Lina Selander & Oscar Mangione

Man sees himself as nature’s interpreter and tamer. But nature does not care about meaning, and its power cannot actually be controlled. It therefore remains silent in the face of mankind’s increasingly reckless experiment, whose catastrophic consequences will ultimately affect man himself. The camera in Överföringsdiagram nr 2 (Diagram of Transfer no. 2) follows a panda at Schönbrunner Zoo surrounded by pictures of the Great Wall of China. Silently the panda holds a bamboo brush to paper, makes some marks with ink—pictures—and is rewarded with carrots. How shall we interpret this artistic gesture? The video proceeds to a control room at a never-used nuclear power plant that illustrates yet another despotic panorama, one with the same silence and latent violence. The images are transferred from one context to another, created and recreated in relation to one another. To question what it means is only human, but in the long run probably irrelevant.

Lina Selander (b.1973 in Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm. Selander’s films and installations can be read as compositions or thought models, where ideas and conditions are explored and weighed. She examines relationships between memory and perception, photography and film, and language and image. Selander’s solo shows include Kunst Haus Wien, Argos – Centre for Art and Media, Brussels, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Her group shows include Kyiv Biennale (2015), Venice Biennale (2015), and Seoul Media City Biennale (2014).

Oscar Mangione (b.1971 in Lund, Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm. From 2006 to 2012 he edited the magazine and art project Geist and took part in numerous exhibitions, performances and projects in venues such as Reykjavík Arts Festival, Venice Biennale, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Artwork

Överföringsdiagram nr 2
2019
Video, 16 mm transferred to HD-video
10 min 35 sec
Courtesy the artists

Venue

Gothenburg Museum of Natural History

 

Image: Lina Selander & Oscar Mangione, Överföringsdiagram nr 2, 2019. Photo: Hendrik Zeitler