THE GREAT WASH

site specific performance treating the theme of affordable pizza and forgetfulness and everything in-between

DISCLAIMER: silent and slow performance so prep yoself to be bored

special thanks to Davide and Hanna for helping me wash the wall!

LOCATION: Outdoors in the street
facing Andra Långgatan 16 (Wanda's Swing)

TIMES:
- Thursday 8/9/22 (in english) 5pm
- Friday 9/9/22 (in english) 5pm
- Saturday 10/9/22 (in swedish) 5pm
- Sunday 11/9/22 (in english) 5pm

Free for the PUBLIC
(no ticket no nothing needed feel free to come empty handed and open-hearted)

Andra Långgatan is a street that is part of an area in Gothenburg which has undergone extreme gentrification since 2012.

I left Gothenburg - my hometown - in 2014. Having regularly returned throughout the years, I have seen the gradual changes of these old leftist quarters which used to host artist spaces, music venues, and cheap pubs. The feeling is now very different; greenwashed hipster restaurants, fancy bars, drunk and rich youngsters and security guards constantly patrolling the streets.

"Wanda's Swing" - a local strip club - is one of the very few spots that remains intact with the street going through these recent vast changes. Their owners kindly gave me permission to use their wall to address these themes.

The performance was a 30min poem performed silently. Using chalks to write on the facade, I direct attention to the buildings as hosts of history / memory, and address the issue of erasing the past and silencing future culture and life. Using the idea of graffiti and its ephemerality within urban cityscapes, the chalk writing was consistently washed out by an assisting performer while I was writing the poem - visually connoting the act of "cleanwashing" a neighbourhood of its identity, and causing forgetfulness around that which is deemed not worth preserving with the city's new development.

" today culture is poor because culture does not generate money
- it generates people "

sometimes art has to be dirty and uncomfortable


to make art that mainly provokes is a very different experience

the site specific format is not protected by the
stage / audience border

the response to this piece was mainly hostile and uncomfortable,
but some was interesting, spontaneous and occasionally also loving