Being Background
Iconic art institutional plain and plane environment do not appeal to creativity but invite for an official recognition compromising between academic and market segments. Nowadays the enforcement and formal organizations collapse, a white cube phenomenon mingled with a black box, walls of museums vanished, boundaries between different art media disappeared, archives went online, and even photographing in the museum became a norm, perhaps touching of an exhibit is already allowed, and even stealing of a masterpiece is welcomed – just for a purpose of promoting a museum, etc. Institutions got stuck in their own policy to preserve structures and mechanisms, fake names and kitschy works from meta-creative pollution. Belonging to an institutional discourse in a way means the disappearance of your private and personal data beyond any comparison. White camouflage comes into consideration for being invisible in the institutional milieu and artist’s withdrawal for researching and recognizing institutional periphery with many stark situations.
Disappearance into a white background was successfully executed through the enactment of interventional performance for artists’ community at the Ice Hotel in Kiruna, Sweden. The perfect environment of the art residency, located several hundred kilometres behind the Arctic Circle, and local Lapland surroundings were covered with a complete white. Firstly, video documentation of the performance and photography series were produced in art residency as well as interventions in public space. Secondly, hacking white cube spaces of major art organizations became a great adventure deconstructing institutional phenomenon.
Interventions performed in Moderna Museet, National Museum, Magasin3, Liljevalchs and Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.
Photography series (screened digitally and prints on archival paper), film, performances, documentation of performative intervention.
More about the Being Background.
