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OLSON LAMAJ

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17 May 2017 Transcultural Emancipation Within the framework of a cooperation project with the Austrian Federal Chancellery and KulturKontakt Austria, the project space FLUC at Praterstern in Vienna presents art on the billboard walls mounted on the FLUC building. International artists spending three months in Vienna as Artists in Residence are given the opportunity to use the billboard walls as a format for presentation and intervention, in line with the political practice of art in public urban spaces. The project “Transcultural Emancipation” is part of this ongoing initiative, which was begun in 2013. What are the main elements of emancipatory processes today, of actions aimed at liberating us from societal norms and the associated world views propagated by the media? How can discussing them help us to occupy new territories in order to focus on related transcultural positions? What abilities, social relationships and individual perspectives on life play a role in developing a differentiated outlook in this context? What possibilities for dealing with cultural differences are offered by the intermeshed model of transculturality as compared to the model of interculturality, and how do artists use them? Artistic exploration of the mechanisms and structures of transcultural emancipation is undertaken in different ways, depending on the context and the aesthetics of cultural reception, and as such it is subject to a constant process of change. Intrinsic elements of the projects realised in the context of “Transcultural Emancipation” are their exploration of the transcultural situation at Praterstern in Vienna and their investigation of how artistic work can be transported into the socio-political dimension. The billboards not only act as surfaces for presentation and projection, but are also meant to stimulate communication: We are interested in the reactions of the passers-by, their reflection upon and questioning of these constellations of a continuously changing socio-political situation. Curated by Ursula Maria Probst

http://www.fluc.at/programm/2017/05/17_IN-DER-KUBATUR-DES-KABINETTS-der-kunstsalon-im-Fluc-zeigt.html
100x150 cm,digital photo, 2012

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Bilboard right side It’s Only a Game, billboard image, 2017  It’s Only a Game is a photo that I created while thinking about working class people and the ways that they are always dealing with work and destiny in their lives. The working class is always the first group of people to feel the effects of economic crises, and these crises force them to start moving, to emigrate. Most workers move from a poor city to a bigger city that will provide them with greater opportunities. These opportunities are at the same time related to an imagined destiny. Making the drawing of a football field on a worker hand is a way of exploring of borders and the destinies we associate with them. The lines of the worker’s hands imply a life story of labor and economic precarity, while the inscribed lines of the football field suggest an imagined space of play, a space where a new destiny can be created in the domain of the game. Football—a source of both entertainment and identity—becomes a space at once more and less real than life. As a space of fantasy, the borders and competition of the football field can both reinforce and ameliorate the divisions that structure working class lives.

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Bilboard left side Mystic Bird, billboard image, 2017  It is a work made by the artist in a period of time when in the Balkan talks about the independence of Kosovo and about Albanian’s destinies. To see and to hear about this things and reflecting on the tradition and symbolism of the Eagle with two heads of the Albanian flag, Olson decided to illustrate the through digital photos montage on how he sees his beloved country. So he decides to photograph a turkey with two heads, referring to the symbol of double-headed eagle in the flag, but not as Albanians describe as a strong and brave eagle that flies free to the heaven but as a eagle of peeling and procumbent. An eagle that is not threatening nobody but only reduced mercy in a way that she don’t have the force to leave nor to fly. This tragic illustration of our artist comes from his personal reflection about the wars and unrest that Albanian people have been through years and simultaneously political situation of Albania with Europe, a country that he intends to admire but which in the eyes of Europe looks like a nomadic people