A DILEMMA ABOUT TRANSGRESSIVE ART

Swedish graffiti artist Carolina Falkholt has created an activist work for this year's festival. It’s called Pussy Ass Peace and contains a personal testimony about an assault at Roskilde Festival. The work is a graffiti painting on the front of the Gloria stage building. It depicts a vagina with the experience described across it. It is a powerful work with a powerful testimony that we recognise is important to convey. Nevertheless, we have chosen a solution where it can be covered if necessary. Below you can read why.

For several years, we have worked with transgressive behaviour. In collaboration with Everyday Sexism Project DK, we have encouraged all festival-goers to share their experiences if they had any testimonies of transgressive behaviour or abuse at the festival. Such work is important because we know that testimonies are necessary for us to learn more and, ultimately, to bring about change. And, not least, because abuse can be feel even worse if you process it on your own.

At the same time, we know that testimonies can be both re-traumatizing and like abusive to others if they are presented in a context where they are met unprepared.

Carolina Falkholt's work has therefore put us in a difficult dilemma.

On the one hand, we recognise the activist idea and know and understand the importance of giving a testimony. On the other hand, the testimony on the front of the Gloria building is explicit and large-scale and hard to avoid if you move about in the surrounding areas.

Our focus has been to provide a space for the testimony to unfold in a context where festival-goers have the possibility to opt in or out. Therefore, we have signs in the area warning about the content - and we can cover it if necessary.

Our decision has nothing to do with the fact that Carolina's experiences took place at Roskilde Festival. We have no desire to cover up the fact that abuse, regrettably, can take place at the festival. On the contrary, we have been transparent about this for many years and worked hard on preventing it.

We have considered whether to reproduce Carolina's work in our own channels and have decided to show it on the basis of the idea of transparency and acknowledgement of the testimony.

You can click dette link if you want to see it – but be warned that it can be violent reading.