Artists study blood and words

  • 2006-05-03
  • By Paul Morton

STRONG STUFF: Marco Laimre's 'Vegetables, Cocktails and Reflections,' one of many pieces in Tallinn Art Hall's 'Violence and Propaganda,' asks questions but gives no answers.

TALLINN - Marco Laimre's "Vegetables, Cocktails and Reflections" is a massive installation work in which a giant rainbow flag, normally a symbol of peace with the word "Pace" placed in the middle, includes the word "Rage" instead. A stereo system pumping out the Dead Kennedys is suspended above. In the far distance a sign says "Happy Holocaust Day" next to a man simultaneously wearing an Israeli army hat and turban.



For Anders Harm, the curator of the exhibit, "Violence and Propaganda" at Tallinn Art Hall, in which "Vegetables, Cocktails and Reflections" holds a central space, Laimre's piece is about many things. It is about Israelis and Palestinians, "the impossibility to take sides in that conflict, to feel for one particular person." It is also about the two major riots that have occurred in France in the last six months.

The first riot last November was among Muslim immigrants, "of people who don't have anyone to represent their rights everywhere." The second one last month was among students protesting changing labor laws. The students had a "spokesperson," and they weren't "demonized in the media like the immigrants."

This is all very associative, and the message that Laimre offers us isn't entirely clear. Nor should it be. The idea behind "Violence and Propaganda" is to play with two nuance-unfriendly forms of communication, whether it be violence (as terrorism, war or prisoner abuse) or propaganda (the lies politicians tell).

Estonia is a small country but it feels the waves of giant events elsewhere. And the work in the exhibit by artists in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, recalls, directly and indirectly, many painful memories of our most recent history: the worldwide Muslim riots over the Danish cartoons, the controversies over Guantanamo Bay detainees, and the ongoing problems wrought by America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These things do come home here.
"Estonia is participating in Afghanistan and Iraq and most Estonian people would rather not be part of that," says Harm. "There's always this [feeling] that we're always far away from that, that despite the symbolic element of helping Americans rule the world there won't be [terrorist] attacks against us.
"We need to take a stance with these questions. We have a responsibility to take a stance."
And so in "Violence and Propaganda," Laimre, together with Elin Kard, Andres Tali and Marko Maetamm, have lodged their sometimes comical, sometimes tragic, but always emotional response.

In "Tip of the Day," Elin Kard grabbed phrases she picked up in the media and presented them as a series of giant tip of the day cards. They read in part: "How can I be welcome in Gitmo / Somewhere in the middle of the land without Geneva Convention / Where access means no access and / where I can study new rules of war."
The bare simplicity of the words taken out of their normal contexts in newspapers and placed in black and white on the cards helps reveal the sinister aspects of America's prison. "Tip of the Day" robs you of any chance to make excuses for robbing people of their rights.
Maetamm 's who Harm calls a "psycho artist" 's did a video installation for the exhibit. In "Burst," we see a group of figures drawn in black outlines, while red ink, the color of blood, splatters on the picture. And we get to hear Maetamm's wonderfully awful noises.

An explanation from Maetamm accompanies the piece: "I was there sitting on my studio floor right under the camera, making this horrible voice and splashing red ink on the picture. Instead of talking about the real problems and doing real things. I think I am absolutely a real fucking failure." You can call this the narcissism of Weltschmerz, but in the context of the exhibition, it carries a strange poignancy. It's a response to living in the shadow of large events of which you have no control.
The exhibit, Harm says, has "wider levels of meaning. It is not about violence and propaganda together." Some of the work deals with violence without propaganda. Some of the work deals with propaganda without violence.
And then there is the act of terrorism, which as some pieces in the exhibit suggest 's particularly, "Vegetables, Cocktails and Reflections" 's "is the use of violence to make a public announcement," Harm says.
"[Terrorism] is the means to express other types of issues, which [terrorists] can't express otherwise. In terrorism, violence and propaganda become almost one."

"Violence and Propaganda"
Tallinn Art Hall
Runs through May 28
More info: +372 6442 818