Milica Tomić, "One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannot come otherwise," 2009.
Bergen Kunsthall
Details
9 September-30 October 2011
Opening:
Friday, 9 September at 8 pm
Lene Berg, Burak Delier, Avi Mograbi,
Trevor Paglen, Superflex, Milica Tomić
Curated by: What, How and for Whom / WHW
Bergen Kunsthall
Rasmus Meyers allé 5
5015 Bergen, Norway
Opening hours:
Tue-Sun 12 pm-5 pm
Fridays 12 pm-10 pm
+47 55 55 93 11
bergen@kunsthall.no
www.kunsthall.no
The point of departure for the exhibition Details comes from Rastko Mo?nik's collection of texts entitled How much fascism?, published in 1995. The basic postulate uttered by Mo?nik still remains-the question is not "fascism-yes or no?" but "how much fascism?"
In the midst of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Mo?nik related the conflicts and the rise of fascistic forces in geographies "from the Adriatic to Siberia" to the structural consequences of the induction and re-construction of peripheral capitalism. At the time of the establishment of several new state entities based on nationalistic ideologies, Mo?nik outlined the number of social conjunctures crucial to this process, their anti-anti-fascism and cultural policies with racist undertones. He detected fascistic social effects within, but also outside peripheries, relating them to general processes restructuring the public sphere in late capitalism. His writing thus clearly opposed the discourse that was upholding the false dichotomy between Western tolerance and multiculturalism at the time, and the excessive, extremist ethno-nationalism of the regressive periphery.
A fundamental ideological shift has occurred in the meantime-there is not even the declaratory proclamation of multiculturalism, and calls for 'protection of the integrity of tradition and cultural values' have become almost obligatory rallying cries of Western politicians. Today, during an alarming right-wing ascendancy throughout Europe, we should direct our gaze beyond the 'peripheries' and into the core of liberal democracies.
Obviously, open manifestations of fascism are fairly easy to recognize (in as much as there are more and more of them), but the exhibition proposes to turn our attention to the silent fascism that is becoming normalized through the systematic violence seeping into the laws and everyday administration practices of the nation-states, and to assess mechanisms of oppression and various symptoms of contemporary fascism presented as unavoidable, pragmatic necessities. In other words, we have to look at the details.
With support from:
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
City of Bergen, Department of Culture, Church Affairs and Sports
Hordaland County
Norwegian Ministry of Culture
Publication
A publication documenting the project and including essays by Tamás Gáspár Miklós, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Hito Steyerl and WHW will be published in October 2011.
Platform:
Lecture by WHW
Friday 9 September
6.30 pm
Platform:
Book launch of Details
Sunday 30 October
6.30 pm
Platform is Bergen Kunsthall's own lecture series. The talks will be streamed live on kunsthall.no and made available in our media archive.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Chaos as Usual
9 September-2 October
Philip Kwame Apagya, Ann Craven, Liz Deschenes, Thomas Julier (in collaboration with Cédric Eisenring and Kaspar Mueller), Olia Lialina and Dragon Espenschied, Takeshi Murata, Seth Price, Antek Walczak
Curator: Hanne Mugaas
Oh, how time flies
7 October-6 November
Matthew Antezzo, Paolo Chiasera, Mai Hofstad Gunnes, Ane Mette Hol, Eve K. Tremblay.
Curator: Erlend Hammer
No Sense of Place
11 November-22 December
David Adamo, Einat Amir, Keren Cytter, Brendan Fernandes, Carole Douillard, Dora Garcia
Curated by Elisabeth Byre in collaboration with Christian Alandete.
Tauba Auerbach
Tetrachromat
11 November-22 December
Curator: Solveig Řvstebř
The exhibition has been initiated by Bergen Kunsthall and is a collaboration with Malmö Konsthall and WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels.
Read more at
www.kunsthall.no.
