In a ten year carrier, Norwegian artist Lars Ramberg has created a broad artistic vocabulary, which can be understood as articulations of political analysis and resistance. His works manifest themselves in performances, interventions, full scale public actions, and word installations. The piece Liberté that is shown at the exhibition of the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2007 exemplifies the artist's working procedures, both as an installation artist, and as a conceptual artist.
The work was originally proposed for a public arts competition, in connection with the foundation of the Norwegian constitution. Ramberg's work was first selected as the winning project but then rejected. In 2005, the proposal could be realized for the National Museum's Kiss the Frog! exhibition, celebrating Norway's centennial (- in 1905, the union between Norway and Sweden was ended). The work consists of three 1980 JCDecaux public toilets, originally commissioned by former Paris mayor Jacques Chirac. Ramberg repainted the toilets in the colors of the French tricolore and babtized them "Liberté", "égalité", and "fraternité". The scenario that Ramberg builds refuses the notion of a fixed national identity but forges relationships across the national boundaries: The constitution that was written during the French Revolution also served as an example for the US American as well as much later the Norwegian constitution and the colors of the French tricolore are the same as in the American and Norwegian Flag. The visitor who entered one of the toilets would listen to an audiotape playing speeches by famous statesmen such as Charles de Gaulle or the Norwegian King Olav. All speeches deal with Norway as a nation state and share the heroic tone of postwar Europe. The Norwegian nation state that is celebrated in these laudable speeches could just as well be any other nation. It becomes clear that our most celebrated concept of identity - the modern nation state - is in reality unspecific and exchangeable. The mottos of the French Revolution: freedom, equality and brotherhood are so abstract that it has long been unclear what those meant for the single individual.
The JCDecaux toilets, that Ramberg uses in his installation, were originally commissioned by Jacques Chirac as a gift to the city of Paris. The history of public toilets starts parallel with the development of the modern democratic nation state where the state takes care of the needs of the people. Today the access to public toilets is often not so egalitarian - often you have to pay to get in - as also in the JCDecaux toilets - or you have to be a customer of a nearby restaurant or shop. Public toilets represent the forces of authorities - either state or corporate. At the same time they function as individual escapes from this reglemented world. Beyond their one designated use, they can function as spaces for all kinds of private behavior not permissible in public. The toilet as a metaphor can be described as a site where the government meets individual - where state custody meets individual desires. Ramberg's approach opposes any deterministic conception of history and demonstrates how all identity - be it that of the state or that of the individual - resides in potentiality.
Another typical work is Palast des Zweifels (2005), in which Ramberg installed the word Zweifel (doubt) in gigantic sculptural neon letters on the roof of Berlin's Palast der Republik. Zweifel takes up the debate around the planned demolition of the once spectacular head quarter of Eastern Germany that housed not only the Communist government, but also served as a "palace for the people" with restaurants, shops, and theater and concert stages. Ramberg's intervention suggests that rather than adhering to predetermined manifestations of ideologies, we should acknowledge that doubt can fuel fresh values and utopias. In times when many political paradigms are rendered obsolete, old models are ready for inspection.
In all of his works, by collecting diverging stories about one topic, Ramberg brings light to the contradictions, instability, and crisis of historical development. In other words, by revealing the unsteadiness of the world and our lives, he opens up the horizon for imagining the other.
Andrea Kroksnes
