Surrend: Arts in hotspots
Surrend: Arts in hotspots, which was formed 2006 by Jan Egesborg and Pia Bertelsen, exists to poke fun at some of the worlds powerful men. We are an independent art group, unaffiliated with either NGO or political party. Surrend mainly uses the street as its exhibition space and stickers with ironic texts as its main medium of expression. In December 2006 Surrend went beyond its usual medium by placing an advertisement in a small Tehran newspaper with an insulting but hidden message describing the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The advertisement is showing a photograph of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. President of Iran and beneath the photograph it is carrying five anti-American statements what appears to support Irans anti-US posture. A close examination of the arrangement of texts reveals that taking the first letter of each statement one can read as SWINE.
Our mission is to make fun of the worlds powerful men. We had earlier undertaken campaign in places such as Serbia, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
In Myanmar, we has placed an ad in the weekly burmese newspaper Myanmar Times. The ad which looks as if it is promoting tourism in Burma for Scandinavian had a hidden messages to the burmese junta. The first letter in each of the words in the poem spells the word "freedom" and the name of the Board of Islandic Travels Agencies is "Killer Than Shwe" spelled backwards. Surrend wanted to show that you can find cracks or holes in even the worst regimes.
If this all sounds a bit wilfully obscure, we insist that art can make a difference: It is very important that art is part of politics. Contemporary art is too introspective and only concerned with the artist's inner feelings. In this age of globalization, it is important for art to be expressive and to take a risk.
In Berlin and Kassel Surrend have launched in autumn 2008 a new poster campaign against Die Linke.
The main idea is to poke fun at all extreme tendencies also the left wing. We think that Germany need a strong left wing party but not Die Linke who just points backwards to old times.
The Linke-poster campaign was the last political happening from us. Instead we will now explore other aspects of life in our art. So Surrend will continue and we will still be doing posters campaigns in the streets and exhibitions. But our time with political art is finished - instead we now introduce a new depressed figure, Moll Morgengrau. This is a satirical story about a depressed artist who starts his life in winther-dark Berlin/Copenhagen and then escapes to Cuba. Moll Morgengrau is also a satirical comment to the cult around depression in the art-world. Moll Morgengrau is inspired by the global financial crisis who will hit people hard with bankruptcy, divorce, depression etc.
(Summary by bm.)
