Per capita Sweden is one of the world’s largest weapon exporters in parallel with the self-promotion of a peace-making nation worldwide. Intertwined in the narrative presented in the film, the authors are building a replica of one of Sweden´s most sold hand held weapons. The film Sicherheit (German for “Security”) made collaboratively by Saskia Holmkvist, Ellen Nyman & Corina Oprea stresses the construction of colonial modernity in the Swedish imaginary. Through a research process the authors seek to endow the image of Swedish weapon industry with a contextual agency. By linking it to people, places of importance to the production of weapons as Karlskoga, Luleå and Göteborg and events whose intersection within a wide variety of imagery gives rise to linking western security with paths of migration, the film tests History in terms of the present. The resulting trajectories effectively link established discourses, proposing transcultural and political re-readings.

The film’s title refers to the term Sicherheit used by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman to describe how security solutions are built on a false sense of security, – which can only be compensated for with more security, since they create more fear out of which an escalation of conflict follows. In the work with the film connections are drawn between questions of security, migration and weapon export in order to approach a self-image of a country like Sweden.