Köken Ergun uses the film TANKLOVE (2008), created for the exhibition during an artist’s residency in Denmark, to explore public perceptions of national defense in a welfare state like Denmark, where tanks and uniformed soldiers are a rare sight. Here there is often a considerable disjunction between the average citizen’s perception of national defense and the realities of military engagement. The military is not something that most Danes give much thought. On the other hand, the activities carried out by the armed services play an indisputable role in current Danish foreign policy. And so both the absence and the presence of military activity in the public consciousness is a central theme in this film.
TANKLOVE takes place in a small provincial town where the relaxed everyday atmosphere is interrupted by a strange noise, which, as it gets closer, turns out to come from a tank. In one of the film’s sequences we see the muzzle of a tank’s gun entering a house through an open window. While the film shows how the townspeople and the tanks gradually become friends, it also depicts the relationship between the everyday life of ordinary people and the international political context as it impacts on them.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
