The installation consists of the contents of an apartment of a deceased person ground to pieces. Glass profiles filled with syrup illuminated by fluorescent lamps. The work was presented as an installation in collaboration with Johanna Ekström and was also the point of departure for a dance performance / live installation in collaboration with choreographer Björn Elisson and Jean-Louis Huhta.
"For the first time I see what a fantastic room Färgfabriken really is. Many "convoluted" exhibitions there have previously hidden rather than highlighted the qualities of the old factory premises. With Johanna Ekström and Erik Pauser's installation "Crime" it is exactly the opposite. Nothing obscures the view. The room feels stripped down and bare. The two parallel rows of cast iron columns that run through the entire elongated room make it resemble a basilica. In the background you can see an open door covered with sky blue Plexiglas. The existential crime that death, annihilation entails. The triumph of violence that war is.Here we are after the ruin. In a state where all differences have been obliterated, where everything is about to return to a kind of undifferentiated nature. Naturally, I associate with Robert Smithson. I say this, not to belittle, but to point to a historical context. "Crime" is Smithson's partially buried wooden shed chopped to wood chips".
"The family, the home. Within its walls, the sweetness, the love, the pacts are produced. The food, that which provides nourishment. People gather around this sweetness. They gather and are given access to. They provide for themselves," write Ekström and Pauser in the catalog. The sweetness of home, yes. But also the site of many serious crimes. The sticky orange syrup contrasts beautifully with the intense blue opening in the fondue, but at the same time forms a suffocating chewy mass".
"I bend down and pick up a stamp-sized piece of paper, a fragment of a book page. Some incomprehensible, cut-off words and lines. Linguistic chip. Pulverized meaning. "Crime" is a depressing but also strong picture of existence as a stone between stones".
"I think Albert Camus would have appreciated both "Crime"/ As with him, an intense feeling of the total absurdity of life is conveyed here. But also a kind of minor insight into the necessity of a fight against the meaninglessness of everything." Lars O Ericsson Dagens Nyheter
2000 Dansens hus Stockholm, dance/ performance for five dancers. 1999 Färgfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden. Bildmuseet Umeå, Sweden. Göteborgs Konstmuseum. 1998 Gävle konsthall, Sweden.