Friday, 12 April 2013, 24:00 | midnight

# 44: Annika Eriksson

Over the years, Annika Eriksson has produced a large number of works in which the perception of time, structures of power, and once acclaimed social visions are called into question. Strategically Eriksson plays with the heated debates around the public realm and structures that regulate it, revealing the urban changes and how this is subject to unexpected political appropriations and inversions.

Annika Eriksson’s latest three works are realized as an ongoing dialogue with times of transition, here explored both through moments of resistance and passivity. In the realizations of these works, Eriksson has used Berlin, where she lives and works, as a point of departure.

Annika Eriksson presents:

It did happen soon, 2012
The work It did happen soon, emerges from research done into the writings and experiences of iconic Berlin based collective Kommune 1, often described as Germany’s first politically motivated commune. Here the experiences of some of the leading figures and of the movement are pushed into temporal ambiguity as the narrative around the desire and drive for transformation is transported into an ambiguous time and space. Here documentary material merges with material from science fiction narratives in a three-part loop delivered by a young actor.

Wir bleiben/The Last Tenants, 2011
Wir bleiben/The Last Tenants focuses on the building where Eriksson used to live. Built in 1755 it has survived centuries, decades and two World Wars. Since the wall came down, the neighbourhood has been rapidly gentrified. The work is portraying the last three tenants of the building: their decision claim their rights to remain in their apartments. In asking the tenants of the building to tell their story, she provides us with a portrait of the building. In the work, the former tenants speak from a moment of occupation, but also from a marked displacement, as if they were trapped in a time pocket.

Wir sind wieder da, 2010
A similar sense of time being broken down, nondescript of lost can be sensed in Eriksson’s video of Wir sind wieder da. The film is set in an urban non-space in Berlin – a grass covered area with a few scattered pieces of discarded furniture. This in between space appears to operate on its own time, maintaining the stubborn calm of non-activity. A subversive form of resistance is implied, the resistance residing within passivity. A group of punks hang out in the darkness; they smoke and drink as their dogs roam free. It is a vision containing both the echo from a recent past and temporally ambiguous vision of a dystopic time to come.

Annika Eriksson (b. 1956 in Malmö, Sweden) has been a resident of Berlin since she was a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/ DAAD inIn 2002/03. Annika Eriksson realized numerous projects and commissions in public space, for example for the Arnolfini in Bristol (2009), for UP Projects in Regent’s Park in London (2008), for Mobile Art Productions and for the Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm (2008), for Platform Garanti in Istanbul (2007) or for IASPIS for the Biennial in Venice in 2005 or for the Dakar Biennial (2008). Eriksson took part in numerous international group shows, recently in “Schazam” at GerhardsenGerner, Berlin (2010), “Code Share” at CAC Vilnius (2009), “The Greenroom” at Bard College, New York (2008) and in the Sheffield Biennale 2008.