On facade, neon sign, Landið þitt er ekki til (Your Country Doesn´t Exist), 2011
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The exhibition Under Deconstruction was first commissioned by the Icelandic Art Center for the Pavilion of Iceland at the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia- and curated by Ellen Blumenstein. Those projects are now on display at the National Gallery of Iceland. The exhibition explores existential and current socio-economic and political issues in Iceland and elsewhere, using video, performance, sculpture, sound, and music. It is a combination of newly conceived and ongoing projects, such as Constitution of the Republic of Iceland (2008/2011), Your Country Doesn’t Exist (2003, ongoing) and Exorcising Ancient Ghots (2011). On the building’s facade, a neon sign bearing the slogan “Your Country Doesn’t Exist” in Icelandic.
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Exorcising Ancient Ghosts, 2010-2011
Installation-view from the audio sculpture Exorcising Ancient Ghosts, 2011
Installation-view from the audio sculpture Exorcising Ancient Ghosts, 2011
Close-up of script of Exorcising Ancient Ghosts, 2011
Work-description of Exorcising Ancient Ghosts, hand-written on column by museum staff , 2011
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Two audio recordings; length 33:10 min (Italian spoken – played through speakers) and 31:51 min (English spoken – played through headphones), A4 text pages/script (Italian and English) hung on wall(s), audio-equipment, speakers (in main installation space) and headphones (in main installation space, balcony and in the building ́s main staircase). The work Exorcising Ancient Ghosts originated in Naples, after a research on Greco-Roman imaginary in the area and feminist archeology, focusing on pornography, sex and gender depiction in ancient times.
The work is an audio-recording from a performance of a a local Neapolitan woman and a Balinese man, reading a text-collage in Italian while they have sex. The text is composed from ancient Greek (juridic-, literary- political and philosophical) text fragments on women and foreigners and their position in society, A second audio recording registers a performance of a native English speaking couple, woman and man, reading an English translation of the same text, also while having sex.
In ancient Athens married women had restricted rights and were to stay at home and foreigners residing in the Polis had as well restricted rights. Racial contamination was of great concern to the patriarchal society. The work was triggered by this friction and an ancient Athenian law, dating back from 5th century B.C., attributed to the orator Demosthenes, prohibiting Athenians and foreigners to live as husband and wife “in any way or manner whatsoever”, since their relation might produce impure citizens.
For the text-research we had the help of a team of PhD Researchers in ancient history and gender studies at the Federico II University in Naples, under the direction of Prof. Claudia Montepaone. For the preparations of the performers in Italy we worked together with an actress of experimental and concrete theater. The Neapolitan couple, a law-student and a cook, were not professional performers.
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Constitution of the Republic of Iceland, 2008/2011
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Installation-view from Constitution of the Republic of Iceland, 2008/11. Performance
costumes and posters with the proposal for a new constitution of Iceland, written and published in June 2011, by the nationally elected Constitutional Assembly.
Close-up of posters with the proposal for a new constitution of Iceland.
Installation-view from Constitution of the Republic of Iceland 2008/11
Constitution of the Republic of Iceland represents Castro and Ólafsson’s first collaboration with Icelandic composer Karólína Eiríksdóttir. For this piece, the artists worked with the composer to create a score to which the Icelandic Constitution would be performed by soprano and baritone vocals, piano, double bass, and a mixed chamber choir. The composition was first publicly performed in March 2008 in Iceland, six months before the collapse of the country’s banking system. The video presented in Venice is a recent performance of the work, which was staged at The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service Television, and broadcast on Icelandic national TV in February 2011. The video was aired two times, the first of which having been the day the new elected Constitutional Assembly was set to begin revising the Icelandic constitution. The posters are the new proposal that has been drafted.
Your Country Doesn’t Exist, 2003-ongoing
Installation-view from the video work Il Tuo Paese Non Esiste (Your Country Doesn´t Exist), 2011.
Hanging from ceiling; performance costumes from Il Tuo Paese Non Esiste, on wall; Installation-view, Your Country Doesn´t Exist –Do It Yourself, 2011
Detail from Your Country Doesn´t Exist – Do It Yourself, 2011. Painting made in collaboration
with Gunnar Snorri Gunnarsson, the Icelandic ambassador to Germany.
Installation-view from Your Country Doesn´t Exist – Do It Yourself, 2011. Painting made in collaboration with Gunnar Snorri Gunnarsson, the Icelandic ambassador to Germany. Photographs documenting G.S. Gunnarsson painting the painting, at the Icelandic ambassador´s residency in Berlin.
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.Your Country Doesn’t Exist is an ongoing campaign, whic started in 2003 in Istanbul in the frame of our exhibition at Platform Garanti CAC, the beginning of which year was marked by global antiwar protests against the invasion of Iraq by the US and it’s allies. Since then, the project has traveled the world infiltrating different contexts spreading the message, “Your country doesn’t exist” in different languages and through various visual modes, including billboards, TV and radio advertisements, post-stamps, drinking cans, sculptures, wall-drawings and performances to name a few. For the 54th Venice Biennial, we presented the projects in four iterations. A neon-sign bearing the slogan in Italian on the facade of the Icelandic Pavilion, a painting by numbers, a music-video filmed in Venice, and during the opening days Live performances of the same work were staged throughout the canals of Venice. T-shirts with the slogan were made througout the duration of the exhibition and sold to the public.
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