And Yet It Moves

And Yet It Moves

MOT International, London

Curated by Hans Askheim

John Heartfield, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen, Lisa Kirk and Mark Titchner.

The artist sold the wallspace at MOT gallery as a promotional billboard to artists and cultural institutions. The funds raised, was then given to Spirit, a local merchant of Broadway Market ( same street as the gallery ), as legal aid, as he had been wrongly evicted from his shop by the local council in Hackney.  GUARDIAN ARTICLE/BACKGROUND STORY

Some of the funds was also used to design and produce a t-shirt collection that was for sale in the shops around Broadway Market. The funds gained by the sale, was also put into Spirits` legal case.

….As a contrast to the other artists in this exhibition Kowalski Hansen has a hands on approach to art making. Kowalski Hansen relates to Heartfield’s less known activist side. Heartfield wanted his works to be available to a wide public with a specific political purpose, he took part in founding the German Communist Party. But unlike Heartfield, Kowalski Hansen is not a member of any political party. Kowalski Hansen makes socially aware businesses, as art projects, and he wants, with a reverse reading of the anti-globalization book “No Logo” by Naomi Klein, to create responsible and socially engaged business models that can create a notion of positivity. His economical experiments aim to be a negation of what can be seen as multi-national companies’ lack of empathy and responsibility for local communities. Kowalski Hansen works within the system of the market economy, and at the same time he is questioning and ironizing over the same system.

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