Andrea Lange

Andrea Lange at KNIPSU roundtable discussion, Landmark/ Bergen Kunsthall, 29.05.2015:

I’m invited to this event as the founder of Atelier Populaire Oslo. But since it is a terminated project, I am here representing only myself. I’ve done a lot of works that might be relevant for this discussion, but I agree that the Atelier Populaire Oslo project might be the most challenging and complex one, so I will focus on that in my introduction.

Before I go on, I must also say that I feel a resistance towards the role as a representative of so-called political art. I think it’s problematic to define some art as political and other as not. So I rarely appear in debates about so-called political art.

But I am truly happy to be here, and it’s with curiosity that I have been looking forward to listening to the other participants. So thank you so much for this invitation.

It is a matter of fact that I work in a safe and privileged country. I always try to take this point of view into consideration, as an artist and as a person. I have always felt a basic reflex to act against any signs of dehumanization and racism. This also feels like a responsibility. It doesn’t apply to me as an artist, more than it does as a person. So it is difficult to separate my personal engagement from my artistic praxis. The driving force behind my work is to investigate and learn and try to understand situations I might only have sensed on the first hand.

I would like to be personal and mention two factors in my background that I think is relevant for what I do.

-My grandmother was one of the very few Jews in Norway that was not killed during the Nazi occupation. I have always known that this is the reason why I’m here.

-In my early twenties, I had a job to finance my studies; it was in a reception centre for asylum seekers in Oslo. It made an impression that never left me.

After I finished art education and ten years after having worked in the reception centre, I went back, but this time I came as an artist and I wanted to relate to those being there trough a work of art.

This meeting challenged my thinking. There were clearly differences between observing, reflecting and telling vs. reacting, interacting and participating. And along came a lot questions.

Do I possess any power as an artist? Do I have any responsibility as an artist? Do I have even more so as a privileged Norwegian?

One clear premise of the artist, anywhere, is that she requests attention and public space.

I do think that when I gain and ask for this space, it is both my responsibility and in my power to use it wise and for the better of others. I like to see this kind of awareness in art.

The refugee has been a focus in my work, often on a personal level. I have narrowed on specifics, like the human strength and capability of mental and psychological survival. I have been interested in the role of the witness, the capacity to identify with the pain of others, or the lack of it. Generally put, my work has been about cultural encounters, racism, language, and identity, and about political and social structures that develops and confirms conflicts at any of these levels.

I make the assertion that the Norwegian and European asylum policy is built on racism. This is clear in practical terms. But judged by the words of the leading politicians, it’s more covered. There is definitively a double standard. The lives of Norwegians seem to have grater value than the refugees coming here. They are often met with mistrust by the system, and suspicion of being parasites on our wealth.

The EU border control has become a tool to shut out poor and persecuted people from Europe. There are right-wing and neo-Nazi movements building up all over Europe and they attack not only refugees, but also Roma people and other minority groups.

In trying to work on these topics, I became aware of a bulletproof wall between the art-world, where I was on the inside, and the asylum- and activist-movement that I related to.

With the Atelier Populaire Oslo project I wanted to create a crack in this wall. The project was a direct call: Engaging other artist to put the refugee topic on the agenda. Using every contact and all cultural status deriving from my own and other artist’s work, to do so.

But not at least was the aim to collaborate with the paperless and refugees themself, to learn from their hard-won experience and help them educate in the Norwegian system, so to be better at hitting back and fighting for their rights.

The Palestinian Camp in Oslo was a protest against the poor treatment of asylum seekers in Norway and it stood as a symbol of the opposition to the Norwegian asylum policy. It was set up outside the Jakob Church in May 2011, and consisted of more than twenty rejected Palestinian asylum seekers. They lived on the street, in tents and barracks throughout two very cold winters in Oslo. The camp was, after one and a half year of existence, the longest peaceful political demonstration of its kind in Norway. In September 2012 the camp was taken down for good. For nearly one year I was living near them, as a kind of artist in residence. I documented their activities, and started to prepare the project Atelier Populaire Oslo, in collaboration with two other artist, Johanna Zwaig and Marius von der Fehr.

Atelier Populaire Oslo was then presented as an artist based platform for production, discussion, research and activism related to the situation for ‘paperless’ and refugees in Norway. It was organised as a public workshop in Kunsthall Oslo in April 2012, and the The Palestinian Camp was invited as co-hosts for the project. The workshop lasted for 17 days. More than 80 artists, writers, undocumented refugees, specialists and activists participated, and daily lectures, meetings and arrangements were held. 

We offered means of production, relevant literature, films etc. We produced posters, postcards, a newspaper campaign, we organised demonstrations, and statements were sent to the press and handed out on the street.

Most of the 22 lectures in the workshop were filmed and can be seen on the the project internet site, it is an archive of knowledge about the conditions for asylum seekers and about refugee politics.

Later, at the Annual Autumn Exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus the same year in Oslo, Atelier Populaire, still in cooperation with The Palestinian Camp, presented a performance spanning three days, based on the Palestinian and Arabic grief ritual Beit Aza. Again more than 50 artist, activists and refugees were involved.

These collaborations were inspiring and ambitious. The preliminary work was huge, it lasted nights and days for months ahead. The project didn’t run smoothly; that would have been impossible, as many participants faced deportations and we all came from unlike places.

The aim was all along to strengthen the fight of The Palestinian Camp and of other ‘paperless’ groups in Norway. More so was it important that different groups of people met and made alliances. It was an educational project, interdisciplinary; it blended art and activism, and it aimed to strengthen both in this common cause.

The driving force behind the project was definitely the cause, but by being an art project on the art scene, it clearly demonstrated a belief in art as a participator and contributor to society. Like in all works of art, choices were taken and priorities of attention were made. I could also argue that the project stood in opposition to political ignorance in the Norwegian art world. It stated: Let go of vanity and fear in art, but never give up its power of Expression.

There are clearly problematic issues about this way of working in art. My struggle, when I sum up the project, is that the subjective sensibility, which I believe is needed for something to become art, don’t get enough space. It gets lost in a sort of collective pragmatic brain, and in a confusion of expressions.

Art is slow; it works by time, and with reflections. This comes in conflict with the activists aim for more immediate results. When being a hybrid of art and activism, the most fragile part is the language and process of art. This doesn’t mean it’s not effective to make collective and participating art. It only means that I personally, as much as I believe in it, need to step back and deal with existential uncertainties and doubts, from a subjective standing point, in trying to see the whole picture.