Annika Lundgren

Magic & Politics is a projection and posters for take away. The works have been realised in three languages English, German and Turkish. The projection is a slide show of a narrative composed by Lundgren. The poster is a description of Magic and Politics with a memory game of political scandals of the last 15 years.

Magic & Politics has been specially produced for the exhibition.

Quoting Annika Lundgren: „Magic & Politics deal with the empowerment of politics and language and I choose to reflect these through a video work and posters. “Magic & Politics” is built around a narration that operates between the illusionist and the politician, displaying their parallelisms. The three structures -the magician, the mediator, the audience- are the three main symbols I choose to work with in order to display the interactive positioning of the power structures such as the politician, the media and the audience. In other words I display interplay on the basis of political processes.“

Lundgren realises a detailed research in the process of her art production. Her depiction of minor scale aspects resemble a major scale commentary. In Magic & Politics, Lundgren forms a smooth ground for interaction of ideas and production of meaning . Her well-told and simple structured narrative is strenghtened with the nuances which play an important role. Magic & Politics is a story of a magician realising the most well-known trick of losing the rabbit in the ordinary black hat. The act of being able to make something get lost for good is much more spectacular then it is assigned to be. Lundgren underlines this significance by suggesting to imagine this act being taken in other fields of life. To think what could be made non-existant with such a minor gesture and without so much effort and energy that is put in. Lundgren not only touches the embedded scheme of politics but also the functioning of the media and the positioning of the public as active-passive listeners.
The return of the rabbit is the unexpected as well as the tragic, it decreases the powerty of the magician and his reputation of supra-natural abilities. At this point Lundgren proposes an intelligent question and an uncommon perspective: what if the rabbit that returned is also an illusion...



The posters accompanying the projection is a memory game, a common aspect of collective memory. The game is composed of images of the political scandals. A humorous statement of short-term memory syndrome of societies. A proposal to grasp realities. The winner of the game is the holder of the most political scandals!!



Poster front & back