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EVERY TIGER NEED A HORSE
Part one 2017
Produced by Oslo National Academy of Arts, KHiO
Selected by Oslo pilot
Gifted for the Norway Kings collection
EVERY TIGER NEEDS A HORSE:
Where is the Horse?
“I heard once of a Spanish feast: Within the ring a rus-c beast,
A horse, to fight was fated;
In came a (ger from his cage,
Who walked about, his foe to gauge,
And crouching down, then waited.”
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Sidste Sang
Oslo’s nickname Tigerstaden (the &tiger city) is one with which most Norwegians are familiar. The name has become associated with the Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s poem "Sidste Sang" (the Last Song) from 1870, describing a battle between a Tiger and a horse, the tiger representing the dangerous city, attack and the horse the peaceful countryside. Specifically referring to Bjørnsen’s poem, Omarzad has made a bronze horse for temporary installation at the station, in order to re-balance the single message of the Tiger. The horse is carrying the message of resistance for peace.
To celebrate this occasion, Bjørnson’s poem, for the very first, me, has also been translated into Pashto, Persian and Arabic– carrying its message to an international audience. It is envisaged that one day Bjørnsen’s poem and its contemporary political reading will be celebrated in the realization of two full scale bronze horses – one in Oslo, and one in Kabul, simultaneously in Kabul, the idea would be to open an exhibition by the Women’s Art Center of CCAA (Center for Contemporary Art Afghanistan) to carry the message of the poem.
“Cultural translation, like any other translation, is a response to cultural difference, which it aspires to overcome, thereby transcending binary approaches to ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Something similar occurs in the mutual gaze engendered in Every Tiger Needs a Horse. In interpersonal communication, two people making eye contact or looking into each other’s eyes constitute a mutual gaze. In intercultural communication, the ‘us’ and ‘them’ binary can generate a tremendous difference between the subject who can return the gaze and the subject who cannot, as in panoptic arrangements. From this perspective, Every Tiger Needs a Horse establishes a radical discourse on the communicative relations between different cultures. Issues of translation and cultural translation will be discussed in detail in this workshop. The starting point is two translations:
the translation of the poem into Farsi by Afghan author, poet and research fellow, Saboor Siasang, and another translation into Pashto by Ghafoor Liwal, a poet, writer, journalist, translator and politician based in Kabul and the Arabic translation by Palestinian poets Hinrik Wergeland. The various debates that arose as a result of their translations, and Siasang’s and Liwal’s reflections on them, will be the workshop’s central topic.
The essence of the mutual gaze, both in its interpersonal and intercultural purview, will be at the heart of a series of one-to-one conversations. As consumers of mainstream media, we rely on the information offered, but how can we be sure we can trust the articles we read? How do we sift through the ideological bias to get to the facts? Most western media reports of the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East seem mostly to coincide with social narratives, confirming western audiences’ already-held notions, beliefs and pre-conceptions about the ‘other.’ In an attempt to challenge commonly held prejudice and discrimination, attendees will be given the opportunity to speak with someone who has experienced the facts firsthand. Four persons from conflict zones including Afghanistan, Iranian Kurdistan, Palestine and Syria, currently residing in Oslo, are invited to tell their story. They will give an account of their personal experiences, their departure from their country of origin and their subsequent stay in Norway”.
https://www.academia.edu/31534636/The_Giver_The_Guest_and_the_Ghost_The_Presence_of_Art_in_Public_Realms
OSLO PILOT - 2017:
OSLO PILOT is pleased to announce a three-day symposium entitled The Giver, the Guest and the Ghost: The Presence of Art in Public Realms, curated by Eva González-Sancho and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk. This symposium will be a key event in the evolution of the experimental and research-based project OSLO PILOT, to prepare the way towards a future periodic art event in public space. The symposium will take placed during three days: 16th, 17th and 18th of November at Posthallen, the former post office headquarters in Oslo, and will centre on a discussion of four case studies of singular artworks by Mette Edvardsen (Norway), Dora García (Spain), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland) and Rahraw Omarzad (Afghanistan). Each of the four works will be analysed and debated via three different formulae: conference plenary sessions, workshops and one-to-one conversations. In the plenary sessions, the artists themselves and a range of specialized speakers from different backgrounds and fields of expertise will hold a broad-based debate. Specially formatted workshops will host smaller groups and examine specific aspects of each case in depth. In one-to-one meetings
“For Omarzad, who was born in Kabul, a city that since the First Anglo-Afghan War in the 1800s has struggled to settle amidst countless invasions and military uprisings, the symbolic presence of the horse should be celebrated. Thus, with Every Tiger Needs a Horse, he is proposing that the beast finally be reunited with its counterpart, a reminder to the citizens of the completed metaphor from which their city takes its unofficial name, and a tribute of the power of peace in the face of aggression. As Omarzad indicates through his orchestrating of the translations of Bjørnson’s poem into Pashto, Persian and Arabic, this would be a localized version of a universal message. (Whether or not Omarzad’s project will come to fruition is still to be seen. It’s worth mentioning that when bronze horse was offered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a gift, it was rejected”.) Frieze One of the irst sights that greets the visitor arriving in Oslo is a sculpture of a tiger by the Norwegian artist Elena Engelsen that stands in front of Oslo Central Station. The sculpture is a physical manifestation of Oslo’s nickname The Tiger City (“Tigerstaden”). The name derives from the poem by Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Sidste Sang (1870), which describes a battle between a tiger and a horse, the tiger representing the perilous city, and the horse the peaceful countryside. Today most people have forgotten the metaphor of the horse and the tiger, originally intended as a critique of the hostile city; today the tiger has come to embody pride in the strident, forceful capital. In reference to the poem, Afghan-born artist Rahraw Omarzad has sculpted a bronze horse to counterbalance the popular tiger sculpture. The artist comes from a country often identiied with violence and war, and where since 1993 many archaeological sites and museums have been looted. Proposed as a temporary installation, Every Tiger Needs a Horse proclaims a message of peace. Contemplating notions of democracy and hospitality, the work sets out to create awareness out of a longing for the day when Bjørnson’s poem and its contemporary political reading might be celebrated in the realisation of two full scale bronze horses, one in Oslo and one in Kabul. To celebrate the occasion, Sidste Sang has been translated into Pashto, Persian and Arabic for the very irst time, carrying its message to an international audience. Any translation always creates a new relationship between a new set of readers and a writers.
https://www.academia.edu/38545234/OSLO_PILOT_a_project_investigating_the_role_of_art_in_and_for_public_space_pdf
https://www.facebook.com/oslopilot/photos/
https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/218890/book-launch-for-oslo-pilot-2015-17-a-project-investigating-the-role-of-art-in-and-for- public-space/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1785776611702766,
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