Klara Lidén
01 May 2008 - 24 Jun 2007
KLARA LIDÉN
1 May – 24 June 2007
It is quite remarkable that people can live together. Every day, around the world people travel by subway and bus, wait at pedestrian crossings, stand in line or drive on the right side of the road. Of course, sometimes things get out of hand, but it’s amazing that it doesn’t happen more often.
I sometimes think about this when I’m sitting on the subway in rush hour. Strangers are packed in side by side and most of them seem to respect each other. But what is going on behind the controlled expressions? What happens if someone breaks the tacit agreement and starts to act “abnormally”?
In Klara Lidén’s video Paralyzed (2003) we see her dancing wildly and throwing herself about on a Stockholm commuter train. Her fellow passengers stare at her in surprise and perhaps in fear. But the point here is not the reactions of the passengers. Neither is it a Jackass joke. Instead, what surprises me is her behaviour. It appears to be some sort of choreography of inner anguish and pent-up anger. She seems to be forcing herself to revolt against the norm.
Lidén started as an architecture student before moving into art (she is currently a student at Konstfack in Stockholm) and is still, above all, interested in city planning and the movement patterns of people in the city. Especially the ways in which city planners together with the authorities direct and control the flow of movement in a city. She doesn’t understand how people can allow themselves to be so strictly controlled. Perhaps her performance in the commuter train is a way of demonstrating a type of defiance against how well-behaved and well-adjusted many of us are, but she does it without claiming the moral high ground. In fact, it is quite the opposite, instead of passing judgement she uses herself as an example.
In the photograph Self-portrait (2004) we see her posing like a flasher with open trench coat. But what she reveals to us is the inside of her coat that is filled with various tools. I see her as a housebreaker ready for action. Or perhaps, she is a homeless person about to build an illegal home somewhere? The ambiguity in her image inspires many associations. Just as in Paralyzed we see someone who does not want to be incorporated into the everyday system – or trapped in a social or cultural preserve.
It is not a unique statement. History is full of artists who have tried to create alternative lifestyles. But what makes Klara Lidén’s stagings special is that her defiance is mixed with a self-exposing angst. She is uncertain of herself and why she wants to be outside the mainstream of society. Certainly, when she builds a type of shed (or should one call them shack-like constructions?) both at the gallery Reena Spauling’s Fine Art in New York and on the bank of the river Spree in Berlin, she appears to encourage us to engage in a type of illegal activism. No building inspector has tested the durability of her constructions... But in relation to her videos, the constructions’ physical fragility is interlaced with some sort of mental frailty. Things are impermanent and always on the verge of collapse.
For her installation at Moderna Museet she has emptied her 30 square- metre apartment of all its furniture, kitchen utensils, the lot, and transported everything to the museum where she has created a construction titled Unheimlich Manöver. The construction also contains videos that were recorded in her apartment. At first this may appear as a self-portrait – look, this is Klara Lidén’s life! But soon one realises that the private is transformed within the public context of the museum. “Unheimlich” is a term coined by Sigmund Freud in 1901, meaning “uncanny” or “horrible”. But it can also be interpreted as “that which is not home”, “unhomely”, a kind of “non-home”. Suddenly her home appears not at all like something private but rather as something universal, perhaps a temporary place of residence to which no great meaning is attached by its inhabitant.
In one of the videos, Bodies of Society (2006), we see Lidén in an elegant choreography methodically attacking a bicycle in her apartment. The feeling that her home is actually a “non-home” is further emphasised, but I also associate to private homes in general. What goes on behind the façades? What is one allowed to do in private that one cannot do in public? Of course, the aggressiveness displayed by Klara Lidén makes one think of the domestic violence that takes place within the confines of the home. But one also thinks of an urge to destroy the barrier between the private and the public in order to allow for a social transparency that makes different forms of abuse of power more difficult. Both in the private sphere and in the city’s public spaces.
John Peter Nilsson
1 May – 24 June 2007
It is quite remarkable that people can live together. Every day, around the world people travel by subway and bus, wait at pedestrian crossings, stand in line or drive on the right side of the road. Of course, sometimes things get out of hand, but it’s amazing that it doesn’t happen more often.
I sometimes think about this when I’m sitting on the subway in rush hour. Strangers are packed in side by side and most of them seem to respect each other. But what is going on behind the controlled expressions? What happens if someone breaks the tacit agreement and starts to act “abnormally”?
In Klara Lidén’s video Paralyzed (2003) we see her dancing wildly and throwing herself about on a Stockholm commuter train. Her fellow passengers stare at her in surprise and perhaps in fear. But the point here is not the reactions of the passengers. Neither is it a Jackass joke. Instead, what surprises me is her behaviour. It appears to be some sort of choreography of inner anguish and pent-up anger. She seems to be forcing herself to revolt against the norm.
Lidén started as an architecture student before moving into art (she is currently a student at Konstfack in Stockholm) and is still, above all, interested in city planning and the movement patterns of people in the city. Especially the ways in which city planners together with the authorities direct and control the flow of movement in a city. She doesn’t understand how people can allow themselves to be so strictly controlled. Perhaps her performance in the commuter train is a way of demonstrating a type of defiance against how well-behaved and well-adjusted many of us are, but she does it without claiming the moral high ground. In fact, it is quite the opposite, instead of passing judgement she uses herself as an example.
In the photograph Self-portrait (2004) we see her posing like a flasher with open trench coat. But what she reveals to us is the inside of her coat that is filled with various tools. I see her as a housebreaker ready for action. Or perhaps, she is a homeless person about to build an illegal home somewhere? The ambiguity in her image inspires many associations. Just as in Paralyzed we see someone who does not want to be incorporated into the everyday system – or trapped in a social or cultural preserve.
It is not a unique statement. History is full of artists who have tried to create alternative lifestyles. But what makes Klara Lidén’s stagings special is that her defiance is mixed with a self-exposing angst. She is uncertain of herself and why she wants to be outside the mainstream of society. Certainly, when she builds a type of shed (or should one call them shack-like constructions?) both at the gallery Reena Spauling’s Fine Art in New York and on the bank of the river Spree in Berlin, she appears to encourage us to engage in a type of illegal activism. No building inspector has tested the durability of her constructions... But in relation to her videos, the constructions’ physical fragility is interlaced with some sort of mental frailty. Things are impermanent and always on the verge of collapse.
For her installation at Moderna Museet she has emptied her 30 square- metre apartment of all its furniture, kitchen utensils, the lot, and transported everything to the museum where she has created a construction titled Unheimlich Manöver. The construction also contains videos that were recorded in her apartment. At first this may appear as a self-portrait – look, this is Klara Lidén’s life! But soon one realises that the private is transformed within the public context of the museum. “Unheimlich” is a term coined by Sigmund Freud in 1901, meaning “uncanny” or “horrible”. But it can also be interpreted as “that which is not home”, “unhomely”, a kind of “non-home”. Suddenly her home appears not at all like something private but rather as something universal, perhaps a temporary place of residence to which no great meaning is attached by its inhabitant.
In one of the videos, Bodies of Society (2006), we see Lidén in an elegant choreography methodically attacking a bicycle in her apartment. The feeling that her home is actually a “non-home” is further emphasised, but I also associate to private homes in general. What goes on behind the façades? What is one allowed to do in private that one cannot do in public? Of course, the aggressiveness displayed by Klara Lidén makes one think of the domestic violence that takes place within the confines of the home. But one also thinks of an urge to destroy the barrier between the private and the public in order to allow for a social transparency that makes different forms of abuse of power more difficult. Both in the private sphere and in the city’s public spaces.
John Peter Nilsson