Ellen Nyman
Transcription of the interview with Ellen Nyman about “Election Night”:
2:05
I made this “Election Night” 2001 outside the parliament in Copenhagen at the election night, the 20th of november. The whole election had been very much about immigrants and the anti-foreign leader party had improved her stages and had a very central role in the whole election and it was the first election when she really gained great power in Denmark and she ended up to cooperate with the government and, since by, she really has a great power in Denmark now.
During all the election period she had said that you can’t use immigrants for anything because they don’t know the language, they don’t know the culture, they are not educated, we don’t ever need them here, so why we should have them here. I wanted to block that, but I didn’t know how, because the first thing you can do is just to go after her with ketchup or paintings or eggs, but it would only make her a martyr and therefore I thought that it was very important to do something which could show the proportions, so that she wasn’t the little David and the immigrants the big Goliath outside, so it was very interesting to use the election night when she is entering the parliament with this great power and this huge media focus, that I was outside in the rain, not rain but in the dark, singing for her. So I sang the national anthem in Danish and that was a very media action. I phoned and asked when she was entering and then when she came she made and interview and then when she said “thank you for the interview” and I could see the red spot on the camera I just started, because I was so afraid to be chased away as a disturbing element, because the police was so surrounded and therefore I started at that moment as I knew that was a still moment just before they close the camera. It was broadcasted on the television, TV 2, and I think one and a half million Danish saw it and it was very interesting because the speaker said he couldn’t comment on this action because he didn’t understand the demonstration or the symbolic thing in it and it caused a media debate afterwards in the Danish press where they were discussing why TV 2 showed it and not DR, and they were criticizing DR for not showing this action and a famous author wrote an article about globalization to explain it to the speaker.
6:49
I’ve been very related to work with the journalism, the media, because I think they are so responsible for how we relate with other people and how we relate to ourselves and how we define ourselves.
