Installation view, during opening at Gavle Konsthall, 2012
MOMENT: Grimmered documents, memory, stories is part of a larger work based on a family-archive and personal memories, reflecting on remembrance, belonging, ownership and what constitutes a sense of home. Central is a desire to understand and sustain, but also to participate in generating our shared history. The artwork in the installation is not only an interpretation of, but also a contribution to the production of history writing. The work reflects on a farmstead situated in the village of Grimmered in Västra Frölunda.
The family archive, spanning from 1839 to 2004, contains letters, plans and miscellaneous official documents, as well as photographs and Super 8 films. The remaining acts testify to the small farmer’s attempt to make their voice heard during the transition period from agricultrual society to the modern welfare state.
The correspondence in regards to the right of ownership was initiated during the 19th century. Later in the mid-20th century, a lengthy legal action began challenging the right of the state to expropriate the farm. This hence a national heritage proposition to preserve the unique village structure, being one of the few existing ring villages. We continue to collate documents to the archive, entailing amongst others repeat recordings with three of the siblings who grew up on the farm.
Instead of focusing on historical facts, we have in the work with MOMENT: Grimmered choosen to emphasize on the actual material that remains of the farm. This material is, in addition to the the family archive, based on memories and emotions mediated by the siblings. In the video based portraits, the expressions and gazes of the three brothers mediates stories of their own. There is no attempt, by us, to make conclusions from the documents we show but rather to produce new stories between them. Photographs of traces (nail holes, scratches etcetera) in the interior walls of the house shift between abstraction and realism, between overview and intimacy, between focus and defocus. We aim to evoke a historiography that focuses on memory as emotional and fragmentary, where details and densifications work toward reinforcing personal recognition, as well as social and political contexts.
Introduction by curators Niclas Ostlind and Anna Livion Ingvarsson (part 1 & 2)
