Performance by Himeriksskvadronen! Photo: Gorm K. Gaare
Vernissage: Friday, September 23, 3.30 pm near the Oslo opera house.

av Morten Traavik

100 tonn Hærwerk i Oslo sentrum

23.september - 01.november 2011

YES/NO was originally part 3 of the cycle of works HAERWERK (Eng.: Havoc) 1-5 produced during Traavik’s 2010 Artist-in-Residency at the Norwegian Museum of the Armed Forces. Two M-48 tanks flanking the entrance to the museum were to be used as the work’s main components, however YES/NO was suddenly and unexpectedly stopped by the Army Chief of Staff just prior to the opening in May -10. Another planned opening, HÆRWERK part 2: DiscoPanzer, was similarily canned by the Army Chief.
No stranger to controversy, Traavik chose to honour his contractual obligations and stayed on as A.I.R.troughout the year, completing two more works in the cycle before the end of his assignment.
 
With funding from Public Art Norway (KORO) and Arts Council Norway, Traavik has worked for more than a year on alternative strategies for realizing the project.  Finally, he was able to borrow two 50 tonnes tanks Centurion Mk. 3/5 from neighbouring Sweden’s Museums of Military History which have been shipped across the border and are now being prepared in Norway to be exhibited in central Oslo.
Apart from being an art work in its own right, YES/NO therefore also has become a resurrection of the humanitarian ”Swedish aid” (No.: ”Svenskehjelpen”) from neutral Sweden to occupied Norway during the Second World War, this time promoting liberal values and freedom of expression to Norway’s civil society. 
 
The artist on the work:
”YES/NO was originally intended as a comment on Western so-called ”humanitarian interventions” by military means, and on the inherent contradiction in exporting humanism by force. However, it feels as though both the Army Chief of Staff’s attempted censorship of the project and, much later, the tragic events of July 22nd have added several new and important layers of meaning to it. I hope you feel the same. We are all YES/NO”.