A letter to the organizers of "On Use Value of Art"

rena.raedle@gmail.com
post@isak.no
babel@online.no

Hello again to you both, Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremic!
Attaining the opening of your exhibition "On Use Value of Art" and the discussion about the theme the day after was truly inspiring. To see what it's about, this link: http://www.babelkunst.no/ that will last to the 25th of this month, then the website will tell some other story! I'll also present you at once: http://www.modukit.com/raedle-jeremic/ it will be more lasting albeit not precisely to this topic...

So no way to evade some words about it: you have collaborated with many good people around Europe to tell stories about Roma ("sigøyner"!) youth in close partnership with & respect for them, not misusing them for your own artistic cv's!
You're stressing: "This project is as much for them as about them! Therefore we had to tread carefully! And it's also about youth in general!"

Then you & your friends tell stories about the Roma youngster's dreams (one of them will become a doctor, see the first picture) & the realities they're living in, f.i. harrassed & deported when the authorities finds it suitable, from the Gazela Bridge in Belgrade & other places.

In the discussion you stressed what you mean with "use value": "It's the opposite of exchange value! The art is to be used by the people we are making it together with, not to further ourselves in the art market!" & reading the little catalog that's accompanying the exhibition, I realise that this is what your'e doing! So here I come to my point: The place where your exhibition is showed, "Babel" in Mellomveien in Trondheim, is a fine place, but with limitations in time for it to be shown & in this context more important: for what kind of public: the art avantgarde, the art connossierurs, to whom I belong.

But this contradicts a little bit the meaning of the exhibition: shouldn't it be showed more out in the town, for a broader audience? & spesifically for the youth in Trondheim? So then I have a suggestion: you see the other e-mail-adress, thats to Isak, the youth culture center in this town: http://www.isak.no/ Why not show it there afterwards, when you're still in the town for a month more? There you can communicate directly with the youth about this topic!

As you see, I also mail this letter to the good folks at Babel, no reason to go behind their back! I dream of a cooperation between you all to solve this, although the time is short! & anyway, for they who read this before it's to late the coming Sunday 25th: see the opening times at the website of Babel & pay the exhibition your attention, which is what it deserves!