Artes Mundi Advance - Aspects of Humanity

UK Premiere of Last Supper

Artes Mundi Advance, in partnership with ATRiuM, Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries, gave the UK premiere of Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström’s acclaimed film Last Supper on the 23 January at The Gate Arts Centre, Cardiff. The Swedish artists discussed the making of their work and their reasons for creating Last Supper, followed by a cogent question session that led to a lively and revealing discussion.

Tuesday 20 March 2007, 7.15pm
Join us at The Gate, Cardiff for the second Aspects of Humanity event, when Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, the 2006 Artes Mundi Prize recipient, will her trace where her ideas come from and talk about her interest in visualising altered mental states. Laurence Kardish, MOMA (where Ahtila is currently showing) describes her work as capturing “the slippery intersection between fantasy and reality.”

Eija-Liisa Ahtila THE WIND, 2002 © Crystal Eye Ltd Installation view taken from Tokyo Opera City Gallery Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery Photo: Keizo Kioku

Tuesday 22 May 2007, 7.15pm
Put this date in your dairy. Artes Mundi will be bringing another international artist to Wales to show and discuss ideas behind their work. An announcement will be made on the Artes Mundi website shortly.

All the evenings take place at the Gate Arts Centre, Cardiff.
Entry is free but admission to each event is by ticket only. These are available from the Gate Box Office, The Gate, Keppoch Street, Roath, Cardiff, CF24 3JW

T 029 2048 3344
E info@thegate.org.uk

Five Questions for… Mats Bigert
Interview with Anna Britten, Metro, 23 January 2007

Stockholm-based artists Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström produce conceptual and video work inspired by human responses to life and death. Artes Mundi brought them to Cardiff to introduce a screening of their film, Last Supper, which looks at the ritual of the condemned man’s last meal.

Bigert & Bergström during shooting of their film Last Supper, Photo: Gösta Reiland 2005

What’s the story behind this ritual?
Everybody thinks it is somehow connected to the last meal of Jesus Christ, but it can be traced back to pre-Christian times, to the fear of ghosts. In Ancient Greece you had to feed the person who was going to be executed, so that they could cross the River Styx into the underworld, and not come back as a hungry ghost.

What happens in Last Supper?
We decided to film a reconstruction of a cookery show, with an actual death row chef. He switches between showing you how to cook fried onion rings and telling stories about Old Sparky and how many people it’s ‘fried’. We didn’t just want an American perspective, though, so we visited every country that has capital punishment.

Do you have a political agenda?
The film is very objectively done. We see it as a kind of confrontation. You need new ways of discussing hot political topics and that’s what we’re trying to do without becoming too dogmatic. There is a pressure group in San Francisco that uses our film [to campaign] against capital punishment. But our main drive is curiosity.

Would you ever watch an execution?
No. Sweden has a very strong stance against capital punishment, but when Saddam was executed they aired it on TV and people watched it, and that creates a brutish mentality. That’s why we abolished public executions in Europe 200 years ago.

What’s your next project?
A film installation called Life Extended, which deals with the dream of immortality and the idea that one day we will actually be able to live forever. We thought that would be almost as depressing as death!

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