Strange Fruit (Ceuta)
2006, Single slide projection, metal and paper

The title of the work is taken from the song Strange Fruit most famously performed by Billie Holiday. The song condemns the racism in United States, particularly the lynching and burning of African Americans that was prevalent in the South at the time when it was written, in 1937.
The movement both in time and geography that the work suggest (to the year 2006 in the south of Spain), connects the contemporary development of fences and borders to the origin of the song. Pointing at a new and at the same time old form of politics, between the different historical moments.

A fictitious interview with Gillo Pontecorvo

Held between Istanbul and Rome, conducted in English, Italian and Spanish, October 2006.

Runo Lagomarsino: Hello Pontecorvo, my name is Runo Lagomarsino, I’m an artist based in Malmö, Sweden.

Gillo Pontecorovo: Hi Runo.

RL: Thank you for giving me the time for this interview.

GP: Your name doesn’t sound so Swedish, more Italian, Lagomarsino.

RL: Yes, my grandfather was from Genoa, but he left to Argentina when he was very young.

GP: Many people did, my uncle also.

RL: Ok, as I wrote in my emails, I have recently made a work about La Bataille d ́Alger and its connection to the ongoing war in Iraq.

GP: Yes, I know, thanks for the pictures, nice work and I like the title, but I never heard talk about this Hélio...sounds interesting.

RL: Hélio Oticica. He was a Brazilian artist. He died in the beginning of the 1980s and I really like his work.
I’m curious to know, how you reflect on the screening that Pentagon did of your film?

GP: First of all, of course they didn’t ask! What can I do...they can just buy the film
at the supermarket.

RL: Or download it from the internet.

GP: But seriously, it has many layers, when the film came out in 1966 I was accused of giving inspiration to all armed groups; The Black Panther Movement, ETA, IRA, not to mention all the resistance groups in Africa. Now I’m accused of telling the “bad” ones the truth...as if they didn’t know it! You know, I’m totally against the war, that Italy sent troops to Iraq was a disaster, una merda!
I’m an old socialist, I fought in the war.

RL: Yes I know.

GP: Screening the film proves that the film is still strong, that it has something to tell about today and not only about the past, but at the same time it is a political tragedy.

RL: How do you mean?

GP: They have just changed the countries, but it is the same war, the same imperialistic war.
In Italian we have a saying that goes like this, Traductore traidore (the translator is
a traitor). Here I’m a traitor. They watch the film to understand and destroy.

RL: I really like the saying, it suits my work very well.
You think they watch your film as an “instruction movie” as if your film is for real?

GP: I think there are many parallels between the two wars, in terms of colonialism and resistance. France and America were not expecting so developed a resistance, many people call it terrorism - I call it resistance. You have to remember, that the French terror was extremely brutal and now Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib - everything is very similar. Although there are differences between Algeria and Iraq, in the end, Iraq and all other countries, where battles against occupation are taking place, will succeed in defending their independence. In the long run, therefore, I think Iraq will, sooner or later, be a free country.
I hope.

RL: Your film was one of the most important anti-colonial films, that inspired a lot of
people, but suddenly your enemy is watching it, do you feel betrayed, or sorry that you were screwed?

GP: A little bit of both.

RL: Can you expand on that?

GP: I’d rather not.

RL: You made a TV documentary revisiting the people and locals of The Battle
of Algiers?

GP: It was not exactly a documentary. It was my on-camera return 25 years after, but to a completely different situation there.
We made a one-hour short, shot in six days. My lead actor, Yacef Saadi, was still there. We spoke, he gave me advice, and he showed me the situation in the Casbah. It was useful for the filming to have such a friend. The program was broadcast at prime time in Italy. It awoke a great curiosity, since few had ever seen the Casbah from the inside. Because of the film 25 years earlier, the Algerians let me go wherever I wanted. They were very kind to let me film in a prison. We even shot inside a mosque and at a Muslim burial.

RL: What is your relation to Franz Fanon?

GP: Fanon, he is one of the sharpest intellectuals, he and Gramsci have been a source of inspiration, I’m also intrigued by the moments of rage in Fanon.

RL: But more directly, can you talk about Franz Fanon in relation to the film?

GP: The political structure of the film was very inspired by Fanon, his
understanding of the oppression of colonialism and his position on violence.
Then of course the scenes with the women and the bombs passing the
checkpoints were almost directly transformed from his text Algeria Unveiled.

RL: In contemporary art there has been a new interest in different forms of documentary strategies, which in many cases focus on political topics, but you have said that in the film genre there is a lack of that .

GP: Yes I think so, if you compare to the time when I produced La Bataille d ́Alger. There are some exceptions like the Dardenne brothers trilogy, which is very strong, they have an amazing way of making actors and non-actors create this fantastic interpretation. Then of course there is the Iranian film, which combines politics and poetry in a very rare way that is difficult to find in Europe.

RL: Why have you produced so few films throughout your career?

GP: Actually it’s because I prefer music.
(Laughter)

RL: Thank you, Pontecorvo.

GP: No problem, good luck with your work.

RL: Is there something that you want to say before we end the interview?

GP: That United States should leave Iraq this must stop, too many killings.



Gillo Pontecorvo died at the Polyclinic Gemelli Hospital in Rome, the 12 of October 2006, before this interview was printed. He was

Installationview Platform Garanti

Casi Quasi Cinema
2006, Slide projection, foam, table and wooden trestles

In August 27, 2003 the US Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at
The Pentagon offered a screening of the film The Battle of Alger, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo in 1966.
Regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq. A flyer for the screening read:
How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range.
Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?
The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a
rare showing of this film.
Which is the text projected in the model, which also include benches and the cinema screen, as if would
have been a model of a cinema where they potentially could have screened the film.

We all laughed at Christopher Columbus 
2003, Slide projection on mdf
45,5 x 25,5 x 42,5cm

By changing the personal pronoun of the sentence from third to first person the work plays with the assumed responsibility of the quote and flirts with the fact that it was always a fictional statement anyway. Like an accidental slip of the tongue the text appears as a projection on a tiny billboard.

G-8 perdona (English is broken here)
2006, c-print on aluminium, 100 x 150 cm

Installationview Borgovico 33, 2006

Anticipated discoveries
Inkjet on map, prints, photography, glass, metal and wood,

Some of us enjoyed underlining borders in the schoolbook with a black pencil. We did not know that to
connect the drawing of maps with school time was a privilege position. Others on the other hand are forced to
read and relate to maps in highly different ways. Others are forced to read maps as narratives of exclusion
and fear. Others are forced to understand Maps as defining who you are and who you can become.
This works starting point was the work of a refugee smuggler/coyote, his work is to challenge the ways maps
and nations have been constructed and regulated and support people, specially the “unwanted”
“the sans papirs” to cross the borders.
It was important to reverse the very sceptical view that many people has on his work.
In today’s time the increasing racism in Europe and in conjunction with the closing of borders makes his
work even more needed. But it was also important to connect his work historically and conceptual, to other
historical geographer, and other narratives. Putting the viewer in a position of
negotiating – what is a document and what is not.

Installationview Rum 46, 2006

LOGICAL ACTIONS
Dia slide installation

Studies of globalisation have identified the new fractures between the global and the local exploring the complex connections between the two. The point of departure of this work is not only the local, in terms of social spatial boundaries at the core of our identities, but also the local read through the gaze of everyday life. Moving around in my neighbourhood, it is easy to identify globalisation narratives that name the local as threaten by the global forces of market capitalism. “Public” spaces have been appropriated with increasing media marketing that may sell from cloth to airplane flights, speaking to our desires of being loved, of belonging, of being protected and safe. But, moving around in my neighbourhood it is also easy to identify other globalisation narratives that speak about resistance, insubordination and re-appropriation.

This work is grounded in an ongoing documentation of a three commercial billboards located in my neighbourhood. The work illuminates the everyday forms of resistance that open this closed landscape, created between market capitalism and consumers and illuminates a new arena through which neighbours speak to and with each other.
These “new cultural products” are not fixed, they change all the time like some kind of everyday conversation among citizens, like a silent and generous share of alternative knowledge and an invitation to subversive spaces. These new cultural products
are neither regulated or organised, a form of fighting back where the pleasure of destabilizing these enormous amount of market production in chaotic ways should not be sub-estimated. An everyday form of subversion that is transformed week after week, month after month.

Against the market production of billboards that commodifies public space, and destroy social bonds through the creation of the individualised desire of isolated consumers, the images presented narrates other stories, tells us about other needs and other people. But most of all re-codifies the local as a space where the interaction between people is more important that the interaction between capital and goods. In other words: they make our neighbourhood safe. They protect us. They create an inclusive we, when market capitalism speaks about exclusive I, they name the present and dream the future.

Installationview Galleri Box, 2006
Photo Henrik Zeitler

Extended Arguments

In the exhibition Extended Arguments the artist explores the relationship between violence and silence.
This is created through two video works.

The first video is based on a documentary footage from a football match. It shows the qualifications to the world cup held in Chile’s capital city Santiago in 1973 between Chile and the Soviet Union. The game takes place in the sadly well-known Estado Nacional, a football arena that was transformed in to a torture and detention centre during the military cup regime. The Chilenian team “wins” the game, due to the fact that the Soviet football team didn’t take part in the event as a statement to the political situation in the country.

The other piece “Notions of conflict. Dance of the Piñata” explores human interaction through the utilisation of a traditional artefact, the piñata. A material object that embodies the extreme forms of violence emerging through the colonial process in Latin America where the piñata was used as a pedagogical tool in the “christianisation” of the “natives” But also in the forms of resistant and hybridisation that has made the piñata a part of Latin American popular culture present at celebrations party and birthdays.

The dialogue between the two pieces is constructed through the boundaries between visible and invisible practises of violence. In the first video the extreme forms of violence, which are the core of this football game, are silenced (and rejected).
What we see constructs a “safe”, “secure” image, and without context, the violence disappears.

Through the use of a piñata the second video, violently challenges the margins between play and non-play. It speaks to us through a focus on the actual process of des-humanisation. We see the violence that construct the subjectivity of a perpetrator and we see the violence that is able to disarm the human subjectivity, the one that makes us humans.
The other boundary, vital to the work, is the one between active and passive subject. How do “we” relate to violent events? Where do “we” position ourselves?
Undoubtedly a common position towards violent events is the process of des-identification with those that have been the target of violence. The football players play as if nothing had happened, as if their involvement has no consequences. The passivity of the actors within the first work changes drastically within the second where other aspects in relation to the active embodiment of violent practice are drawn (even if the artist covers the actors eyes).

The artist provides ways of developing resistance, towards violence, in the form of absence. The absence of the Soviet football team violently reframes the space where the football match is played; from a football arena to a detention centre. At the same time the other piece marks through the presence of a vulnerable body, but even more by the presence of a (un-) vulnerable desire to challenge power relations.

Histories that nothing are
Dvd loop
2001-2003

In the video Histories that nothing are we see a man running holding a Molotov cocktail. The sequence is constantly repeated. The Molotov is never thrown.
It raise questions about what kind of images represent the political activist in media today, on another level it also deals with the issue about political strategies, their difference and what they can accomplish.

THIS IS NO TIME FOR SALUTING FLAGS

Text av Marianna Garin

Runo Lagomarsinos separatutställning This is no time for saluting flags inkluderar helt nya arbeten. Det är noggrant utvalda komponenter, var och en unik med sin givna innebörd och intagna plats och alla sammanbinds de i en större narration. Konstnären vecklar på ett stillsamt och återhållet sätt ut innehållet av den laddade koloniala historien och dess konsekvenser i vår imperialistiska samtid. Lagomarsinos arbeten har ofta kretsat kring kartor, i vissa fall är de en geometrisk komposition utförda med hjälp av metersystemet fundamentala redskap linjalen, eller med millimeterpapperets precision. Den kartbild Lagomarsino visar oss är abstrakt eller till och med imaginär, den avtäcker en sanning som om den ville påvisa att det inte finns stabila och fasta gränser, det finns ingen evig geografi som inte är motsägelsefull. Dagens sociopolitiska karta modifieras och omritas ständigt av dagens historia och är inte enbart en rest av den koloniala historien. Människor tvingas fortfarande underordna sig maktens arbiträra landavgränsningar, och de förstärkta gränslinjerna i Europa med ödesdigra konsekvenser.

Världskartan upprättas ofta utifrån den imperialistiska dominansens perspektiv. I skulpturen A Message Needs Support from Another Message vänds det perspektivet. Denna minsta beståndsdel leder oss in i utställningens narrativ och positionerar konstnärens subjektiva hållning. Som så ofta i Lagomarsinos arbeten kan skulpturen hänvisas till en konkret plats eller situation, nämligen Gibraltarsundet, fast här i inverterad form. Den har sin utgångspunkt i den uruguayanske modernisten Torres Garcías välkända Upside-down Map, från 1943. En inverterad latinamerikakarta som kommit att bli en slags symbol för Latinamerikas återtagande av sin plats på världsscenen, alltså en revidering av vår tids världsbild.
Kan Europa fungera utan ett ”icke-Europa”? Skulle man kunna vända på perspektivet ut- och-in och godta Franz Fanons påstående att Europa bokstavligen var ”Tredje världens skapelse”? Skulpturen blir en ingång till flera beröringspunkter. I serien acetonteckningar, Untitled (1-7), är de nya avancerade högteknologiska murarna i gränsen till Spaniens enklaver Ceuta och Melilla upplösta till abstraktion. I likhet med en hägring är bilderna så när som synliga som de är på väg att försvinna.
Kartans position i en politisk diskurs återkommer i videoverket Bringing Politics Down to Earth. I verket avtecknar sig en slags tragisk enmansprocession som försvinner bortåt i bilden, en man håller upp en abstraherad tredimensionell kartbild som långsamt förgörs av eld. Detta återhållna våld som sker i tystnad är hos Lagomarsino ett återkommande element, så som t ex Notions of Conflict, Dance of the Piñata från 2004. I fotografiet G-8 perdona, (English is broken here) upprepas den stilla processionen där en skyltbärare med budskapet ”G-8 perdona” (G-8 förlåter), som också går bortvänd in i bildens centralperspektiv. Bilden får oss att tänka på brustna löften och ett västerländskt dåligt samvete, där t e x Latinamerika inte till fullo omfattas av skuldavskrivningen, vad finns det att förlåta? Och vad betyder förlåtelsen? English is broken here…

Anticipated Discoveries är konstnärens egen kartläggning med de olika elementen presenterade som värdefulla fynd i ett vitrinskåp, som likt odefinierbara landområden kan upptäckas av betraktaren. Utgångspunkten för Anticipated Discoveries, är en europakarta med nedtecknade kulspetslinjer av flyktingsmugglare Amir Heidari. Det är hans sätt att förklara smugglingsrutter till Sverige och Europa mestadels från Iran. En del linjer tar omvägar via Singapore, Malaysia och Indien. Flyktingsmugglaren, som medialt är allt annat än en hjälte, utmanar den befintliga kartbildens gränslinjer och återskapar den under andra premisser och lagar. Här åskådliggörs en motståndshandling av en ”modern geograf” enligt Lagomarsino. 
I kontrast till detta står den ”ärevördige” historiske kartografen Martin Waldseemüller, upphovsmannen till den 500 år gamla kartan, omnämnd i ett citat i samband med Christies auktion av den första världskartan med benämningen Amerika.

En hägring är på samma sätt som kartan en abstrakt konstruktion. Kanske en illusion för en möjlig räddning som i sin tur slår emot en annan verklighet – med sin struktur och sitt språk att underordnas i. Ett annat element är fotografiet där This thing called the state, står skrivet på ett tunt och skört ark i ett kollegieblock som en paradox till den osäkerhet och inre konflikt om det som konstituerar den struktur vi kallar staten. Vilka är de instrument som definierar och håller ihop ett eurocentristiskt maktorgan?

Lagomarsinos uttryck hänvisar ofta till modernismens reducerande och abstraherande formspråk, en strategi hos konstnären för att konfrontera den dominerande västerländska kulturens arv. Det finns en inneboende ambivalens i hans arbeten som är ett medvetet verktyg. Något som kanske hör ihop med att hela den postkoloniala diskursen i sig lider just av en ambivalens eller av inre motsättningar som återspeglas i vår världspolitik. Styrkan finns i spännkraften mellan ett poetiskt bildspråk och de konkreta politiska diskurser konstnären ägnar sig åt.
Runo Lagomarsinos begreppsvärld kan inte heller bemästras, och som betraktare krävs det mod att låta bilderna och språket vecklas ut, men det är just i det mötet som också nya tolkningar kan möjliggöras.

“When one enters language one is confronted by a choice, a choice that contains the political history of the language, the imperial scope of the language and the fact that one either has been oppressed by the language or has had learn to master it. This is why language is not a retreat, not a refuge, not even a place where one makes decisions. It is a place for struggle”
Derek Walcott