Bricks of Enlightenment - ML2090 First Phase
Upper Gallery - and Nikolaj Plads
January 23 - March 14 2010
Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, presented the total installation Bricks of Enlightenment - ML2090 First Phase by Bosnian-Danish artist Ismar Cirkinagic. The exhibition was located at Nikolaj's Upper Gallery, as well as outside, on Nikolaj Plads, and is an investigation of how power is staged, taking as its starting point George Orwell´s dystopian science fiction novel, the haunting 1984.
George Orwell wrote his novel in 1948, inspired by Stalin´s totalitarian regime, and by swtiching the last two digits of the year in which it was written he came up with the year 1984. Similarly, the title of Ismar Cirkinagic´project ML2090 refers to year 2009 in which it was launched. The letters of the title, ML - an abbreviation of the Ministry of Love - refers to the Orwellian body making sure the population displays the proper kind of love and loyalty vis-à-vis "Big Brother" in the superstate Oceania. The Ministry's love for the population most often expresses itself through the use of torture and by inducing fear.
Based on thorough artistic research, Cirkinagic, in co-operation with the architectural drawing office A-LAB, created an imposing visualization of a building which normally exists only in the reader´s imagination. The exhibition presented the opportunity to walk around in a scale 1:1 section of the building, assisted by an audio track for directions, as well as a smaller model of the whole building.
Bricks of Enlightenment is the first phase of the overall project ML2090 which in three instalments intends to examine the staging and functioning of power. Whereas Orwell in 1948 projected Stalin´s Soviet Union to 1984, Cirkinagic, from a current point of departure, wants to take the novel´s dark vision even further into the future: to the year 2090. The aim is to investigate how power systems - whether a democracy or a totalitarian regime - run the risk of developing into a betrayal of the original ideals, when the power structure - for various reasons - moves away from these ideals, allowing a new set of values to take root.
The motivation behind ML2090 is Ismar Cirkinagic´own personal experiences with life under two different political systems. Born in Bosnia in 1973 under Tito´s moderate totalitarianism, he escaped to Denmark in 1992 because of the war in the former Yugoslavia.
Cirkinagic graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006
and works with both photo, installation and painting.
The exhibition Bricks of Enlightenment takes place as a collaboration
with the Norwegian architectural drawing office A-LAB whose co-owner
Adnan Harambasic, just like Ismar Cirkinagic, came to Scandinavia
as a consequence of the war in Bosnia.