A striking Abundance: A workshop on the Political Imaginaries of Striking Otherwise organised by Valeria Graziano, Giulia Palladini and Jenny Richards as part of the exhibition A Careful Strike* curated by Michele Masucci at Mint.

This event is a workshop on zoom, with limited space. To book a place or for any questions please email Jenny: jennyrichardsjenny@gmail.com.

The starting point of this workshop is the consideration that for many people the classical forms of strike – where workers withhold their labour and stand on picket lines in front of their workplace – is no longer, or has never been, a viable option. Workers tending to fundamental needs in the care sector, for instance, but also unemployed populations and those caught up in the gig economy that increasingly does not recognize their status as employees are all examples of a widespread condition that calls for an alternative political imaginary around what a strike is and what it can do.

The workshop will be structured in two sessions.

We will begin by looking at the current state of affairs with the right to strike in Sweden and beyond and by sharing some histories of powerful forms of struggle such as strike-ins, reverse strikes, alternative production strategies, plant takeovers, maintenance boycotts and self-reductions. What these different forms of strike action share is how they responded to their specific conditions of possibility by re-organizing labour otherwise. In doing so, they revealed the artificial nature of capital’s logic of scarcity, opening up instead a horizon of militant abundance.

In the second part of the workshop, we will facilitate some structured conversations to allow participants to actively engage with the question of strike organizing and explore together different political imaginaries applicable in their own locales.

The workshop is aimed primarily (but not exclusively) to those who are currently engaged in care work or precarious employment or thinking about ways to collectively address current working conditions, or for those putting pressure on employers within or outside unions.

Release conversation with Jakob Jakobsen and Ana Teixeira Pinto: what is to be done?

Part of Editorial meeting – A Gathering Towards a Critique of the Contemporary by Paletten Art Journal

What: Conversation with Jakob Jakobsen and Ana Teixeira Pinto, moderated by Frida Sandström (Paletten)

Art and culture are exposed to immense challenges due to various populistic agendas. This has an immediate effect on contemporary art and its complex habitat between the local, national and international. When publishing spaces are becoming more restricted in favour of ideological and market-driven communication – there is an urgency for expanding critical conversations, formats and languages. With the utmost integrity, we aspire to modify ways on how to relate to art and the world at large. Through the function of art, aesthetics and the artworld, can we further understand how the development of the democratic nation-state that emerged out of modernity – is deeply rooted in colonialism and capitalism?

2020 was a year dominated as much by uprisings, as the repression of these, a crisis of social reproduction and health, and various forms of nationalist, logistic-economic and quite some socio-physical reconsiderations. Since the early spring, Paletten Art Journal has gathered writers from various perspectives, under the headline “Editorial meeting.” The emphasis on the notion of the ‘editorial’ was first meant to physically gather people in open editorial meetings, to propose, discuss and determine and alternative methods for future work. While these meetings had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, the conversation between editors and invited contributors continued, fuelled by critical reflections on phenomena such as the distribution of resources, concepts of care, a rising wave of neo-fascism, populism and conspiracy theories, and the role of editorial work and writing, in relation to various forms of political organising.

While the initial plan was to use the editorial meeting as a means to extend the scope of a singular or a few editors, making space for unforeseen encounters to result in unforeseen contributions, the physical restrictions dominating the year cancelled this plan. In collaboration with co-editors Patrik Haggren, Matthew Rana and Frida Sandström, local and international writers were invited with an attempt to both broaden a Northern-European centred discussion, and to dive into locally complex cases in the format of a number of exhibitions reviews.

One of the planned editorial meetings was supposed to take place at Mint – whose critical strivings also has been a great source of motivation during the development process of this editorial project. It is, therefore, a joy to also close this chapter at Mint – hopefully not to only make full circle, but to emphasise on future alliances and trajectories. Celebrating the publication of this compilation of texts that the project has resulted in, Frida Sandström meets the contributing writers, Ana Teixeira Pinto and Jakob Jakobsen, to discuss matters of future work: what is to be done, and what are we preparing for?

The resulting texts, recorded conversations and multimedia montages form this year’s attempts to examine practical possibilities of art criticism today. They are available at paletten.net.

Editorial meeting – A Gathering Towards a Critique of the Contemporary was commissioned by, and funded by Regionsamverkan Sydsverige.

Join Johanna Hedva for a presentation and discussion on their new book, Minerva: The Miscarriage of the Brain. The event is organised as part of the exhibition A Careful Strike* at Mint. (Due to the current pandemic the exhibition has been postponed until fall 2021).

Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain collects a decade of work from artist, musician, and author of On Hell, Johanna Hedva. In plays, performances, an encyclopaedia, essays, autohagiography, hypnagogic, and hypnopompic poems – in texts whose bodies drift and delight in form – Minerva tunnels into mysticism, madness, motherhood, and magic. Minerva gets dirty with the mess of gender and genius. She does the labour of sleep and dreams. She odysseys through Los Angeles, shapeshifting in stygian night and waking up to wail in the light.

The struggle over history is the struggle for life, recognition and reparation. The conditions for an independent historical narrative are a recurring issue within the history of different movements. Which narratives are given a voice, which are suppressed? How is the ongoing struggle over history expressed today in different contexts? Participants: Judith Kiros, Stefano Harney och Fred Moten.

Follow the conversation online via Mint’s facebook page