The Press Room is a representation of a real situation – a light and sound installation – in which you interpret your experience using the codes that are available to you for reading the situation. The outer shape is recreated but the actual content has been removed – a fictitious situation but a real action. Art makes it possible to enter other worlds and stage different events. Being in the centre is crucial for Jörgen Svensson’s work.
In his work for the series The 1st at Moderna Museet, he converts a private experience to an artificial situation within the framework of the institution. In the traditional museum building, which does not have a permanent press room, you can access, or become part of, a work that explores our very real everyday life while simultaneously affecting it. It is about relations, connections and structures, in which various contexts are explored.
What importance do we ascribe to the media? Is its alleged power a modern, threadbare myth, on a par with photography’s early function as a truth-sayer? How real is an image presented in the form of a photograph? The words with which we interpret our experiences are markers. They describe a history based on the importance we place on them. The media coverage of Moderna Museet after its re-opening at Skeppsholmen in February 2004 has clearly and deliberately put its finger on art as a media factor.
The Press Room is a concept and a standpoint, where theory and practice are present at the same time in the work. The combination of culture, politics and power has been the subject of investigation for Jörgen Svensson’s earlier work. Contemporary art is often described as political, in the sense of being in opposition to the powers that be. Both receive much coverage by today’s media, and the question is, how productive or contra-productive is our information society? Which claims are true and which are false? Our various relations affect our lives and thus attach an immaterial value. What value has art? According to Jörgen Svensson, it speaks for itself, seeing that it concerns something that concerns us all. Art is part of life.
Jörgen Svensson was born and brought up in Skoghall, a mill town on the island of Hammarö, some kilometres outside of Karlstad, Sweden. His experiences from his hometown have, one way or another, influenced several of his works. One can mention Lars Lithell’s Meetings [Lars Lithells möten] (1989-1994), a photo documentary of a fictitious person, impersonated by Jörgen Svensson himself, who encounters different people in their environments. Bus 993 [Busslinje 993] (1993) offered the people of Skoghall the possibility of travelling by bus to Stockholm for a few, short hours, and the people of Stockholm to spend a week in Skoghall. In F.ART The Government Dinner [F.ART Regeringsmiddagen] (1994), the government was invited to dinner to discuss the concept ‘installation’, as in the installation of the government and art installation. In Public Safety (2000), two American police officers patrolled the streets of Skoghall for a week. The common theme of these works is that they shed light upon aspects of staged worlds – meetings – and expectations.
Annika Gunnarsson
