Per Teljer is a video artist. He was previously a member of the Swedish/Norwegian video group "Sunny Heart Videos". Today he works alone or with Jannicke Låker under the production name "Home Front Videos".
Sonja Hedstrand is the editor for Space. Space is a young Swedish magazine about art, photography, video, interior architecture, architecture, film, fashion and design. This article was previously published in Space nr 2/1999
- But you don't believe in God?
- That's just why. Can one become a saint without God? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.
/---/ (Rieux:) - The only thing I care about is being human.
- Yes, we strive after the same goal, but I am less assuming.
Albert Camus, The Plague
Video stills taken from the video
"Deaf Throes" by Per Teljer.
It was during the 19th century that science began to undermine the conditions for religion, but the need to understand the unfathomable conditions of life have never ceased. Who will take care of these questions now, one wonders. Psychology is not accountable, anymore they only work with the stress reactions of rats. And philosophy is only about words. So, there is only one way left, and that is art.
I have watched Per Teljer's collected video works from the past few years. Here follows some of the stories in his narrative films: In "Terrator" a man is standing fishing on the docks when a psychopath turns up and demonstrates how he slit his father's throat. The psychopath continues to pester the fisherman, who, in the end breaks down and later walks away. In "Polio" there are two over-aged delinquents that begin mocking and beating a person who is mentally ill. In "The Succer" a heavyset man steals a ball away from a smaller one and then starts shooting penalties at him as he simultaneously mocks him causing the smaller man to run away crying. In "Miami" two friends are driving around in a car bickering in a childish way, causing the audience to laugh. But suddenly the atmosphere changes when they catch sight of a mentally retarded boy standing waiting for the bus. They pick him up and drive him out into the forest, beat him and leave him lying there. The beginnings of the films are often funny, the characters harmless, regular people, which is most often comical on film. When suddenly they behave so indispicably and unspeakably cruel. But the worst part really is that they are still so completely and utterly ordinary.
My immediate reaction to these repeated practices of degradation in Per Teljer's video films is still - Why does that person just stand there? Why doesn't he leave, stand up for himself, or even better - hit back? According to the norm anyone who lets himself be degraded lacks self-esteem, pride. The intrigue is the same in almost all of Per Teljer's work, a veritable Via Dolorosa where the artist himself often plays the part of man in a very exposed position. Those who are harassed in the films could be anyone, innocent victims who just happen to be in their antagonist's way. Making your own film offers a very tempting possibility to play the stronger roll, but instead the artist chooses to put himself in the roll of the degraded victim where no one wants to be. It takes indulgence and great empathy to take on the roll of the mocked whipping-boy.
One of the most important motives of Christianity is vicarious suffering. Humanities guilt is neutralized with the help of "Christ's precious blood like that of an innocent and untainted lamb's". As long as religion flourished there was reconciliation. In our athiest society it is somewhat more complicated than that. Now there is no son of God who can suffer for us, instead we must struggle with humanity against evil. The problem in a secularized society is that we can not put the same meaning in suffering as we did when religion still dominated our lives. This question is central in our times and this is what I see reflected in Per Teljer's work. Albert Camus has described this in "The Plague": That hour in the evening when the believers devoted time to soul-searching, that moment is difficult for the prisoner or the banished, for they have only empty nothingness to examine". The exiled or expelled could be contemporary man who is without the practical means to fathom this dilemma. The means being belief. How are we to explain incomprehensible suffering now? One has to search to find reconciliation in Per Teljer's video films. The same scene must be played over and over again. The spectator waits in vain for his catharsis.
The heroic touch given to the victims in Teljer's videos is amplified by the unpleasant experience of sympathizer that the viewer experiences by just sitting passively and watching. As a bystander one is forced to participate in the group that does not lift a finger to stop what is happening. It is inevitable that one is confronted with complicated relationships between guilt and responsibility that are otherwise repressed. I keep returning to Camus who in a world of a thousand whys and without a simple because realizes that the demands on humanity are overwhelming. But Per Teljer has also understood that the questions don't just disappear because we repress them. On the contrary, he succeeds with the help of a revealing psychological realism in combination with the video media's own exhibitionist quality which heightens the viewers awareness. The viewer's anxiety-ridden reaction is a very important part of the work, I think, because it is the result of a long awaited kommunication often missing in many works of art.
"Deaf Throes" from 1998 distinguishes itself from the other films. "Deaf Throes" is about two deaf skinheads sitting on a park bench drinking beer and telling racist stories to one another. (In sign language!). But when one of them tells a story about a mongoloid the other one becomes furious because his sister is mongoloid. He proceeds to accuse the other of having a mother who has sex with niggers. They become hostile and the first guy walks away with his sixpack under his arm. Per Teljer's stories remind us of how "heartless" a child can behave. We all recognize the pattern from our school years. But as adults we understand that the malice one was so confused and sad about as a child is not real malice. "Deaf Throes" is more humorous than the other work because it brings the absurdity of prejudice to a head. The powerful relationship between inferior and superior positions is also modified. It is as if it gently whispers: "It's too bad about mankind because they know no better. Be patient with them". Hidden deep under all this violence I suspect a large dose of tolerance. Certainly it is difficult to be human, but I will gladly believe Camus when he writes at the end of "The Plague", "that there is more to admire in humanity than despise".
Translation by Melinda Bergman
