Category: 2020

The Struggle for Ports and Logistics

Follow the conversation at www.m-i-n-t.se/en-omsorgsfull-strejk/

During the past years, the Naples port has been affected by harsh labour conflicts. Employees have been fired on unclear grounds and the port businesses are unwilling to negotiate with the union. In Genova, dockworkers have gone on strikes to block ships with weapons cargo destined for Jemen. When the Black Lives Matter movement grew in the USA hundreds of dockworkers went on strike in Portland. In Sweden, the Swedish Dockworkers Union struggle has become significant in the rapid restructuring of the power relations on the Swedish labour market. What does the conjunction between political strikes and labour related strikes entail today?

This evening departs from a series of reports from different contemporary struggles that reflect the conditions to document and establish one’s public narrative. Based on this aspect, which historical continuities with earlier movements can we see in today’s struggles?

Reports by:

Papis Ndiaye, S.I. Cobas Italy

Martin Berg, chairman of the Swedish Dockworkers Union

Alessandra Mincone, journalist at Napoli Monitor

Mathias Wåg, activist and writer

Moderated by Julia Lindblom, journalist at Arbetaren and Benj Gerdes, artist and filmmaker.

Luleåbiennalen 2020: Time on Earth

Dimen Abdulla, Linnea Axelsson, Chto Delat?, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Elisabete Finger & Manuela Eichner, Aage Gaup, Apostolos Georgiou, Beatrice Gibson, Maria W Horn, Thomas Hämén, Susanna Jablonski, Ingela Johansson, Kapwani Kiwanga, Birgitta Linhart, Hanna Ljungh & Mattias Hållsten, Fathia Mohidin, Santiago Mostyn, Christian Nyampeta, Ingrid Elsa Maria Ogenstedt, Didem Pekün med KHORA, Charlotte Posenenske, Sofia Restorp, Iris Smeds, Augusta Strömberg, Isak Sundström, Svärta (Yngve Baum, Jean Hermanson, Odd Uhrbom), Erik Thörnqvist, Cara Tolmie, Tommy Tommie, Danae Valenza, Ana Vaz, Peter Weiss & Hans Nordenström, Mats Wikström, Måns Wrange, Markus Öhrn

21.11 2020–14.2 2021

Norrbotten

The Luleå Biennial stretches across the vast region of Norrbotten. Budding into the arctic circle at Sweden’s border to Finland, the region – with its heavy industries, mining landscapes, high-tech research centers, unique nature and the historical homeland of the Sami people, Sapmi – plays host to one of the world’s northernmost art events. This time, the biennial will take place in Luleå, Boden, Malmberget, Storforsen, Arjeplog and Korpilombolo – in an evacuated school, in a church, at a silver museum, at art centers, in a former prison and at Norrbotten’s Regional Museum.

The Luleå Biennial is an international biennial for contemporary art where global and hyper-local perspectives come together in site-specific installations. Alongside of numerous exhibitions, the 2020 edition will also include a touring literature program, theatre, radio and an online journal. The 2020 Luleå Biennial grapples with the question of what ”realism” could mean today both as a concept, expression and paradigm. Through their works, the invited artists tell of realities related to society as a system – bureaucracy and logics of mass media and industrial infrastructure – but they also break into, challenge and topple these reigning arrangements; through strikes, the psyche, theatre, magic and, not least, art itself. Realism emerged as an art historical concept in the second half of the 19th century and remained prominent into the first half of the 20th. This multifarious project grew out of a general interest in portraying society as it actually appeared in all its roughness and mundanity and injustice. On the one hand, realism pro-posed a set of aesthetic conventions, but more than that it meant the introduction of a new world of motifs to art. The realistic project was initially led by an intellectual bourgeoisie, but would since come to involve art and literature in which the working class asserted itself as both topic and agent. With its more blatant political edge, this later period is often referred to as social realism or socialist realism.

When we choose to look back on the tradition of realism and place it in our degenerating contemporary time, it is without a sense of obligation towards history. What we are revisiting is the artistic ambition to make the world appear whole. In such a practice there is both courage and madness; an act of inhibition that requires you to engage with the impossible and forge together the splinters of a broken world in order to make sense of it. On the small and large scale, the artists in the biennial present their own perspectives on how to organize the world.

In collaboration with Sweden’s Public Art Agency and the curator Edi Muka, the biennial presents Woven Songs, a series of existing and newly commissioned works that are integrated into the exhibitions or appear in public spaces in Norrbotten. This exhibition within the exhibition questions something as immediate as the earth and how we live our lives on
it. This earth that accommodates at once a profane and magical symbolism, and figures a material ground for both sanctity, life and death, all directly beneath our feet.

The Luleå Biennial constructs a kind of realism that often moves far away from an illustrative or documentary tradition. Rather the works tend to present reality as a theater: staged, alienated, longed for and, in many cases, completely absurd. Perhaps these spectacles can help us reconsider the meaning of realism and our actual agency, in relation not only to the -ism but to reality as such – during our time on earth.

Karin Bähler Lavér, Emily Fahlén and Asrin Haidari,
curators Luleå biennial 2020

Riot is to Love our Survival

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.

Factory girls – The Wilful Textile Worker

The artistic project: The factory girls – The wilful textile worker organize an exhibition and  conference at Mint Art Gallery in the ABF building in Stockholm. The conference wants to  highlight and discuss the conditions, knowledge and resistance of women in the textile and home  industry; their willingness and self-will, which is expressed in organization, professional pride and  strategies. During the week, parts of the play Fabriksflickorna – makten och härligheten [The  Factory Girls – The Power and Glory] are reactivated, in an exhibition by Åsa Norman (Sweden)  textile artist, and Frida Hållander (Sweden) PhD, craft artist. The play premiered in Skellefteå  under the direction of Suzanne Osten and Margareta Garpe in 1980.

In the exhibition, Norman and Hållander show parts of the multi-year artistic project The Factory  girls – The Willful Textile Worker through material and crafts investigations – as well as archive  material and sound. Artists and researchers are invited to the conference. They will hold  workshops and presentations to create a Nordic context for an in-depth discussion on textile  production and the home industry.

The project is carried out with support from the Nordic Culture Fund, The Swedish Arts Grants  Committee, the Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse and Byggnads kulturstipendium. The exhibition  och conference is part of Stockholm Craft Week 2020.

Conference Week Program:

The conference is taking place in the ABF-house at Sveavägen 41 in Stockholm. The lectures is in  different lecture-halls (see schedule). The lectures will be available to follow online via Zoom and  we take a limited number of people in the audience.

Wednesday September 30

The exhibition opens! Opening hours: 16.00-20.00.

Thursday October 1
Conference day 1, all lectures are in Katasalen at the first floor in ABF huset

The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00

10:00-11:30 Introductory presentation and lecture by Åsa Norman (Sweden) textile artist and  Frida Hållander (Sweden) PhD, craft artist, presents the ongoing artistic project Factory girls –  The Willful Textile Workers. Tjia Torpe (Sweden) educator and producer will tell about the play  Fabriksflickorna – makten och härligheten [The Factory Girls – The Power and Glory]. Language:  Swedish.

13:00-14:30 Leena Enbom (Finland) doctoral researcher in Social and Economic History in the  University of Helsinki. The lecture will shed light on the variations of home industries that  appeared as part of the secondary labour market in the urbanizing Finland from the late 19th century until the 1960s. Additionally, the lecture will discuss the disciplinary functions of the  workhouse and relief work institutions based on the obligation to perform crafts and sewing tasks.  Language: English.

15.00-16:30 Lecture with Malin Nilsson (Sweden) PhD Economic History, researcher at the  Department of Economic History at Lund University. She will present her dissertation Taking work  home: Labor dynamics of women industrial homeworkers in Sweden during the second industrial  revolution (2015). Nilsson’s talk will also focus on how women’s commercial home based textile  production became a highly politicized topic in Europe in the late 19th century. Language:  Swedish.

Friday October 2
Conference day 2, all lectures are in Katasalen at the first floor in ABF-huset The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00 

10:00-11:30 Sushmita Preetha (Bangladesh) journalist, writer and researcher, together with Karin  Elfving (Sweden) journalist and ethnologist. The lecture will be based on testimonies from textile  workers in Bangladesh were it is describe how their rights are constantly violated, also how  Covid-19 has pushed these workers into further difficulties. Preetha and Elfving will also include  the response from some of the Swedish brands. Language: English.

13:00-14:30 Lecture with Franz Petter Schmidt (Norway) Associate Professor of Textile Art at  KhiO – Oslo School of Fine Arts, textile artist and artistic researcher. Schmidt will present his  artistic dissertation project Reflection, Weaving Fabrics for Suits (2018), which touches on the  textile factory Sjølingstad Woolen Mill in Norway, and textile industry production through feeling,  longing, belonging, memory, pride and being queer. He will also present an ongoing project on a  diary written from 1925 to 1942 by the weaver Malli Berge. Language: Norwegian.

15:00-16:30 Emelie Röndahl (Sweden) PhD student at HDK – Gothenburg University in the Arts,  presents her ongoing artistic dissertation project “Crying Pixels: a practitioner’s narrative through  woven rya – aspects of time in hand made practice”. Language: Swedish.

Saturday October 3
Conference day 3, all lectures are in Hjärtat at the entrance level at ABF huset

The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00 

11:00-12:30 Munish Wadhia (Sweden) artist, will present his ongoing work on the match industry  Jönköping’s Match Factory AB. Wadhia will also present his work “Signs taken for wonders” in  which he returns to the images and objects that surrounded him during his childhood, but with a  decolonial gaze that questions their given meanings, here he refers to the experience from  different textile factories. Language: English.

13:00-14:00 Marie Hållander (Sweden) freelance poet and lecturer at Södertörn University.  Hållander will present the literary project “Among the girls and machines of the textile dust”  where she starts from textile stories and archives from Sjuhärad in Västergötland. Language:  Swedish.

14:00-14:30 Nino Mick (Sweden) poet and writer, they will read an adapted version of a novel in  progress that delas about Berta Bäckman (b. 1860) and other factory worker that works in a match  factory in Tidaholm. The historical novel moves on two times, 1875 – the time of the great fire in  the factory where 50 girls perished, 1909 – the Swedish general strike. Language: Swedish.

15:00-17:00 Go-slow action, along Sveavägen, start outside the ABF-house, public performance  led by Frida Hållander & Åsa Norman.

Sunday October 4

The exhibition is open 12:00-16:00 

With generous support from Konstnärsnämnden, Nordisk kulturfond, Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse and Byggnads kulturstipendium in collaboration with Iaspis.

Illustration: Hanna Stenman

Factory girls – The Wilful Textile Worker

30.9 – 4.10 2020

Åsa Norman & Frida Hållander

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm

The artistic project: The factory girls – The wilful textile worker organize an exhibition and  conference at Mint Art Gallery in the ABF building in Stockholm. The conference wants to  highlight and discuss the conditions, knowledge and resistance of women in the textile and home  industry; their willingness and self-will, which is expressed in organization, professional pride and  strategies. During the week, parts of the play Fabriksflickorna – makten och härligheten [The  Factory Girls – The Power and Glory] are reactivated, in an exhibition by Åsa Norman (Sweden)  textile artist, and Frida Hållander (Sweden) PhD, craft artist. The play premiered in Skellefteå  under the direction of Suzanne Osten and Margareta Garpe in 1980.  

In the exhibition, Norman and Hållander show parts of the multi-year artistic project The Factory  girls – The Willful Textile Worker through material and crafts investigations – as well as archive  material and sound. Artists and researchers are invited to the conference. They will hold  workshops and presentations to create a Nordic context for an in-depth discussion on textile  production and the home industry.  

The project is carried out with support from the Nordic Culture Fund, The Swedish Arts Grants  Committee, the Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse, Byggnads kulturstipendium, and in collaboration with Iaspis. The exhibition and conference is part of Stockholm Craft Week 2020.

Conference Week Program:  

Thursday October 1 Conference day 1, all lectures are in Katasalen at the first floor in ABF huset  

The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00  

10:00-11:30 Introductory presentation and lecture by Åsa Norman (Sweden) textile artist and  Frida Hållander (Sweden) PhD, craft artist, presents the ongoing artistic project Factory girls –  The Willful Textile Workers. Tjia Torpe (Sweden) educator and producer will tell about the play  Fabriksflickorna – makten och härligheten [The Factory Girls – The Power and Glory]. Language:  Swedish. 

13:00-14:30 Leena Enbom (Finland) doctoral researcher in Social and Economic History in the  University of Helsinki. The lecture will shed light on the variations of home industries that  appeared as part of the secondary labour market in the urbanizing Finland from the late 19th century until the 1960s. Additionally, the lecture will discuss the disciplinary functions of the  workhouse and relief work institutions based on the obligation to perform crafts and sewing tasks.  Language: English.

15.00-16:30 Lecture with Malin Nilsson (Sweden) PhD Economic History, researcher at the  Department of Economic History at Lund University. She will present her dissertation Taking work  home: Labor dynamics of women industrial homeworkers in Sweden during the second industrial  revolution (2015). Nilsson’s talk will also focus on how women’s commercial home based textile  production became a highly politicized topic in Europe in the late 19th century. Language:  Swedish.  

Friday October 2 Conference day 2, all lectures are in Katasalen at the first floor in ABF-huset The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00 

10:00-11:30 Sushmita Preetha (Bangladesh) journalist, writer and researcher, together with Karin  Elfving (Sweden) journalist and ethnologist. The lecture will be based on testimonies from textile  workers in Bangladesh were it is describe how their rights are constantly violated, also how  Covid-19 has pushed these workers into further difficulties. Preetha and Elfving will also include  the response from some of the Swedish brands. Language: English.  

13:00-14:30 Lecture with Franz Petter Schmidt (Norway) Associate Professor of Textile Art at  KhiO – Oslo School of Fine Arts, textile artist and artistic researcher. Schmidt will present his  artistic dissertation project Reflection, Weaving Fabrics for Suits (2018), which touches on the  textile factory Sjølingstad Woolen Mill in Norway, and textile industry production through feeling,  longing, belonging, memory, pride and being queer. He will also present an ongoing project on a  diary written from 1925 to 1942 by the weaver Malli Berge. Language: Norwegian.  

15:00-16:30 Emelie Röndahl (Sweden) PhD student at HDK – Gothenburg University in the Arts,  presents her ongoing artistic dissertation project “Crying Pixels: a practitioner’s narrative through  woven rya – aspects of time in hand made practice”. Language: Swedish. 

Saturday October 3 Conference day 3, all lectures are in Hjärtat at the entrance level at ABF huset  

The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00 

11:00-12:30 Munish Wadhia (Sweden) artist, will present his ongoing work on the match industry  Jönköping’s Match Factory AB. Wadhia will also present his work “Signs taken for wonders” in  which he returns to the images and objects that surrounded him during his childhood, but with a  decolonial gaze that questions their given meanings, here he refers to the experience from  different textile factories. Language: English.  

13:00-14:00 Marie Hållander (Sweden) freelance poet and lecturer at Södertörn University.  Hållander will present the literary project “Among the girls and machines of the textile dust”  where she starts from textile stories and archives from Sjuhärad in Västergötland. Language:  Swedish.  

14:00-14:30 Nino Mick (Sweden) poet and writer, they will read an adapted version of a novel in  progress that delas about Berta Bäckman (b. 1860) and other factory worker that works in a match  factory in Tidaholm. The historical novel moves on two times, 1875 – the time of the great fire in  the factory where 50 girls perished, 1909 – the Swedish general strike. Language: Swedish. 

15:00-17:00 Go-slow action, along Sveavägen, start outside the ABF-house, public performance  led by Frida Hållander & Åsa Norman.  

Sunday October 4 

The exhibition is open 12:00-16:00 

With generous support from Konstnärsnämnden, Nordisk kulturfond, Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse and Byggnads kulturstipendium in collaboration with Iaspis.

Illustration: Hanna Stenman

History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934)

Welcome to an evening of lectures and presentations arranged by the independent research group Agentur, on Thursday, September 17, 2020, 5 pm. Please note that the number of seats is very limited! RSVP vital!

History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934)
A report by Agentur, within the framework of the research project The Aesthetics of the Popular Fronts.

On February 12, 1934, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Paris, to protest against the advances of fascism. A few days earlier, extreme right and royalist organisations had held a large manifestation in the city, which had deteriorated into deadly riots and an improvised coup attempt. The threat was real: European fascism was gathering its forces. At the same time, the opposition was hopelessly fragmented. Liberals, social democrats, and communists were set violently against each other. Would their separate demonstrations collide in new street fights, in evidence of the paralysis of the opposition?

In March of the same year, the author Marc Bernard published his account of the events of those days, The Workers’ Days of February 9 and 12. In this short book – the mythical and mythologizing foundational text of Popular Front literature – Bernard documents what happened then, in careful detail. The demonstrations did not collide, they were united into one. The opposition set their differences aside in favor of a united front against a common enemy. The French Popular Front was created, and its model soon spread to other countries and continents. A chapter was opened in the history of anti-fascist organization.

History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934) takes its cue from Bernard’s text, which is now for the first time published in Swedish translation. It is a text that poses questions to the present: Is it still possible to think unity in resistance as a political and aesthetic principle? Is there still a progressive tradition that we can draw upon, and that stretches back to the moment of the popular fronts? If so, what continuities can we invoke? What discontinuities must we assert? With readings, presentations, artistic contributions, and critical commentaries by Emily Fahlén, Jörgen Gassilewski, Martin Högström, Ingela Johansson, Emma Kihl, Samuel Richter, Kim West, and Ellen Wettmark, we invite to common reflection regarding a central event in the cultural history of anti-fascism.

History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934) initiates a series of reports produced by the independent research group Agentur, within the framework of the research project The Aesthetics of the Popular Fronts. The reports take the form of public events, arranged at different places and institutions in Sweden and abroad during the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021; videos based on documentation of the events, directed by Agentur, and published on digital platforms; and printed publications, produced in collaboration with a number of Swedish and international publishing houses, platforms, and magazines.

The event History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934) – an evening with readings, presentations, critical commentaries, and discussions – takes place on Thursday September 17, 2020, 5–8 pm, at the art center Mint, located at the Workers’ Education Association (ABF), Sveavägen 41, Stockholm, Sweden. There is a very limited number of open seats for this event. RSVP to info@agentur.ooo (first come first served). Please note that the event will be documented on video. Language: Swedish. Welcome!

The video History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934), based on documentation of the event, as well as on specifically commissioned short films and presentations, will be published on October 15 at m-i-n-t.se and agentur.ooo. Tune in!

The publication History Is Not Over (February 12, 1934) will be published in the fall. The volume will contain Marc Bernard’s book in Swedish translation, together with essays and artworks based on the contributions to the event and the video. A joyful foray into the intellectual landscape of deep anachronism!

Thanks to Fabrique éditions, Stella Magliani-Belkacem, Michele Masucci, Benjamin Thorel, and our collaborating partners.

Coming reports

Must Be Written Later: Titanic October 15 / online November 8 / Chateaux in November.

Culture House Culture House Culture House: Cyklopen October 30 / online November 22 / Stockholmstidningen in December.

To Philosophize With Labor: Biskops Arnö week 47 / Tydningen in January.
For more information, see here.

About Agentur

Agentur is an independent research group for critical cultural production, based in Stockholm. Committed to an ideal of social equality, it seeks to invent new forms, methods, models, and functions for progressive cultural work in a new, postdigital public sphere and an increasingly precarious labor market. Agentur operates as a multidisciplinary critique bureau. It conducts longterm research projects on issues of public interest in a polarized and fragmented present. Among Agentur’s participants there are poets, artists, critics, researchers, designers, and public servants. In 2020–21, Agentur conducts the research project The Aesthetics of the Popular Fronts.

About The Aesthetics of the Popular Fronts

“Popular Fronts” was the common name of the coalitions of liberal, social democrat, and communist parties that were formed in several countries during the 1930s, in order to establish united fronts against the rise of fascism. Artists and authors, filmmakers and journalists, cultural workers and politicians mobilized for the purpose. The research project The Aesthetics of the Popular Fronts is based on detailed studies of artworks they created, texts they wrote, projects they realized. The aim is to draw up a provisional map of a historical, cultural, and social situation, in order then to ask if that history can still be our history. Is there a tradition of anti-fascist unity politics that stretches back to the moment of the Popular Fronts, with which we may still be able to identify? The immediate background to the project is the rise of the new far right in Sweden, Europe, and globally today. It poses the question of how, at what levels, and with what means we can in the most effective way counteract that rise culturally and politically.

The project is supported by Kulturbryggan.

FILMFORM RE:VIEW - Mint

Combined digital & physical screening on September 2th, 7PM CEST

Mint is opening this years FILMFORM RE:VIEW, and has selected works from the Filmform collection that, from different perspectives, reveal the shadow as position and strategy. FILMFORM RE:VIEW is the format where external professionals and institutions from spheres of culture or research are invited to botanize in the collection. Starting off from their specific areas of interest and questions a film programme is curated and thereafter presented as an open screening at Filmform.

This programme is shown in a limited screening format at Filmform in Svarvargatan and simultaneously streamed live at the Filmform website: https://www.filmform.com/calendar/filmform-review-mint/

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the current pandemic special restrictions apply for those who wish to attend the physical screening. Admission is reduced to a maximum of 12 people. The ticket price is 40 kr. You book a ticket by RSVPing to info@filmform.com after which you will receive information about the different payment options and confirmation. First come, first served. We urge those who experience even the slightest symptoms to stay at home and enjoy the live streamed version of the screening.

The screening is arranged with support from Stockholms Stad. Filmform is supported by the Ministry of Culture through the Arts Grants Committee and the Swedish Arts Council.

Konstfack's Master of Fine Arts Degree exhibition

Alexandra Larsson Jacobson, Danae Valenza, David Torstensson, Elise Léonin, Ferdinand Evaldsson, Henning Rehnström, Ingrid Gustafsson, Jonas Törnkvist, Josefin Jussi Andersson, Luki Essender, Maria Kulikovska, Marija Griniuk, Muhammad Ali, Petronella Petander, Tony Karlsson Savci

5.6–16.6 2020

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm

When a work is exhibited, it becomes something in the world. It meets an observer, a room, an environment with sound, light, ceiling and walls. In the exhibition, the work is in some way given an unpredictable life. Its effects are tested through that situation. Does it grab us? Does it shake things up? Does it sow seeds in our memories? This is why the exhibition is a natural part of the artistic practise; it puts the implications of existing in the world – as an artist – to the test.

This year’s graduating class in the Master’s Programme in Fine Art gives us an impressive breadth of artistic works to enjoy. These works interpret reality and renegotiate it, distil it through research, actions and listening practices. They take shape through painting, film, sculptures and song. Through radicalism, care and poverty, gestural abstraction, sleeplessness and museology. They show clearly the scope and the thought-provoking potential of the art.

Alexandra Larsson Jacobson
Elise Leoni
Danae Valenza

This year, the class has formed a collaboration with the newly established Mint Art Gallery, located in the Workers’ Educational Association (ABF) premises in central Stockholm – a building that opened in the early 1960s and has since then functioned as a centre for self-organised education in the city. This is not a traditional exhibition hall with accommodating white walls and quiet spaces, but instead, an environment that encourages installation in responsive dialogue with existing environments and their own special peculiarities. The works are shown in dance halls, basements and stairwells, through reflections, dialogues and interventions. The exhibition as a practice is thus tested for yet another lap as it approaches the world and its chequered complexity.

Graphic design: Linda Hallstan

Konstfack in collaboration with ABF Stockholm

I Am Not One

Anna Andersson, Cara Tolmie, Isak Sundström, Jakob Krajcik, Jenny Bergman, Lina Bjerneld, Magnus Thierfelder Tzotzis, Nacho Tatjer, Nanna Nordström, Nathalie Gabrielsson, Roxy Farhat, Stephen McKenzie, Susanna Jablonski, Zhou Tao

8.5 – 14.6 2020

Bonniers konsthall, Torsgatan 19, Stockholm

The crisis in the Swedish art world, as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic and the forced or voluntary isolation experienced by us all, is a reminder that alone we do not feel particularly good. Therefore, five art organisations – Bonniers Konsthall, hangmenProjects, Index, Mint and Signal – are experimenting with a joint project and have produced the exhibition I Am Not One.

The pandemic is not the theme of this exhibition, but its origin. Through an associative chain of thought, a number of works and artists have been selected by the respective parties. Rather than a concordant curatorial argument, the exhibition can be considered a kind of montage. The works offer angles of approach to the situation we find ourselves in right now. Art is a place for collaborative thinking and it does not back away from what is difficult. Instead of presenting answers or solutions, art allows us to remain with the complicated and paradoxical that permeates our world: existentially, poetically and materially.

Cara Tolmie & Susanna Jablonski
Zhou Tao

This collaboration is one way of drawing attention to our various organisations’ practices and institutional conditions. The crisis currently unfolding in the Swedish cultural sector is probably the worst in modern times and we will need various kinds of help to cope. An evident need of solidarity and support has arisen, as well as a desire to show that art in everyday life must carry on.

Who knows when we may meet again, it will probably be a while yet. But when it is possible, we wish to gather you all for a conversation where everyone is welcome to discuss with us what we want to happen after the crisis. An occasion to examine new forms of collaboration and reflect on the future of art, artists and art institutions. Perhaps this exhibition can be seen as a first invitation.


A night with Armin Lorenz Gerold & Eli Levén

Welcome to an evening with performances, poetry and bar at Konsthall C! During the evening participating artist Armin Lorenz Gerold (Berlin) will perform under his alias wirefoxterrier, and writer Eli Levén (Stockholm) will read from his upcoming book, to be published by Norstedts in August. This event marks the final weekend of this exhibition.

The performance starts 7:30

wirefoxterrier started as an online screen name created by Berlin based artist Armin Lorenz Gerold releasing sentimental song sketches and mixtapes into the tumblr/soundcloud pop ecosystem. His 2018 release ’Sex (play and being played), initially part of his self-released ‚fan-fiction‘ series ‚Radio Prishtina‘ became an almost coincidental feature on the viral TV show SKAM. Examining how virality shapes current writing, sounds and production methods, wirefoxterrier will perform a few songs of his upcoming first extended play Looking (tbr spring 2020) at Konsthall C.
https://soundcloud.com/wirefoxterrier

Eli Levén is a novelist and screenwriter. His debut “Du är rötterna som sover vid mina fötter och håller jorden på plats” was adapted for film by Eli as “Something Must Break” and directed by Ester Martin Bergsmark. The duo also made the hybrid documentary “She Male Snails” together. In August 2020 Eli’s new novel will be published by Norstedts. An adaptation by the novel, to be directed by Eli, is currently under development.

‘The physical world was still there’
The physical world was still there but this exhibition turns its back on it. From a close perspective sound, video, painting and objects share the joy and fear of temporal ecstasy, rush, heat and mental confusion. When someone puts their hands on your body and your blood vessels seem to merge, when the last drink of the sun blurs your mind, when time seems so thick you lose any concept of that which was and will be, when the night is in motion.

Curated by Emily Fahlén and Asrin Haidari (Mint).

Free entry.

In collaboration with ABF.