Solidarity Lost – Ten years of Work

“The Swedish artist Per Teljer has succeeded in confronting this genre with his video-taped ‘micro dramas’. In an ultra-compact format and with a ferocious tempo, Teljer presents his tales of violence, absurdity, cruelty and humiliation against a backdrop of a Swedish working-class suburbia, where depressing high-rises stand scattered among the fragmented residues of the once-wide Nordic forests. Teljer’s deeply shocking, but at the same time hilariously funny works reach the level of true mastery through his almost eerie capacity to capture the conventions and language of a post-modern ‘lumpenproletariat’. Recurring characters in his films are the ‘bully’ and ‘the Mentally retarded’ whose violent actions are as much the result of deliberation, as the paradoxical consequenceof an incapacity to communicate verbally.”

Extract from text by Erik van der Heeg /Southbound exhibition catalogue, Berlin 2003 ©

The book collects essays from Bo Krister Wallström, Gisle L. Johannesen and Therese Bjørneboe and includes a DVD with 7 of Teljers original videoworks: Solidarity Lost 2006, South of Heaven – Chapter 1 2003, The Celebration 2001, The Samaritan 2000, The Vigilante 1999, Deaf Throes 1998, The Succer 1996.Extract from text by Erik van der Heeg /Southbound exhibition catalogue, Berlin 2003 ©