Index hereby announces a project within the frame of Dak’Art biennale 2008, Dakar.
By the initiative of artist Annika Eriksson, Senegalese filmmaker Mansour Sora Wade’s film the Price of Forgiveness (Le Prix du Pardon, 2001) will be screened during one night, and thereby premiered in its home country.

The screening will take place close to Place du Souvenir, at a short distance from Dakar downtown centre. Eriksson’s decision of screening the film of Wade at this particular site stems from the place with its direct contact with a seascape, placing a huge screen towards a backdrop containing the vastness of the (Atlantic) ocean. This becomes an important symbolic transformation, a fusion of a filmic landscape and the scenery of a similar coastline – connecting the real with the imaginary, thereby extending the character’s action of taking a strong moral stance in the wake of a domestic distress into the frame of the everyday.

By positioning the cinema screen in a slightly remote area and at the side of the city centre, Erikssons' tactics underlines the visual enigma of the outdoor cinematic experience. With the projected image freed from an architectural surrounding, it is now being conditioned by the real time of evening turning into night. Being a crossbreed between a sculpture featuring moving images and something resembling a drive-thru-movie theatre, the work remove itself from the idea of a conventional screening situation. This temporary one-night theatre will work the boarders of the populated urban and suburban landscape, the brinks of mere agricultural surroundings, vis-à-vis the vast openness of a sea. Offering its lucid activities to a broad visibility, it addresses the rhythm of the open-air nightlife consisting of car-drivers, random flaneurs, and motivated visitors approaching from afar.

Annika Eriksson is Swedish and based in Berlin. Her work has continuously been raising the question of how communities today constitute their identities, with her most recent production showing a special interest in performative scenarios in various public spaces. Eriksson has shown widely in exhibitions and projects commissioned for institutions such as The Smallest Cinema In The World for Portavilion/Regent’s Park, London (through September 28); Göteborg Konsthall, Gothenburg; Maximum Happiness for Yes No Other Options, Sheffield Biennale, The Man In The Park for Mobile Art Productions, Stockholm (all 2008); Biennale di Venezia (2005); Frieze Art Fair Projects, London (2004); and the Sao Paolo Biennale (2002).

This one-night screening event has been made possible through the support of the Swedish Institute and Cinemafrica. Thanks to Dak’Art biennale 2008, and 37cinq show events, Dakar.

The Price of Forgiveness is an Index initiative by invitation of Dak’Art biennale 2008, Dakar.

The Index exhibition programme is curated by Mats Stjernstedt and Helena Holmberg.