eva Luating quaLity in artistiC researChCases 1 and 2: Unknown Woman and Territorial Pissingin 2009 two controversial final projects at the university College of arts, Crafts and
design (Konstfack) in stockholm were widely discussed at art schools, in newspapers
and in numerous blogs. anna odell, a student at the Fine arts institution, staged a
fake suicide attempt by standing on a bridge in central stockholm. passers- by naturally
thought that she was going to jump from the bridge and called the police. she was
taken to a mental hospital, kept in restraints and admitted there for the night. next
morning she revealed that she had simulated the event and her acting was part of an
art project. The hospital staff reported her to the police for raising a false alarm, fraud
and violent resistance, while the general public’s indignation centred on her cheating
the doctors, nurses and police and occupying a hospital bed without being ill. her
explicit aim was to show the shortcomings of public mental healthcare. The project
entitled ‘unknown Woman’ (Okänd kvinna 2009-349701) was finally presented at the
students’ annual exhibition in may 2009 and consisted of an installation (a hospital
bed), four movies, sound recordings and excerpts from the hospital case books. she was
eventually prosecuted and sentenced to pay a symbolic fine of 2,500 swedish kronor
(approximately 250 euros).
a few weeks later another student at the same institution presented a video
recording called Territorial Pissing as his final project, showing among other things a
masked male spraying graffiti on the walls of an underground station and smashing the
window of a train. he was reported to the police for the damage. The case was dropped
however, since the true identity of the masked vandal could not be determined and
the video was the only proof at hand. The Traffic office, who brought the prosecution,
plans to appeal.
it needs to be added that neither of these final projects were labelled ‘research’,
but we suggest that they could be regarded as action projects. The most interesting
consequence was not primarily the artistic qualities per se, or the artists’ intentions, but
the debates that followed for the rest of the year, discussing art and ideology, artistic
freedom, the legal responsibilities of the college, the supervisors and the individual
artists, and who should pay the fines. Blogs and letters to the editor also exposed the
latent hatred of modern art amongst the general public. The debate gradually involved
the rector, lecturers and students at Konstfack, the cultural minister, all leading art
critics as well as the public. Konstfack chose to engage a lawyer to judge if other final
projects might be transgressions of the law. The art critic ingela lind concluded:
The old nineteenth- century role of the artist as outsider and rebel has been
devoured by the market and the entertainment industry. But at the same
time, the function of art as moral and ethical instructor has been soiled by
the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. instead, artists often work
towards the same aims as journalists and critics: to expose hypocrisy and
double standards in society. in doing so, they must stamp on new taboos, and
that is exactly what anna odell has done.^8
(lind 2009)