Conny Blom (SE/SI)

Kill the Poor, 2019
text, video loops with images of planned luxury villas

Even though Sweden is among the richest countries in the world, years of neoliberal austerity politics have taught the Swedish people that to reduce public expenditure is needed in order to secure a prosperous future. Constant cuts accompanied by the farreaching privatization of basic state functions have transformed the former model welfare state into a neoliberal wet dream where the state actively assists in redistributing money from the poorest to the richest.
1980 Sweden was the most egalitarian country in the world and the economic gaps between the richest and the poorest were smaller than ever, but in 2019 the gaps have grown to be the biggest in modern times. The once pioneering welfare state has become dysfunctional with understaffed schools, hospitals and an infrastructure dependant on venture capitalists. Everything operates with an inverted Robin Hood logic.
The richest 10 percent are getting 20 times more tax subsidies than the poor. For example, the yearly tax subsidies on mortgage loans could finance free and expanded public transports for all in the whole of Sweden, something that would seem much more up with times than property ownership in days of pending climate catastrophe.
Kill the Poor consists of a video slideshow of planned luxury villas that will be subventioned by the Swedish state, a satirical text on the topic, the title of the work (a quote from the Dead Kennedys song with the same name) as a large scale wall text, and a projected, near endless text loop with hundreds of news headlines about delays and cancellations in the dys-functional, privatized Swedish public transport system.

Conny Blom (b. 1974, Sweden) is currently living and working between Landskrona, Sweden and Bukovje, Slovenia. In his artistic practice, Blom works in many different media and frequently examines social and political hierarchies, revealing alternative readings by remediating preexisting material. Working both separately and in a team with Nina Slejko Blom, he has made over 200 exhibitions at relevant institutions around the world. Parallel with his artistic practice, he and Slejko Blom run the Bukovje/Landskrona Conceptual Art Centre, a nonprofit exhibition platform whose program includes both up and coming artists as well as established names like Gillian Wearing, Jeremy Deller, and Trevor Paglen. In 2017 they published CAB – Conceptual Art Book with the financial help of conceptual art legend Joseph Kosuth. Blom teaches at the Umeå Art Academy in northern Sweden. Selected exhibitions include Bucharest Biennale 8, +MSUM (Ljubljana), 5th Moscow Biennale, freiraum quartier21 (Vienna), MuseumsQuartier (Vienna), MMoMA – Moscow Museum of Modern Art, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art (Prague), Biennial of Graphic Arts, MGLC (Ljubljana).

http://connyblom.com