Magnus Bärtås

" Between 1998 and 2005 I’photographed a certain type of kiosks, which I’ve found in many of the Balkan and post communist countries in Europe: Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Poland, Hungary and Belarus. This became a hypothetical work: I called these kiosks Satellites* and considered them as transit objects – objects that in some sense have been portents or that have shown a way to a change of paradigm. A transit object is empty, plain, it lacks all sorts of ornaments and redundancy – it has an elusive simplicity. But by purely emphasizing function a transit object transforms into a highly aesthetic object.

These modules were produced during the Communist era, a considerable amount of them as premises for people’s private companies. A specific physical space was allotted to the market economy, and in this sense the kiosks express control and restrictions. But their daring design and clever modular system simultaneously includes a nomadic quality, which bears the seeds of change. The inherent possibility of expansion of space involves a subversive element. The name Satellite means that I treat them both as satellites of pioneer capitalism in the Communist Europe and flying objects with an uncertain destination. During the transition period to market economy (and the neoliberal era) their owners often build on to the kiosks and changed them. In the small shopping windows there was often what seemed to be a random selection of objects at display – as if there existed no superior or inferior categories of goods. Side by side on the same shelf there could be a hardcore porno movie, a doll for a child, pencils and biscuits. A shopping window of this kind could be viewed as either a creation of a mind that lacks experience of capitalism or as true and honest mirror of the very nature of the society of consumerism...."

Magnus Bärtås om "Satelites" (1998-2005) text från konstnärens hemsida