In this lecture, Jacobi will present his new ongoing project, The Third Testament.
The Third Testament is a 'What If? Scenario' – what would happen if? A fictional text, a series of drawings, and a series of installations that explore the relationship between Armageddon (the Apocalypse), God, and the Israelites.
The Third Testament is a satirical attempt to rethink the relationship between war, peace, and religion. It is also a fictional solution to the crises and wars in the Middle East and a proposal for an updated version of Christianity and Judaism. How can God be conceived as part of the world's harsh realities today? The wars in the Middle East are waged and justified with a high degree of Christian/Jewish rhetoric. How would God actually relate to the all-pervasive and brutal violence used to resolve these crises?
Frans Jacobi is a visual artist (b. 1960 in Denmark). He lives and works in Bergen, Norway. Jacobi works with performance, installation, film, text, and images. His works are often large-scale scenarios that address political and societal issues. Through the use of an urgent aesthetic, temporality and presence become a point in themselves.
Since 2012, Jacobi has been a professor of time-based media / performance at the Faculty of Art, Music & Design at the University of Bergen. He completed his PhD, Aesthetics of Resistance, at Malmö Art Academy/Lund University in 2012. Between 2019 and 2022, he was the head of the Art Academy at the University of Bergen.
Image: Frans Jacobi "Armageddon Politics", watercolor and text, 29 x 21 akvarel og tekst, a4