Who me? Yes you
by Olivia Morris Andersen
FAMU, Prague, Czech RepublicGraduation year: 2022
portfolio winners call 'BLURRING THE LINES 2022', 2022
Sweden has managed to keep domestic peace for two hundred years, mainly through social democratic traditions like neutrality and non-alliance. However, these values have somewhat deteriorated. The exports-based economy still supplies weapons that exceed the needs of the national defence. Most controversial has been the exports of military equipment to the Saudi-led coalition, at war in Yemen. It interests me, how governors can provide the means for war whilst remaining somewhat uninvolved, peace-promoting, and anonymous in the face of violent conflict elsewhere.
The contradicting values and actions makes the Swedish, public narrative of weapon exports confusing. It is a vague yet charged narrative, not transparent and in favour of the economic gains. As such, highlighting, cropping, assembling, blurring, colouring, and re-printing archived photographs from the debate was the way for me to to re-capture an issue that is otherwise invisible, if not biased. Cropping and printing is thus not so different from pressing the shutter release of the camera, to me.
The images in this series were made by inserting a specific keyword (“exports of weapons”) in the search engine of the two main newspapers in Sweden. From the articles associated with this keyword, within a limited timeframe, I sampled the photographs. Through the silkscreen process, I then re-interpreted a final selection of these pictures of my own choice to achieve a different framing of the issue.
What I aim to unearth in these images is our “invisible” involvement in war,
which is usually downplayed in the debate; to go back in time and re-capture an ambiguous yet intense narrative charge. The final photographs are selected and refined according to the material reality of war “somewhere else”, however, as familiar as they are anonymous, they can still resonate with the “peaceful”, political climate here.
The theme of anonymity and suspicion partially reflects the current dubious narrative, as well as the loss of identity in the social democratic tradition. But, mostly, it reflects my position as an author and Swedish citizen, who is likely ill informed and unknowing about the extent of our involvement in war.
The contradicting values and actions makes the Swedish, public narrative of weapon exports confusing. It is a vague yet charged narrative, not transparent and in favour of the economic gains. As such, highlighting, cropping, assembling, blurring, colouring, and re-printing archived photographs from the debate was the way for me to to re-capture an issue that is otherwise invisible, if not biased. Cropping and printing is thus not so different from pressing the shutter release of the camera, to me.
The images in this series were made by inserting a specific keyword (“exports of weapons”) in the search engine of the two main newspapers in Sweden. From the articles associated with this keyword, within a limited timeframe, I sampled the photographs. Through the silkscreen process, I then re-interpreted a final selection of these pictures of my own choice to achieve a different framing of the issue.
What I aim to unearth in these images is our “invisible” involvement in war,
which is usually downplayed in the debate; to go back in time and re-capture an ambiguous yet intense narrative charge. The final photographs are selected and refined according to the material reality of war “somewhere else”, however, as familiar as they are anonymous, they can still resonate with the “peaceful”, political climate here.
The theme of anonymity and suspicion partially reflects the current dubious narrative, as well as the loss of identity in the social democratic tradition. But, mostly, it reflects my position as an author and Swedish citizen, who is likely ill informed and unknowing about the extent of our involvement in war.