Documenting Britain
I will examine where the history and institutional definition of ownership, geographies and belonging of these islands cross with a generous interpretation of my own lineage. It will meander from the perception of Viking pillaging, to the definition of Scottish/Nordic words like huss and heim as low class slang to the business of making borders in lands where there were none, stories of colonizations and protectorates, ancient treasures and individual human destinies. The work consist of text and images and will be process oriented, fragmented and experimental.
December
I am idly googling the Elgin Marbles that were removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the beginning of the 1700th century by the Scottish nobleman and ambassador in Ottoman Constantinople Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine. The first article that I open is by Paxman who true to his practice of belittling the person he opposes this time has turned his master supprestion technique toward human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin who has voiced her opinion that the marbles odd to be returned to Greece. In the rant he doesn’t call her by her own name once but repeatedly refers to her as Mrs George Clooney or just Mrs Clooney betraying the intimate connections between patriarchy and the colonialist/supremacist mind. I am struck by his venom but also at his very fluent seemingly rather well informed knowledge of the history of the place. Until a few articles later I realise that he must have been googling more or less the same combinations of words and read the same articles and information that I am doing before brewing them into his own special brand of journalism.