post (r)evolutionary exercises Favorite 

The post (r)evolutionary exercises are the outcome of a meeting/friendship/project that started in summer 2010, when we took part in "Goings on" seminar in Beirut, Lebanon. In this seminar, curated by Cecilia Andersson, Scandinavian and Middle east art groups were invited to meet and learn about each others practices. That's what we did, we got along really well, and we started at once to think of ways to do something together again. After the seminar, The Danish group rum46 applied for money to get everyone to Denmark and Sweden in summer 2011, in a project called Camp.

Then in between, as we know, the Arabic uprising came – our new friends stood on the Tehrir square, or struggling in Damascus and so on, and we felt that when they came to us, that is what we wanted to talk about; What now? What do you do after the revolution? 
We wanted some kind of physical outcome of the talks, and choose posters, also so that we could distribute them to the people taking part afterwards. 


And then finally, in August 2011, when everybody (except sadly, the Syrian group that did not dare to travel because of the violence in Damascus) had arrived and were gathered on the farm, we all as usual began to do "the farm things", (like slaughtering, fencing, milking, etc,) someone came up with that "this is actually what you must do after the revolution"; building up again. So we discussed, and sketched, and identified these "exercises". Intended for anyone who hopes to live through a revolution. They are illustrated with pictures from projects we have made, some from the actual meeting that summer with the Middle East art groups, and some from previous events taking place on the farm.

And yes, we took the design from a manuscript of William Morris, the radical frontiers person of the Arts and crafts movement in the late 19th century in England. Nowadays, these patterns are popular interior decorative, but then they represented a criticism on industrialisation and its enslavement of the masses. It had nothing to do with bourgeoisie or elitism, just like we don't believe that art or farming should be elitist, or conservative. I suppose the design kind of underlines this contradiction on the surface, to be radical and yet traditional. We like to play with that.