VI - INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES

What defines a 'community' and how are artists today discussing political action, solidarity and living together?

The exhibition Vi - Intentional Communities brings together work by 20 contemporary artists, historical documentation from the late 1970s and early 1980s and presentations by active groups in the Copenhagen/ Malmö region.

The term 'community' is open to many interpretations. It can imply a kind of exclusivity that easily slips into xenophobia or distrust of others outside the group. At the same time, community is one of only a handful of useful concepts that we can use to describe the collective in this period after socialism. The notion of an 'intentional community' might also seem contradictory, but it is in regular use today by different groups who seek to develop a way of life based on certain agreed principles. The rich period of experimentation around and after 1968 is a particular source of inspiration for this exhibition and has become a rich catalyst for a number of younger and more established artists who are examining the longer-term legacy of 1968 and its perceived failure through their own eyes. 'Intentional community' also questions the arbitrariness of our own local or national community and the ways we identify ourselves.

The exhibition includes a small amount of historical material from communes and seventies communities including the commune Friedrichshof in Austria. However, the main emphasis are on contemporary work modelling different ways of living as well as projects actively creating intentional communities today. The works explores various real and imaginary communities, proposing new collectives, creating private social worlds and documenting existing groups. The atmosphere of the show jumps between the optimism and hope of building a new world and the terror of imposing a single vision on the whole of humanity. The exhibition section includes film, photographs and sculptural installations by Pawel Althamer, Elisabeth Arkipoff, Johanna Billing, Phil Collins, Annika Eriksson, Jakob Kolding, Mike Nelson, Philippe Parreno, Arturas Raila, Sean Snyder, Jasmila Zbanich, Andrea Zittel & Joachim Hamouamongst others. Projects by make it happen and proto academy working with different communities in the city of Malmö will be initiated during the exhibition since Vi also is a way of looking at the possibility for our own local communities in this region. A programme of discussions with people from different communities, artists' groups, planning agencies and activist organisations in the region will therefore accompany the exhibition.

'Intentional communities' serves also to introduce the new activities of the Rooseum over the next five years. The programme will be the first co-ordinated integration of projects, exhibitions, studios, archive and micro-cinema that will comprise the new Rooseum structure. The exhibition is therefore an invitation to our audience to identify themselves as a community and become involved in the process of re-imagining the Rooseum, defining it as a place rooted in the region while reaching out to the world.

More theorically, it will instigate an over-all policy by practically testing Vito Acconci's pivotal statement from 1980: 'A gallery could be thought of as a community meeting-place, a place where a community could be formed and called to order'. Pressetext

VI - INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES
mit Pawel Althamer, Elisabeth Arkipoff, Johanna Billing, Phil Collins, Annika Eriksson, Jakob Kolding, Mike Nelson, Philippe Parreno, Arturas Raila, Sean Snyder, Jasmila Zbanic, Andrea Zittel & Joachim Hamou, u.a.