Headlong – Brickwall

An exhibition about bureaucratic barriers, futility and the will to be free.

Participating artists:
MINNA HENRIKSSON (FI)
ULF LUNDIN (SE)
MARTE HODNE HAUGEN (NO)
RUBEN WÄTTE (SE)
KANSLIBYRÅN (John Huntington & Per-Arne Sträng, SE)

We can see how walls are towering higher and higher, recent barriers hinder our movements. The paths through mountains of paper and reception areas become tangled and narrow. Navigation through the shrubbery of society becomes more difficult, the maps are constantly redrawn and the sets of rules rewritten. Bureaucracy becomes a vast shapeless mass: A body that hangs over us like a heavy cloud, which produces a thick moist fog. Here we are together, with thorough structures, administrative departments and governmental evaluations. But why aren’t things getting better? Why is it impossible to overview? Everyone can see it is getting darker, the fog transform our neighbors to gloomy shapes. Distinguishing the ghosts of imagination from real zombies becomes harder.

Bureaucracy and regulations in a democratic country should be a reflection of public opinion. Where everyone is equal before the law, everyone has access to public institutions, all have extensive and easily accessible information about society and are given the tools to understand the structure and design of the system. But this reality is seldom the case; citizens often face an impenetrable barrier of bureaucracy that can sometimes seem insurmountable. This feeling of incomprehension and alienation is a collective experience.

As more barriers are built in the Nordic countries the current political development adds fuel to the fire and creates a loss in the accessibility that many groups have to societal institutions. This development is mainly a problem for marginalized groups. For example: xenophobic or “immigration critical” groups is raising mental and social fences between citizens of different backgrounds, and a strengthened neoliberal agenda makes the income gaps wider and separates rich from poor, healthy from sick and workers from unemployed. In these processes bureaucracy becomes a tool that separates citizens from decision makers.

But in this development we can see tiny lights that distinguish themselves from the surroundings, they are plenty. They are the small actions, the multitude of thin voices, they are the rule benders and the pathfinders, those who loosen the tight noose of the neck tie. The ones that brick by brick are trying to dismantle the towering walls.

Curated by: Kanslibyrån