Michael Rakowitz

“Destroy the past, and you can control the future,” reads a quote by Tom Holland on a small sign installed at ankle level inside of the Malmö Konsthall. Along with the maxim comes a description of collection item #BM 124565: “panel with seated king and attendant.” I see no such frieze in the space, where most of the walls are naked. #BM 124586, “panel with apkallu,” was excavated from the palace of Nimrud in northern Iraq in 1846 and acquired a year later by the British Museum. #MRAH O.0278 (“fragment middle section of tree”) went to Brussels.

Similar signs, with quotations drawn from accounts

picks November 08, 2019

Liv Bugge

In close-up, a hand insistently models a piece of clay. The soft shape alters under the pressure, as one imprint is immediately exchanged for another. On an opposite screen, in Liv Bugge’s Instructions to make use of an already present itch, 2017, diapositives of fossils loop unendingly, their material inscriptions seeming to float, unmoored. Meanwhile, anonymous human voices on an accompanying audio track struggle to empathize with the paleontological objects––or are they speaking to each other?

The work reflects the viewer’s own spectatorship, framing the central concerns of the Norwegian