acquired in 1968 by the Swedish central bank, as a gift to the employees when the bank celebrated its 300th anniversary. | sv |
| art.description.summary | 1985 is a monument to a revolution that manifested itself in a new regulatory framework for the Swedish finance- and credit markets. The monument was enacted in and around a villa on Värmdö. | sv |
| art.description.supportedBy | Vetenskapsrådet, Iaspis – The International Artists Studio Program in Stockholm | sv |
