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Jens Haaning
by David Elliott
Jens Haaning focuses
on how society is composed and how power is expressed and communicated
within it. As levels of immigration have increased so has racism
become more prevalent, Haaning is one of relatively few Scandinavian
artists to have confronted such issues in his work but in a way
that acknowledges the complexities of cultural assimilation on both
sides. Immigrants often quickly become an underclass and appear
to the host culture to have few characteristics other than their
obvious foreignness. Turkish Jokes, 1994, a sound installation made
in the Turkish quarter in Central Oslo, broadcast jokes told by
Turks in their own language through a loudspeaker. Faced by such
an unexpected intervention both Norwegians and Turks were somewhat
bemused: to the one it was unintelligible, to the other it was understandable,
even enjoyable, but who was the joke directed against?
Arabic Jokes, 1996, continued this idea and took place in an ethnically
mixed area of Copenhagen. This two month long project consisted
of an advertising poster campaign which combined the image of a
blonde Danish pin-up with jokes written in Arabic. Again it was
not obvious at whom the posters were directed or what the motive
was for their production. The bringing together in this way of different
aspects of local and "ethnic" popular cultures, highlighted in a
stark way more serious aspects of the East West culture clash as
well as how it was impossible to keep communities separate when
they were living together. The work Foreigners Free, 1997-9, which
offered a special reduction to the price of entrance of the Badischer
Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, similarly offered a possibility of acceptance
but only if one was prepared to group oneself under the semi-offensive
category of "foreigner".
Other works examine the economic effects of other forms of categorisation.
In Travel Agency, 1997, Haaning offered flight tickets as art objects
as they could be sold much cheaper than in a Travel Agency as the
levels of tax on art were lower. In Fribourg in Switzerland a similar
project, Super Discount, 1998, sold food, cleaning products and
other items in a Kunsthalle for 35% less than in a local supermarket
owing to differential import taxes between France and Switzerland.
The work shown here consists of a number of coloured posters featuring
men of non-European origin who are now living in Western Europe.
The photographs have been shot informally on the street or in Foreigners'
Clubs and a text has been added in the style of a fashion magazine,
which gives the name of the model as well as the source, and price
of the clothes and accessories the "model" is wearing.
Originally published
in Organising Freedom, Catalogue, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2000
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