Future Primitive; Desert Script

Established in 2006, Fine Art Union is the artistic collaboration of Norwegian artists Synnøve G. Wetten and Annette Stav Johanssen. In their often bizarre and haunting artwork, Fine Art Union explore the possibility of alternative evolution and, in particular, the notion of a ‘future primitive’. Future primitive is a term borrowed from a book on the subject by John Zerzan, an anarchist and primitivist philosopher who argues against what he perceives as the oppressiveness of agriculture and industry in favour of the freedom of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Fine Art Union adopt and extend Zerzan’s theory, and his rejection of notions such as language and domestication, interpreting his philosophy through the medium of improvised performance. Future Primitive; Desert Script (2013) is an embodied artistic response to the problematic and restrictive ideas of history, gender, race and power. As their manifesto asserts: ‘Fine Art Union aims to be a constant bug inside totalitarian logic … to trigger new considerations of action.’ Masked and stripped of their personal identity, the artists become their imagined future primitive, traversing the landscape free of these social constraints. On a windswept beach or a desert plain, an androgynous creature moves among the rocks. Bald-headed and almost naked, it hops and bounces, climbs and scampers, sniffing grass and beating its fists at the open void. It is exploring and marking its territory.

Using raw cinematography, Fine Art Union draw on nature documentaries for their filming aesthetic, positioning the camera as a curious observer. The artists perform without a script, through improvisation and instinct, evolving this new species in the moment of performance. The work borrows elements from French New Wave films of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which, produced on low budgets, often used portable cameras, were made on location rather than in a studio, and included extensive actor improvisation.

Wetten and Stav Johanssen both completed their Master of Fine Arts at Malmö Art Academy in 2009. Fine Art Union’s solo exhibitions include ‘Nipple Scale for a Parade’, SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand (2012) and ‘Fine Art Union Club’, Galleri 21, Malmö (2010). They have participated in a number of group exhibitions, including ‘Queering Sex’, Human Resources, Los Angeles (2011); ‘Astronomical Frontiers’, Henningsen Gallery, Copenhagen (2010); ‘Common Sense’, St Michael in Eppan-Appiano, South Tyrol (2010); ‘Art Kino # 8 Access et Paradox’, Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, Paris (2010); and ‘Every Body Counts’, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Buskerud (2008). Fine Art Union recently performed at Oslo’s Museum of Contemporary Art as part of ‘PARADOX: Positions in Norwegian video art 1980–2010’.