Our broken American hearts

Hope is once again tied to the USA. Hope of a re-emerging order, some kind of decency and maybe just the hope of a new hope. After eight years with George W. Bush and his warring administration an alleged secterian and unrealistic minority of critics has turned into an overwhelming global majority. That´s hopefull. But what will happen now? A restart?

The Museum of Forgetting’s next project – Our Broken American Hearts – is a reflection on our relationship with USA, focusing on the mixture of love, disappointment, critique and re-born passion. Previously we have worked with the Iraq war, and media’s coverage of this war. A starting point for our engagement, work and creativity was a critical view of the US war politics, propaganda and the failure of the media industry to critically cover the ‘war on terror.’ Now we are interested in how ‘we’, Swedes, Europeans, people, you name it/us – in spite of our indignation and outrage also hosts a lot of love for USA. many have been fed, and eagerly taken inside its steady outflow of popular culture. Intellectuals and academics around the globe have for long had American output as their dominant source of inspiration and confrontation.

The hegemony is deep in all areas. So is the love and the criticism, as well. It is as if a US-critical part falls out from every generation, like out of a chemical solution. It is a matter of coming into consciousness as well as a crisis. In any case, the falling out, falling away, from USA, rooms beside the joy of critical awareness and articulation, also a sting of disappointment.

Our project is thus, not at first hand a project about USA or ‘America.’ It is rather about us (everybody are invited) and ‘America’ in us, and now, after Bush, about our broken American hearts.

Participating artists: Johanna Billing, Kalle Brolin, Karin Broos, Dror Feiler, Gonzalo Frasca (UY), Maria Friberg, Coco Fusco(USA), Björn Melhus (TY), Erik Pauser, Ride1, Åsa Sjöström and Gunilla Sköld Feiler.