INDEX
Marti Manen
Isabella Tjäder
Description of the presented project:
Big Opening Event is a collective post-consumer endeavor held at the Fulfillment Center in July 2019. Amazon boxes were collected from all over the country to be used in an opening ceremony modeled after the balloon releases of public celebrations and political rallies.
This video essay situates this unmanned event within a history of excess and naïveté in mass celebratory spectacle, including the misguided fanfare around mass commercial development projects in recent years. Smile boxes rain from the ceiling like empty promises, untangling the complex relationship between politics and economic development that underlies these voracious—and nearly unregulated—“Megadeals.”
Description of the institution:
Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation has a history of more than 40 years behind it. Firstly, with a focus on photography and publishing, and for the last 25 years with contemporary art as its cultural sphere. Index has been extremely important for the artistic context in Stockholm and the art world of northern and central Europe, however Index is not just history. We work with questions of the contemporary, using clear tools and formats.
The size of Index is “human” and the contact with its visitors is defined as a permanent dialogue. Being placed at the center of Stockholm helps Index to be understood as a key institution and node within contemporary art networks.
Index has multiple public roles as an art institution. We are a platform for artists and for audiences. We understand that the role of an art institution like Index does not begin and end with an exhibition – instead there is an ongoingness to the activities, research processes, learning programs and relationships between Index, artists and audiences. Index works with an artistic conceptual approach that aims to carve out space and time for criticality, dialogue, curiosity and building discursive situations that develop the role of art today.
Nina Sarnelle, Big Opening Event
Video
28min 41s
2019