Surrend

Denmark - Berlingske Tidende

Danish artists attack Ahmadinejad

Surrend, a group of Danish artists that specialises in provoking people in power, has now targeted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It published what was ostensibly a profession of loyalty to Ahmadinejad in the form of an advertisement written in poor English in the Tehran Times. However, the initial letters of the five lines of text spell the word SWINE.

When the newspaper realised what had happened it was appalled.

In an interview with Af Bent Blündikow, Jan Egesborg, one of the two Surrend artists, explained that the act was by no means in the tradition of the "routine pacifist blathering" typical of the 1970s and 1980s.

"We can't be pigeonholed and we don't just attack the right-wing fringe. The new thing is that we're moving in territory usually reserved for journalists. We attack leftist dictatorships just as vigorously. We're not part of the traditional Danish art scene. We come from the street-art scene and have no ties with old ideologies." (22/12/2006)

» full article (external link, Danish)


http://www.surrend.org