| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-12-22T06:37:29Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-12-22T06:37:29Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2017-09-09 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2077/54781 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | sv |
| dc.subject | GIBCA | sv |
| dc.subject | secularity | sv |
| dc.subject | memory | sv |
| dc.subject | public artwork | sv |
| dc.subject | memorial | sv |
| dc.subject | music | sv |
| dc.subject | grief | sv |
| dc.subject | black metal | sv |
| dc.title | The Grief Prophesy | sv |
| dc.type.svep | artistic work | |
| dc.contributor.creator | Leach, Maddie | |
| art.typeOfWork | Public project commission for international biennale / curated group exhibition. | sv |
| art.relation.publishedIn | Gothenburg International Biennale for Contemporary Art (GIBCA 2017) | sv |
| art.description.project | The Grief Prophesy was commissioned by Antwerp-based curator Nav Haq as new art work for GIBCA 2017, specifically as one of a small number of off-site public projects operating within the biennale’s overarching theme of secularity. Mapping and interpreting the historical specificity of a particular site, my project for GIBCA addressed an event in Gothenburg’s recent history in which Jon Nödtveidt, lead singer of black metal band Dissection, together with his friend Vlad murdered Josef Ben Meddour, a homosexual and Algerian national, in Keillers Park at Ramberget on 22 July 1997. Sensationalised in media reports at the time as a ‘satanic murder’, Meddour’s death was registered as a homophobic hate crime, both men eventually confessed and were imprisoned for the murder. Nödtveidt was released in 2004, briefly reforming Dissection before committing suicide in 2006.
The title of my project, The Grief Prophesy, refers to Dissection’s first demo tape The Grief Prophecy released in Strömstad in 1991. I collaborated with the artist Kristian Wåhlin (aka Necrolord), who produced a suite of notable album covers for Dissection in the 1990s and was a friend of Jon Nödtveidt. I asked him to create a ‘portrait’ of the site of the 1997 murder. Wåhlin’s image incorporates the park’s water tower and Göteborg’s Mosque, represented in Wåhlin’s ‘doom aesthetic’ as neighbours separated by a landscape of rocks, forest and a glowing park lamp. The album recordings contain slowed-down versions of a Dissection instrumental called Into Infinite Obscurity performed on vevlira and oud. Vevlira (or Hurdy Gurdy) is associated with the kind of Swedish folk music positively promoted as ‘swedish culture’. Oud is an instrument originating in North Africa and the Middle East. Both recordings were made inside a water tower very similar to the Keillers Park water tower.
The Grief Prophesy album aesthetics and the atmospheric affect of its music was intended to act as a lamentation for Josef Meddour at the 20-year anniversary of his death. However, it also intentionally produces a more complex and disconcerting weave of associations on belief, memory, narration of history, residual grief and ideas of erasure, asking where these might reside when considering the circumstances of the night of July 22 1997, its public legacy and personal aftermath. It proposes a question about the form a public memorial can take, what is remembered, and which ‘publics’ are addressed in such a project. It recognises a persistent entanglement of Jon and Josef as they are written into various histories.
The resulting project was proposed to GIBCA as a public artwork taking the form of a 12” vinyl LP (as 417 copies) to be freely distributed from Musiclovers Rekords in Gothenburg. This intention was subsequently revised to a public performance of Into Infinite Obscurity by the two musicians I commissioned to work on the project and a single ‘listening copy’ that remained at the record store throughout the duration of GIBCA. This revision was due to a lack of permission agreement between myself and the original composer of Into Infinite Obscurity. The album was supported by two photographic images circulated within biennale publications – one in the PARSE journal and one in the GIBCA Guide – and a bandcamp webpage with free digital streaming. A short film was also produced on The Grief Prophesy project by Kristina Meiton and made available online and at Röda Sten Konsthall.
Public knowledge of the project was further supported by three artist talks on The Grief Prophesy Project: BRA 10 at Konstepidemin on 05 September 2017; Göteborgs Konsthall on 27th September 2017 in conversation with Kristian Wåhlin and Dr Thomas Bossius from GU Culture Studies department titled ‘Black metal, aesthetics and memory’; and Röda Sten Konsthall ‘konstmiddag’ event on November 15 2017.
I also undertook a guided site visit and listening event at Keillers Park as part of GIBCA’s public programme on 28th October 2017. These presentations have been employed as a both a practical method of public transmission for the album recordings themselves, and to encourage a discourse on memorialisation of the men involved in the specific event The Grief Prophesy addresses.
| sv |
| art.description.summary | As her contribution to GIBCA 2017 Maddie Leach produced a remarkable 12” LP with a number of collaborators. Borrowing its title from a demo tape by black metal band Dissection, The Grief Prophesy focused on a decommissioned water tower in Keillers Park in Göteborg where lead singer Jon Nödtveidt was involved in the murder of homosexual Algerian man, Josef Ben Meddour, on July 22 1997. | sv |
| art.description.supportedBy | Valand Academy Research Board,
Postcode Lottery Foundation,
GIBCA 2017 | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://www.maddieleach.net/projects/the-grief-prophesy/ | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://www.gibca.se/index.php/en/2017/artists-gibca-2017/maddie-leach | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://www.gibca.se/rs_events/view/grief_prophesy_en/?lang=en | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://parsejournal.com/article/journal-issue-6-secularity/ | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://www.konsthallen.goteborg.se/kalender/the-grief-prophesy/ | sv |
| art.relation.uri | https://konstepidemin.se/kalender/gibcabra10/ | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://www.gibca.se/index.php/rs_events/view/maddieleach_talk_en | sv |
| art.relation.uri | https://www.facebook.com/events/1099683593500206/ | sv |
| art.relation.uri | http://www.tidskriftenordobild.se/ordoblogg/category/kritik-predikande-underton-i-gibcas-sekularitetstema | sv |
