Arton Art Catalogue, Valand Academy

ARTON

(18)

+

ONE

+

TWO

+

THREE 1

ARTON (24)

2

ARTON

(18)

+

ONE

+

TWO

+

THREE

ARTON (24)

inside cover Sara Arnald 2 4-5 6-9 10-13 14-15 16-17 18-21 22-25 26-27 28-29 30-31 32-33 34-35 36-39 40-41 42-43 44-47 48-49 50-51 52-55 56-57 58-61 62-63 64-67 68-69 70-73 74-77 78-79 80 i-ii iii-viii ix-xv xvi-xx xxi-xxii xxiii

Lotta Antonsson Thom Bridge Martha Persson Cora Hillebrand Lotta Antonsson Adel Szakacs Daniel Wendler Esther Shalev-Gerz Hannah Rosvoll Dorna Aslanzadeh Kirstine Lund Hannah Rosvoll Sara Arnald Marcus Stenberg Karin Sandberg Adel Szakacs Linn Lindstrรถm Dorna Aslanzadeh Kirstine Lund Pรฅl Henrik Ekren Kjell Caminha Martin Holm Karin Sandberg Rickard Ljungdahl Eklund Thomas Eliasson Mikael Demitr Lindegren Christian Dumky Thom Bridge Lotta Antonsson Introduction Frida Sandstrรถm Mikael Nanfeldt Jason E. Bowman Biographies Colophon

inside cover Sara Arnald

4

Utan titel (Mirror for a Camera 1), 2013-2014 Resin coated silver gelatin print PREVIOUS PAGE

Hand from Poetic Propaganda, 2010-2014 Collage/Photography on paper

7

The Other, 2014 Watercolour on paper, 105 x 150 cm FOLLOWING PAGE

Details from Flesh II and Flesh III, 2014 Watercolour on paper, 112 x 182 cm and 112 x 182 cm

In the summer of 2013 I experienced an extravagant emotional response to a meadow.

Although I had passed it numerous times before, it had never made a great impression on me until a morning when it appeared as the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The dawn light, the warbling of the birds and scent of the meadow became a punctum experience in reality.

The same summer, I came across a research report by scientist Dr. Lakhmir Chawla, who had discovered a form of activity in the brain at the moment of death.

By studying dying patients he observed that following the stopping of the heartbeat, and as the expiration of oxygen in the brain begins, for several minutes there is a rise in activity that resembles full consciousness.

It is believed that during this activity images arise in the dying brain, as the activity passes over the cortex.

This discovery suggests that it is this moment people with near death experiences describe as when their lives have passed before their eyes or when they have seen a light at the end of the tunnel. With this in mind I have been urged to give away beautiful visual experiences that may resurface in the minds of viewers, which they may relive and recall until the moment when it is their own time to go.

PREVIOUS PAGE

Meadow, 2014 Scent and sound installation Exhibition view, Gallery Rotor 2, Gothenburg

13

Hand from Poetic Propaganda, 2010-2014 Collage/Photography on paper OPPOSITE

Hand from Poetic Propaganda, 2010-2014 Collage/Photography on paper

16

Music for Waste, 2014 Archival pigment print PREVIOUS PAGE

Music for Waste, 2014 Exhibiton View, Gallery Monitor, Gothenburg

"‌ what I sometimes found myself doing instead was sitting out on the patio in the evenings with the microphone placed to pick up the widest possible catchment of ambient sounds from all directions, and listening to the result on my headphones. The effect of this simple technological system was to cluster all the disparate sounds into one aural frame."

At a recycling plant I collected sounds from a system designed to dismantle electronics. The system is arranged by a particular order and utilises conveyors that transport the electronic waste through a number of processes, where the electronics are dismembered into smaller parts, so that each new part can be transported to the next process. A deconstruction that engages both human labour and various electronic devices and machines. The number of processes, and the various transfers between them, were recorded individually. The recordings are then looped and played back simultaneously through two directional loudspeakers. Since all of the loops are of different lengths, capturing certain aspects of the dismantling process, the composition forms a rhythmically repetitive pattern that cycles through recurring changes and eventually will meet at the same point of origin, and then repeat.

Acoustic design fundamentally aims to shape the movements of sound through space to either minimise excessive noise or disturbance or to harness the characteristics of specific sound phenomena to heighten the appreciation of their presence. Directional loudspeakers are mostly utilised for presenting information without adding distracting unnecessary noise to the surroundings where it is sited, for example in a museum where sonic harmony of silence can usually be found, or in a shopping mall where the message would just dissolve into the crowded sonic atmosphere. Directional loudspeakers are not made for transmitting sounds beneath 300 Hz, since there is generally no use in having such low frequencies in these situations.

How do we value different sounds and what identities do certain sounds transmit or represent? The transition between one condition to another. From the desirable to the unwanted.

21

Engagement, by an artist, is to transmit what arises and with the ut-

The potentiality of trust

most attention. A careful and generous listening to the concept should guide the artwork to the

given to this form of creative understanding will allow a multiplicity of perceptions, construc-

format that it demands, without imposing on a nascent idea further outside thoughts and deci-

tions, connections, hierarchies and dialogues to be passed on to the world, where the artist is

sions regarding means, media and material.

one of the viewers.

Describing Labor, 2012 Neon installation, variable dimensions

26

Hunter/Gatherer, 2014 Two shopping bags FOLLOWING PAGE

V채gg, 2014 Immersive installation

30

Portrait of a Lady, 2014 Photograph on paper, 65 x 100 cm

(S)elsewhere, 2013 Analogue photograph, 15 x 10 cm (S)elsewhere, 2014 Map

36

From A Room of One’s Own, 2014 Self published book PREVIOUS PAGE

From the series Evergreen, 2014 Archival pigment prints on metallic paper mounted on dibond in wooden box frame, 120 x 80 cm

38

From A Room of One’s Own, 2014 Self published book

Excerpt from Conversation with Karin, 2014 Two channel video, continuous loop, 8 minutes 22 seconds

Karin (left):

…

Baahhh I hope you never give up on me like I do! … … …

And I can’t even reply I do the same …

I hope you never give up on me like I do …

I hope you never give up on me like I do Never give up on me like I do Aaaaooooaaahhh …

I hope you never give up on me Like I do Like I do Hope you never give up on me Oooaahh

Karin (right):

Am I really the right one for you? … …

If I don’t have you who am i? You say you miss me and you long to have me in your arms That you think about me every day and miss my laugh …

I hope you never give up on me like I do …

I hope you never give up on me like do I hope you never give up on me like I do … …

(Leaves)

41

Innan jag raderade •, 2013 Self published book

18 December Once the glass container is removed, one can see that the roots have adjusted to the shape of that which closed them in.

44

System, 2013-2014 Installation with glass containers, water, acorns, chestnuts, blue Japanese acorns, tables, sewing thread, metal wire, stones, clay, fishing hooks, picked-up-objects

46

There Are Days When I Think We’ve Stopped Falling, 2014 Sculptural installation FOLLOWING PAGE

Cluster (of past attempts to take up space), 2014 Installation view Pending Concurrence, Gallery Rotor 1, Gothenburg Second hand women's clothing, sugar and wheels, 170 x 110 x 95 cm

49

50

All things must pass, light or dark—positive or negative.

There is no such thing as binary oppositions. There is only inbetween.

A Singularity of zero volume and infinite density will, in theory, attract all information that comes within its event horizon.

However, recent research claims that there is no such thing as an event horizon. Black holes will eventually radiate their energy until they simply vanish. As the laws of physics demand that all of the information in the universe must be conserved, information cannot thus disappear—it has to go somewhere. The absence of event horizons means there are no black holes in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity. There are, however, apparent horizons, which persist temporarily.

All things must pass, light or dark—positive or negative.

There is no such thing as binary oppositions. There is only in‑between.

54

Theoretical Mass, 2014 Installation view, The Glass House, Valand Academy, Gothenburg Sculpture/Interactive installation/Performance/Photography PREVIOUS PAGE

From Monochromes, 2013 Performance/Photography

56

The Last Image at Eggers, 2014 Installation view of Room 133 OPPOSITE

Self-portrait at Room 133, 2014 From The Last Image at Eggers Archival pigment print, variable dimensions

58

BRAVE NEW WORLD ORDER, 2014 Installation view, Valand Academy, Gothenburg

Keystone, 2013 Colorage on panel, 198 x 122 cm

61

de säger jag ska bada om jag känner värkar ska försöka hinna det nu men det tar ju massa tid till mitt ofödda barn som växer mer för vardag känner din kropp i min de säger att jag ska prestera borde inte stå på en stege men hinner inte annars tänker inte vara svag och gravid aldrig låta mig köras över sov lilla barn sjunger denna sång till dig de säger att jag ska tänka på att tyngden försvårar balansen att jag också andas för två att vi båda börjar bli tunga de säger att jag ska vila nu och göra saker jag inte kommer hinna när du är född som att fika och gå till frisören sov lilla barn sov lilla barn sjunger denna sång till dig kom ihåg lilla barn när du ser mig kämpa det är inte ditt fel lilla barn mamma måste prestera ge dig högre puls och stress förlåt lilla barn det är inte ditt fel mitt barn mamma ska bli konstnär det kommer fortsätta såhär

62

de säger jag ska lägga mig ner och vila ibland på dagen att vi båda växer nu jag kan inte det men sov du sov lilla barn, sov lilla barn om du föddes nu skulle du överleva och du föddes nu skulle jag gå under det är massa tid kvar sjunger denna sång till dig

Vaggvisa (Lullaby), 2014 Sound installation played once every hour, 4 minutes 36 minutes

“Why Would a Water Vein Need to Find a Place to Die?” is phrased as a Zen kōan, a type of question that aims to provoke great doubt and test a student’s progress in their thinking practice.

It is a question based on several false assumptions.

Water does not act in the form of veins, like in the animal body, but merely reacts to geological conditions.

Water does not really act at all as it possesses no agency as a being.

Water does not perish, it adapts, but also, it is true that all things fade.

If opposing ideas are held in the mind at the same time the concepts coalesce, knit together and asunder.

The way seeing through a net is both an abstracting veil and a grid for measurement.

Have you ever squinted at the sun to reveal that web-like structure; the thousands of circles layered in the cornea?

(A water vein would need to find a place to die because it keeps no place for death to enter)

66

Time Traveller Bindle, 2014 Wooden stick, mesh bag, a copy of the I Ching and six 16th century Chinese copper coins PREVIOUS PAGE

Why Would a Water Vein Need to Find a Place to Die?, 2014 Exhibition view, Gallery Rotor 1, Gothenburg

71

Conservation of the CBS Rรถda Sten Mural, 2014 A re-creation and conservation project ABOVE

Documentation of the CBS Rรถda Sten mural, 2004

The celebrated CBS Rรถda Sten mural was painted in the summer of 2004 by CBS Crew, one of Berlin's most iconic graffiti crews.

The mural became an instant Gothenburg landmark but was soon painted over, it however remains imprinted in the memory of many people and was one of the most significant pieces ever done at Rรถda Sten.

Mikael Demitr Lindegren is now recreating the mural using remains of original pigments together with photographic documentation, the first tests and colour samples were collected in the summer of 2012.

If you go to a place with a lot of graffiti paintings you can often pull layers of history straight from the wall.

73

Conservation of the CBS Rรถda Sten Mural, 2014 A re-creation and conservation project

74

How Low Can You Go, 2014 Still from video OPPOSITE

We're Passed Deadline?, 2014 Installation view, Valand Academy, Gothenburg Scaffolding, wooden beams, pallets, screws and speakers

77

We're Passed Deadline?, 2014 Dye-ink and black empty marker on tarpaulin OPPOSITE

We're Passed Deadline?, 2014 Installation view, Valand Academy, Gothenburg Scaffolding, wooden beams, pallets, screws and speakers

78

Utan titel (Mirror for a Camera 2), 2013-2014 Resin coated silver gelatin print FOLLOWING PAGE

Hand from Poetic Propaganda, 2010-2014 Collage/Photography on paper

+

THREE

INTRODUCTION: 18 + 1 + 2 + 3 This publication brings together the work of 19 graduating masters students from fine art and from photography. It also includes contributions by three of their tutors: Lotta Antonsson, Jason E. Bowman and Esther Shalev-Gerz. The volume itself is edited by two of the masters students, Thom Bridge and Kjell Caminha, who like their colleagues have taken on some of the many different tasks needed for the overall realization of their final public exhibitions of masters work. This is the first time, in the very long tradition of the Spring Show at Göteborgs Konsthall that both graduating artists from fine art and from photography have shown together, and this is now happening primarily because of the student self-organisation under the rubric “Arton” that has generated the possibility and the direction to work together.

Arton is the manifestation of their collective will to forge their own pathway into a world of professional artistic practice beyond the academy and beyond the role of student.

Arton is the independent energy and vision of artists taking advantage of what an educational setting offers them, but exceeding its terms, and manifesting their own agency to shape the conditions, resources and

i

meanings of their own—diverse, critical, challenging, and ultimately unpredictable—artistic expression and contribution.

The publication is also shaped

by Arton’s initiative to frame a discursive reflection on their own prospects as graduating artists: What are the conditions and what are the challenges facing an artist emerging from the academy, and running headlong and determinedly into the wider world of contemporary practice, in this second decade of the twenty first century? Through a series of lunch time panels and discussions “onArt” held in conjunction with a rolling programme of solo thesis exhibitions, they have explored critical questions of artists’ agency and self-institution; artists’ rights, employment conditions and market and commissioning contexts; and artists’ many different languages and critical frames.

These themes are further expanded upon and contested in the form of a newly commissioned text by artist and journalist Frida Sandström and two interviews conducted by the publication’s editors, the first with Mikael Nanfeldt, director at Göteborgs Konsthall, and the second with Jason E. Bowman, curator of the student group exhibition Fast Forward at Göteborgs Konsthall. The

publication as a whole demonstrates the push‑and‑pull of debate, and the liveliness of the student-artists’ ­ongoing debates about their roles, their potentials and their futures.

It is always a privilege to have the opportunity to interface with artists at the moment of their formation, their entry into a mode of self-production and full critical independence. However, this year is an especially rewarding moment for their educators, as we can now see a group of mature artist visions assert their demand on a wider society’s ­attention. But as educators we are only one part of the story of the ­formation of artists.

We have to also acknowledge the deep abiding significance of ­the artistic and cultural agencies, ­(independent, public and private) that constitute the rich ecosystem of artistic and intellectual culture in Gothenburg. These artists that put themselves in the place of the public today are testimonies to the artistic life of our many public places of art and criticism in the city and the wider region.

Let us listen carefully together to the many different things that they have to say to us, in the many ­different voices they have shaped.

Let us listen for what passes over

into authentic public dialogue and considered public presentation in their exhibitions and events. They will always speak and show much more to us than we have ever spoken and shown to them. This is part of the strange fold of art on art, of ­Arton, or as Beckett put it: "On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on. Say for be said. Missaid. From now say for ­missaid.” And so we go on Arton.

Mick Wilson Teacher and artist, prefect of Valand Academy

ii

FRIDA SANDSTRÖM Performing Hunger: on Don’t Make a Scene? and Never Mind the Bollocks?— two of the Monday Lunch talks onArt that were programmed to coincide with the Fine Art and Photography MFA Thesis exhibitions at Valand Academy, 31 March and 28 April 2014.

I write this on the first of May, a day when several ways to protest are presented—and performed. One common strategy is to question what you are against.

Running parallel to the three sequences of thesis exhibitions by MFA students from the fine art and photography programmes at Valand Academy, three lunch talks were ­arranged by the 19 students. The ­topics circled around the exposure of art, the valuing of it and the d ­ ialectics in which it is discussed were debated and brought into ­question. Simultaneously these ­notions where p ­ resented and p ­ erformed. I will here try to investigate this duality by looking into the performativity of ­discussion, the production and d ­ ependence on art.

One can ask o ­ neself about the drama: which world is real—the staged one or the improvised one, the art school world or the art world. Or, is possible to “make a double”?

This said, we can begin to form an idea of culture, an idea which is first of all a protest. A protest against the senseless constraint imposed upon the idea of culture by reducing it to a sort of inconceivable Pantheon, producing anidolatry no different from the image worship of those

1. Antonin Artaud, Theatre and its Double, 1938 p.10 ff 2. Ibid

iii

religions which relegate their gods to Pantheons. A protest against the idea of culture as distinct from life as if there were culture on one side and life on the other, as if true culture were not a refined means of understanding and exercising life.1 So begins Antonin Artaud’s Theatre and it’s Double. The reason why I start this text by citing him is that life has been mentioned several times during the onArt talks this spring.

The three lunch talks were presented as a space for reflections on what the students were actually facing, just as they are about to leave the academy.

Will they survive? Artaud may have the answer: We need to live first of all; to believe in what makes us live and that something makes us live—to believe that whatever is produced from the mysterious depths of ourselves need not forever haunt us as an exclusively­digestive conclusion. ­ […] I mean that if it is important for us to eat first of all, it is even more important for us not to waste in the sole concern for eating our simple power of being hungry.2 The hunger that Artaud brings up as a power or a drift could easily be

compared to the hunger for art practice that once brought the students together. Therefore, if we look at the academy as an effigy of the assembly of students, Artaud states that every real effigy has a shadow that is its double. And, from the moment the sculptor believes he has liberated the kind of shadow whose very existence will destroy his repose, art must falter and fail.3 Must the students fail living outside—if there ever is an “outside”?

One thing is sure, which is that the students will not be students for so much longer. They will be alumnus, a Latin noun for "foster son, pupil", deriving from the verb alere, "to nourish", this brings us back to the hunger.

On the question on performance Artaud marks the distinction between the time and the story’s time, the body and the acted body. So, what is the story of the alumni? If we believe in the distinction that Artaud makes and see the academy as a stage, where art practice is presented, does the student even have a story outside the academy if we believe in the distinction that Artaud makes? To perform history is another question; so also is—if history is written in a certain space, how it is connected to the afterwards and the outside.

If s­ tudents are performing their education by living it—is it possible to continue life, or even to survive, without it?

During the first talk, Mick Wilson brought up what he called “a question mark in relation to the market”—the market, which, in a neo-liberalistic point of view, could be regarded as life. A life that may be performed through culture. Erika Fischer-Lichte (Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin) believes that culture is performance.4 But who is it that participates in this performance? Mentioned during the last lunch talk was whether there is a distance between those included and those who are not included in the language or in the scene. What is a scene, then? One could say that it is a place where time is presented or performed. According to FischerLichte, the performance allows all sorts of participants to experience themselves in its course as a subject who is able to co-determine the actions and behaviour of others and whose own actions and behaviour, in the same way, are determined by others.5 She means that the individual (participants)—be s/he actor or spectator—can experience him/ herself as a subject who is neither fully autonomous nor fully determined by others. So, who takes responsibility for the situation in which s/he participates, even if it is not created or initiated by her-/himself? By making us ask this question, FischerLichte presents performance as a social process, where different groups

3. Ibid 4. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Culture as Performance—Theatre history as cultural history: Freie Universität Berlin 5. Ibid

iv

have an encounter and negotiate and regulate their relationship in different ways.6 By calling the struggle between actors and spectators political ever since certain definitions of the situation or the relationship between them (certain ideas, values, convictions and modes of behaviour) is stated by one part, forced upon the other. Therefore Fischer-Lichte connects the performance to the power structures of everyday life.

Compared to the mise-en-scène, which in her opinion is reproducible, Fischer-Lichte means that a per­ formance takes place only once. So, could we see the time spent at art school as a singular event, or how many performances actually take place at an academy such as Valand?

It is the performance that brings forth meanings writes Fischer-Lichte and compares this with dramatised histories, which may only be referring to history, or to meaning.

Instead of attributing this to what is perceived, Fischer-Lichte describes the perception as a part of the performance of the being. She calls it a collapse of oppositions, in which the participants experience themselves as co-determining subjects of what is happening, while, at the same time, they are determined by it. This is the eventness of the performance, which she sees as much a social as an aesthetic or political process. It is

6. Ibid 7. Ibid

v

something that is lived through. So, if education is a performance, is it as much determined by the students as they are determined by it?

This brings us to the question of responsibility, a frequent word during the first lunch talk with the title “Don’t make a scene?” The performer and educator Joakim Stampe was invited to talk about his practice and of the history of performance festivals in the city of Gothenburg. However, instead the hour was mostly spent discussing whether performance is a way to get away from the “collapse of opposition” mentioned by FischerLichte.7 Is it, through performance, possible to be both the effigy and it’s double and therefore get away from the failure, the hunger, the death ­ (or birth) outside the academy?

Dorna Aslanzadeh (MFA student): It’s all about our responsibilities. What about the academy, or the state’s ­responsibilities towards the artist?

Mick Wilson: But aren’t you a part of that? You cannot deny counting yourself into that.

Aslanzadeh: I do see myself as a part of it, and I do take responsibility.

Wilson: In what way?

Aslanzadeh: Through my time and energy as well as financially.

Wilson: No volunteers will pop up to help you in this neoliberal universe, but that doesn’t stop you from selforganising, either by working with the

state, or by navigating away from it.

Let’s return to Fischer-Lichte: Here is where relationships are negotiated, power struggles fought, communities build up and dissolve. Their perception follows the order of presence as well as that of representation.8 May the negotiation that Fischer-Lichte mentions here be performed in the room of the talks at Valand Academy, where a central concern is whether art has been or can be democratised?

How to justify art and how to fight elitism? Is it, for instance, possible to measure the distance between the participants? In 1999, Brian Ashbee describes in Art Review how professionals (curators, critics, journalists and many others) impose their own narratives on the practice of artists.

Ashbee means that the narration is a sort of manipulating of the artwork that the narrators do for their own ends.9­ This was the last subject of the three talks Never mind the bollocks?—­ asking whether the dialectics in art are obstacles to be compared to the e ­ ffigy’s collapse with it’s own shadow.

Karl Bergström (BFA student): Art bollocks are misplaced art texts, texts that have left the work.

By arguing that the domination of narratorship is a situation analogous10 to that of the food industry, Ashbee brings us back to the question of hunger, brought up by Artaud in the 1930s. After exemplifying the

primary producers of food—the farmers—who are relatively powerless compared with the big supermarket chains whose buying power ostensibly enables them to drive down prices in the name of consumer choice, but in reality enables them to make vast profits,11 he exchanges the word food12 with art to describe how the primary producers in the art industry are in a weak position as the farmers. Then, Ashbee brings up the concept of "added value", something he means can be applied to milk or bread as well as to a piece of art. He doesn’t really answer whether it helps, but at least he points out that the artists can impose their own narratives on the work. At the same time, Ashbee a makes a distinction between the production of food and the production of art, since the art market, in his point of view, is not free. Instead, he describes it to be rigged; hugely distorted by the presence of public subsidy forcing the individuals to produce "significant" work. Ashbee here means that the only way to get access to this external narration is to infiltrate the dialectics and create their own discourse. To perform the narrative themselves and therefore, to use Fichte-Lichte’s before mentioned words: to bring forth meanings.

But, wouldn’t such “sub-dialectics” alienate the public? Not according to Fischer-Lichte, who means that the visitor neither is confronted with the

8. Ibid 9. Brian Ashbee, 1999: Art Review 10. Ibid 11. Ibid 12. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Culture as Performance – Theatre history as cultural history: Freie Universität Berlin

vi

atmosphere, nor distanced from it; thing as Ashbee did 15 years ago: rather s/he is surrounded by it, s/he ”Would it be possible to insist on immerses into it.13 From the different using one’s one terms to frame one’s standpoints of being a writer, a critic art practice instead of obey the terms and an educator at the academy, canonised by art history?” He thereFredrik Svensk means that we are fore brings us back to the time of the reducing art when talking about it, Enlightenment and the birth of the but that the dialectics also is a way aesthetics, and ask if it is still an open to make it reachable. Ann-Charlotte question if an artwork by necessity Glasberg Blomqvist, educator, writer means something at all? and art critic, then touches upon the Here Svensk reintroduces the same power relations as mentioned Barthesian reader (and therefore

by Fischer-Lichte. performer) of the dialectics. Wilson Glasberg Blomqvist: Of course there then marks the word “art” by asking is power in these positions [in the what does it signalise? language].

Glasberg Blomqvist: I don’t mean By avowing that she is not blind etymologically, but what it can say. to her own privileges, Glasberg Describing the language of art as a Blomqvist asserts that this is a power map that you have to adjust to, Glassituation that always needs to be acberg Blomqvist sees it as something knowledged, but that she, to be able that one can learn and later find to discuss this, needs a clearer defiways to navigate through—or beside. nition of what the subject of the talk Again, we get back to Fischer-Lichte’s really means. But, when asking for collapse of oppositions, in which the this definition, she actually performs participants’ experience themselves the question of art bollocks. How as co-determining subjects of what to talk about how to talk? Glasberg is happening is simultaneous to their Blomqvist also touches upon another determination by it. crucial question when asking why Here the MFA student Thom the word ”worse” often is—almost Bridge brought up an important automatically—added to the notion question. of the bollocks.

Thom Bridge: What about almost Fredrik Svensk: What does art all of us having to communicate with bollocks really mean? When discussing another language other than our it here; are we including all conversanative one? tions on art or only certain ones? And, Mick Wilson: You are right about is this talk included in the question? the difference between learning to Here Fredrik Svensk asks the same speak­ing about your practice in anoth-

13. Ibid

vii

er language than one’s native one.

Wilson describes the artistic practice to be almost defined by this language, and how it, when articulated in the native language naturally becomes something else. Therefore, he means it is even more important to get to know how to express one self in one’s own language, he means.

Glasberg Blomqvist: “Gestaltning”, there is no good English translation for that word, but it must be one of the ones most used at Valand Academy.

With that word, Glasberg Blomqvist gets even closer to the core of the conversation—since the word actually means ways of expressing or performing.

Fredrik Svensk: Maybe the art bollocks can be thought of as a war machine. A way to talk about art that stigmatises every other way to do it, and make it look stupid? If people feel worries about how to talk about art, it might be because it is dangerous to speak about anything. One should be afraid! When you adjust to any language you also adapt your body. It is impossible to be strategic, and stay the same!

Mick Wilson: Is the conversation as the artwork a reason to this worry?

Fredrik Svensk: I think the problem of talking about art can be traced to the invention of the art system as an integrated part in what we might call colonial modernity and the invention of the civilized human. For me the

worries about how to speak about art are deeply related to the worries about how to speak about the other. And even if one could claim that the art world is now globalised and multiplied, I would lie if would claim that I do not find the dominating discourses the way I quite Eurocentric, still haunted by the question of Enlightenment and its dark sides.

Mick Wilson: Aren’t the words that you just used (immanence, Euro­ centrism, invention of the human) examples of those thresholds that you are pointing out?

Fredrik Svensk: That is true. It is a performance of shielding. But it also comes with an energy, it creates situation. I do not become more Eurocentric by articulating the word ”Eurocentric”, and that is how it all works: our way to speak doesn’t produce a certain ­critique, it actually produces situations. It is a performance of shielding.

But there is also energy in this.

To continue the comparison of art and food production, the title of the students’ last exhibition, Fast Forward at Göteborgs Konsthall, brings the associations to fast food as well as to the quick forth bringing of meaning. Could the energy that Svensk proposes be the simple power of being hungry.14 A hunger that is to be defined by anyone who performs it—may it even be outside the academy. It may be a double protest onArt.

14. Antonin Artaud, Theatre and its Double, 1938 p.10 ff

viii

MIKAEL NANFELDT Interview with Mikael Nanfeldt, director of Göteborgs Konsthall.

Conducted by Thom Bridge and Kjell Caminha at Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, 25 April 2014.

Kjell Caminha: First of all, could you tell us which projects Göteborgs Konst­hall is developing at the moment?

Thom Bridge: Could you talk a little bit about Göteborgs Konsthall’s relationship to Valand Academy as it is now and to its previous incarnations over the years as Valand School of Mikael Nanfeldt: The combined MFA: Arts and The School of Photography?

Fine Art and MFA: Photography exhibition Fast Forward is coming MN: I think it is an important relaup, after that we’re doing a summer tionship that has been going up and exhibition Naturum looking into the down over the years. Right now I relationship between man, nature have stressed the importance of and ecological systems. I am includbeing connected to the Art Academy ing one of your colleagues from the because it’s a way of being connected, MFA: Fine Art programme (Linn like the basis of this discussion, to Lindström). I saw her project and emerging artists. It always sounds a was fascinated, it fitted into the bit strange to talk about responsibiliidea, so I asked her. It’s going to be ty because it tends to become a moral an exhibition with only a few artists issue. But I think that both of us have who in a sense create some kind of a responsibility. From the Academy’s system or an ecological one, like Linn point of view it is to connect the artdoes. I moved an exhibition from ists to the art scene, institutions and autumn to late spring so I’m in the spaces. Perhaps not for everybody, process of looking into what to do but for some of you it will be part of instead. After that it’s going to be a your career as an artist, and hopefully Gothenburg-based artist Dana Sedean important one. For the Konsthall rowsky who works with performance, it is also important to connect to video and text. Then we’re back with that responsibility, to say that we Valand Academy and after that will are going to be a part of your career be the 2015 summer exhibition with and we are going to follow you. This Johan Zetterqvist, it will be a solo is the second or third time that I’ve presentation. And then we have the decided to meet every MFA student Göteborg International Biennial for and have a discussion about what Contemporary Art. they’re doing, to get a sense of the discussions, interests and ­ambitions.

ix

Since starting this I’ve also noticed that it’s been much easier for me to connect to the artists. From a personal point of view one tends to develop an interest to follow artists, to see what happens in the future.

Even though perhaps it takes some time to include one of the artists in an exhibition, you follow them, have e-mail contact or sometimes go and take a cup of coffee together to talk about what is happening. Therefore it is both important from a personal point of view as a curator, but also from the institution’s perspective to be connected to the Academy.

sibility towards the local scene. You can look upon this responsibility in different ways: it’s our responsibility to bring in international artists to nourish the local scene. That’s why, for example, the biennial here is important and that artists come to Gothenburg, so that it’s not only us going to them. We started to ­consider, outside the exhibition format or exhibitionary practice, how we may look upon this place as a platform for discussion, for talks, for meeting or whatever. For instance, if you need a space, not long term but as a working place for a shorter time, not necessarily as an artist ­residency KC: Besides this initial conversation but perhaps you just need to be with students are there any more somewhere. Can we develop stratstrategies that you apply or do you egies to be a place to also become a expect anything or feel responsible form of contemporary art centre in to retain these graduates? a sense, with different purposes? I’m not saying you get to do whatever MN: It is complicated to talk about you want; it has to be in the line of how far that responsibility goes. We how we are working. For example I don't have the solo responsibility to have visited Glasgow International solve and create an exciting art scene and CCA (Centre for Contemporary because we’re one of many parts. We Art) in Scotland where they work are looking into different strategies with these kinds of strategies and can today, is there anything else besides give you a space, provide you with working with this particular exhibimarketing tools, whatever you need tion or by including some of you in to present yourself—so you become group exhibitions? In the last year we a platform for artist-run ideas, that’s have started to discuss how we can something we’ve started to look into. look upon this place as a platform for We have also looked into how we can the contemporary art scene. Since become a place for residencies, short I started as the director here I have or long-term, which I think is the way pointed out that we have a responwe have to go in the future.

x

KC: I think as a follow up to that, sometimes there can be a culture of expectation from students of what institutions outside the academy can provide for them.

MN: You have to provide also.

KC: And that’s my question, what do you expect from a graduating artist in order to start a conversation or dialogue with Göteborgs Konsthall?

MN: I don’t know if I necessarily expect something particular. When we talk about developing strategies to look upon this place as a kind of platform for artist-run initiatives or artists-run practices, to host or whatever, it will take some time for us to develop and work with those strategies since we haven’t been working like that before. One of the problems we have here is that we don’t have that much space. But, I think in the future, because I talk a lot with Jason E. Bowman (MFA: Fine Art Programme Leader) and Mick Wilson (Prefect, Valand Academy) about how to connect to these ideas and what we can do. This is not just for the Konsthall to solve but perhaps a political point of view—how do you make it possible to do things without a young artist with no money, betting on their whole life and financial future. I mean, how can you provide these types of possibilities? And, I

xi

think that it’s not just Konsthall’s responsibility but also a city idea. Is it interesting for a city to be able to have experimental art? And then you have to provide, not necessarily with money and saying we pay you for doing this, but by giving possibilities to enable these types of things, we give you a platform or space. What I’ll never be able to do and perhaps it’s not interesting either, is to say we have this and you should use it in this way. It is more interesting to be able to say: you want to do this, how can we help? Using collaboration to find ways to do things: I think this city needs more of that. If it’s going to be interesting to stay in a city for a while, you also have to find ways to be able to stay in that city. I’m one of those that don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing that people leave, if they feel they can also come back. An interesting art scene needs a flow of people coming in and leaving. I think it is kind of a good idea and interesting also when you leave a school to perhaps become part of another scene.

TB: But how about for example Love Explosion last year (group exhibition at Göteborgs Konsthall co-curated

by Mikael Nanfeldt and Ola Åstrand, summer 2013) that took its starting point as Gothenburg, was there anything that you learnt through the process of doing that exhibition?

MN: What I learnt specifically was that there was some kind of need from many of the artists for Göteborgs Konsthall to work more with local artists. I got this sense that artists felt the Konsthall here tended to show everything but local artists that was a criticism I met. Because when you are a Konsthall in a specific city, you have to think about your situation in that city and what your role is in that city.

KC: You mean in a political way?

MN: No, not necessarily a political way, a practical way—in a way of interest also. Are you interested?

Because there are many really good artists in this city who have never exhibited here. They have perhaps exhibited at Galleri Box and Galleri 54, which is good of course; but they have never exhibited for example at the art museum (Gothenburg Museum of Art) or the Konsthall except for the graduation exhibition.

And that is something for us to think about, what does it mean to be able to profit everywhere but not in your own hometown? With Love Explosion I was going around thinking, “How can I do something without being some kind of local patriot, can I do something that looks into the city, can I do something?” I co-curated the exhibition with an artist who comes from Gothenburg because I wanted

it not to be from just me. I wanted to create some kind of curatorial tension between me and another person who I knew from the beginning looks at things a bit differently than I do. I didn’t want easy answers.

TB: But those dialogues you had ­between each other, they informed the exhibition and how it worked?

You both had different viewpoints and notions of collaborations?

MN: Definitely, I never normally do exhibitions that are as crowded as that. I tend to be very minimalistic in the way I work. The artist I asked to co-curate with me, I know he is more maximalist. I tend to like work that in a sense stands on some kind of research idea while he works in a much more experimental kind of way.

So I wanted this tension to be part of the curatorial process and I was at first, when we ended up with about 30 artists, very shocked. I have never done an exhibition like that before.

TB: But is that kind of approach something you would like to continue in the future?

MN: Yes, definitely. We will come back to that specific type, of course.

In the future we will be doing solo shows with Gothenburg based artists but we are also going to come back to this kind of co-curatorial

xii

i­ nvestigations into the local art scene.

Next time I will chose other people to work with, to see what happens then.

KC: Does Göteborgs Konsthall have any kind of quotas to fulfil?

MN: But perhaps we have to point out these things in emails and on our website and on Facebook. That you can ask us to be here and to do things and usually we say yes, if we don’t feel it going against what we are standing for. We are not hosting political parties for example.

MN: No KC: No? You have free agency?

MN: Yes, every director here points out his or her own vision and that is how it is going to be because there are no political agendas to follow here. We don’t have any quotas to say that you have to do this and this, and this and this.

TB: We’ve already talked a ­little about Göteborgs Konsthall in relation to the city and bringing in international artists, but what is Göteborgs Konsthall’s role in Sweden, nationally, and its engagement with the rest of the country?

MN: Besides thinking that we are one of the major Konsthalls in Sweden, I think that from my point of view KC: I have noticed in the past few what we are doing is an important years, particularly last year, that part of the national arts scene. If we there has been an evolution in the do an exhibition with a local artist programming of smaller evening then I look upon it as an important events for example last Wednesday’s exhibition on a national level, as well book release (Det som blir kvar by as on an international level, otherEmmanuel Cederqvist). wise we wouldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be interesting if it were only for a MN: That is not because we have few people living around Götaplatsen. said we want to do this, it is because We are also part of a community of people have come to us and asked, institutions that I think has become can we do this? And then we give you more and more important. We have the space if we feel that it is a kind been involved in creating a network of release that goes in line with what of institutions across Sweden called we are doing.

Klister, which is now about a year old. We can all feel that the money KC: Good to know! is not pouring in on us and there are examples in Sweden right now

xiii

where some of the institutions have become problematic for politicians.

For ­example Gävle Konstcentrum is facing the possibility of being closed down and at Lund Konsthall where this very disturbing action is taking place where the politicians themselves had wanted to decide which exhibitions they should do. And of course you can go abroad and see the same things happening for example in the Netherlands, Hungary and Russia. Yesterday the artist Jörgen Svensson had an essay titled Konsten måste vara luddig och komplicerad broadcast on national radio (Art has to be ambiguous and complicated, 24 April, Sveriges Radio) about the future of critical art and how we look upon it in society. We have felt the need to create some kind of a network in Sweden to discuss the future of these kinds of institutions, is there a place for this kind of institution in the future of society? Do we have public place for critical discussions about things? I think this is important.

TB: But how about the collaborations that you are opening up and thinking of locally, could they also be considered nationally in terms of collaborating with other institutions across Sweden, as exchange between cities for example?

MN: From an exhibition point of view we don’t have so many of

those kinds of collaborations, I think most of the collaborations are on a discussion level. We, Göteborgs Konsthall, have never really been part of co-producing exhibitions even though I feel perhaps we have to look at that in the future because of a money issue. It’s not that cheap to make a really good exhibition and on a practical level how do you produce really good exhibitions? It’s kind of a boring discussion but it’s kind of important to survive.

TB: But sometimes it means that more things can happen, for example there are plenty of collaborations not necessarily happening nationality but internationally where different institutions have partnered to be able to exhibit an artist or for simple things such as funding publications or being able to extend an exhibition.

Is that something that could be or is considered?

MN: Definitively I think it is something that is going to happen in the future. It will happen more and more for us, because we are part of things and have done different collaborations over the years with discussion platforms. When we started up what’s called Meetingpoint, Göteborgs Konsthall, Malmö Konsthall, Ystads Konstmuseum, Elastic Gallery and Iaspis worked in collaboration with Signal – Center

xiv

for Contemporary Art to bring both national and international curators to Gothenburg. The idea was for artists to have portfolio reviews and some of those artists have since been exhibited. We also had a seminar this autumn with a number of institutions and Riksutställningar (Swedish Exhibition Agency).

KC: Talking of collaboration you said you didn’t expect to have so many artists in Love Explosion and now we have nineteen MA2 students exhibiting in the exhibition Fast Forward, what is your expectation?

MN: I think it’s going to be very interesting to see this exhibition because it’s the first time that you are bringing together artists from fine art and photography. They have always been separated before, so that is something I am looking forward to seeing. I can see there are different discussions going on if you are studying Photography or Fine Art. When I did the studio visits I saw you are looking into your practice in different ways, not necessary completely differently but there are different issues popping up between them. I thought about this when I met you Thom, but not only you, some of your colleagues also, some of you really looked into the idea of photography, both from the technical point of view and what is photography.

xv

That is some kind of discussion that none of you at Fine Art had, at all.

And that is something that I found very interesting, not necessarily that the outcome as a viewer differs but that the discussions and thinking about what you are doing does. It’s interesting that it differs. I’m looking forward to this exhibition and to seeing whether it possible to do these co-exhibitions. I have noticed that over the years there tends to be more and more students going to the Academy and I don’t know if this is the absolute maximum of how many there can be. I know for a fact that it can be 30 artists co-exhibiting and for the Love Explosion exhibition some of the artworks were really big and we were still able to get it all in. It’s just a question of how good you are at working together with things. And that is not always the case between artists when you do a group exhibition. Mostly I’m looking forward to this exhibition because even though you are different units you are also still part of an art academy, the same art academy.

JASON E. BOWMAN Interview with the curator of the exhibition Fast Forward at GĂśteborgs Konsthall, 10-25 May 2014. Conducted via e-mail exchange with Thom Bridge and Kjell Caminha.

Thom Bridge and Kjell Caminha: Could you tell us about the Midwest project—describing what it was and why you started it, and discuss its main goals and strategies?

time across multiple platforms. I was working as an artist with a curatorial practice. We had all made commitments to the development of milieu in regional cities in the UK, where resources, institutions, funding, Jason E. Bowman: Julie Crawshaw, lifestyle, access to resources and the Rachel Bradley and myself, were commercial differ from London. contracted by Arts Council EngMidwest involved many individland to support the development of uals, artists, institutions, cultural artists across the region of the West workers, art schools, and artist-run Midlands. Midwest became a six-year spaces etc. and described as a catalong project (2003-2008) that sought lyst. Development was a key tenet to support, at grass-roots level, the informed by Julie’s postgraduate development of an artist-led infrastudies into global social developstructure to complement and develop ment. the milieu within the West Midlands, Simultaneously, there with a national and international was increasing demand for reach. professionalisation of artists and Midwest was an SPV, a Special Midwest negotiated the needs of Project Vehicle, and not a formally artists, from their perspectives, constituted organisation until almost instead of policy-makers. As its a year before we decided to close it. penultimate project, we initiated A project model has levels of flexiKnow Your Place to ask if policy bility that a formal organisation may could be artist-led so sought to not. A principle was that Midwest challenge the space between policyshould become redundant, and dismaking and artistic practice. perse when it achieved its aim, which Artists identified key questions, was to improve the milieu to match which were posed to senior policythe aspirations of those practicing in makers and advisors who affect that region. the perception of practice, who Rachel had worked as a curator in addressed the question of whether a series of institutions for contempolicy could be artist-led. Over porary art. Julie had been working a series of evenings Midwest with artist development for a long programmed responses in addition to

xvi

hosting presentations by a series of artistic practitioners who had been successful in policy intervention— Asier Perez, Bilbao; Nis Rømer, Wochenklausur, Vienna. At a final event the participating practitioners developed ideas for future action.

TB & KC: What about the Saloons, Ranches and Casinos? What was particular about these sub-projects, perhaps starting with the choosing of the titles?

confidence in art and artists, policy barriers and lack of investment etc.).

It suggested a need for a collective scoping of artist-led activity and models in other locations. These became the Casino road-trips.

With about 20 artists per trip we surveyed artist-led cultures, contexts and conditions in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Leeds and Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead. Casinos also were social platforms for artists to meet including hosting performances, artists bands, pub nights etc.; a live survey of spaces, projects initiatives and models, but also key was pursuing and engendering debate about the conditions and conditioning of practice and each trip. We were coming together to share experiences and discuss tactics, models and initiatives for development.

JB: Titles were ironic—basically by reversing Westmids (colloquial for the West Midlands) into Midwest it gave identity for the project. Saloons were how we started. We invited speakers to talk on milieu and the development of conditions for artists.

Talks were programmed across locations, urban and rural; institutional, and not. Speakers included from commercial gallerists, art development workers, directors of institutions and practitioners. Consequently, we met many artists with whom we worked.

TB & KC: How did you manage to fund all that? Could you specify the funding, both public and private; also how you and your collaborators were able to finance yourselves?

The Ranch was a series of co-learning events. The first took place at an artist-run space and focussed on questions relating to structures for development in relation to specific contexts and conditions (such as geographic limitations, lack of social

JB: Arts Council England almost entirely funded Midwest directly, by about £60,000 per year. We raised other money through partnerships etc. We paid almost everyone a fee and travel etc. except those for whom it was part of their jobs. The

xvii

artists from the West Midlands were not paid for their time. Aspects of the programme were funded as separate projects, such as when we examined the dearth of studios in the region through a programme called, Intellectual Property, which was three debating forums on economic development, regeneration and cultural practice. The forums considered differing approaches to the notion of workspaces, but also looked at the regeneration context of Birmingham, which was developing a new cultural quarter. From across Europe, Midwest brought together a series of economists, urban developers, human geographers, sociologists, urban theorists, artists and cultural landlords.

Finance in terms of hard cash was only one of the ‘economies’ through which Midwest operated, much of its success was because of the engagement of practitioners and their generosity towards each other. We were reviewed annually by the Arts Council in terms of whether we were successfully delivering against the aims and objectives of the funding.

Projects like Midwest are complex in terms of cultural policy etc., as they don’t produce secondary audiences for art (or at least not initially) they focus on the more nebulous needs of artists. At the time of Midwest, increased focus

was being placed on the contested notion of ‘professionalisation’ and in some senses Midwest was attempting to site itself as an example of those problematics through the incentivising of artists to consider alternatives to the market.

TB & KC: Why did you end it? What was the reaction of the community with this conclusion? And how to do it, what is the procedure to close doors?

JB: Multiple factors informed that decision including personal desire to move into different arenas of work. Midwest was not intended to become a permanent fixture. We sought to become redundant. In 2008 we reviewed and evaluated the project. We believed that many of its original aims had been adequately achieved. We thought it pertinent that by e ­ xiting, artists could move on with the visions they had produced through it. The finances attributed may then also re-enter the field and become available for other initiatives.

We were always conscious that Midwest should be complementary to what was already there, defy dependency and also not be a means to limit other forms of agency.

Closing any project and exiting a context is always complicated as it raises major questions about sustain-

xviii

ability, futures and how experiences who was a regular participant in are to be understood when they Midwest initiatives—has visited become mnemonic. The demise of those developments since Midwest. ­Midwest was facilitated through a Eastside Projects was established final two-day workshop called Up, soon after Midwest closed and is Up and Away by Pete Mann. Pete’s one of the most vital artist-organised research interests in action learning initiatives in Europe and operates and action research, experiential as a public exhibition space that is learning, tacit knowledge and organi- ‘imagined by artists. Ikon Gallery sation and management development and Turning Point West Midlands gave him a global learning perdeveloped a symposium in 2013, spective to make sense of Midwest. entitled from Midwest to Midville— Through those two days, Pete used looking at the past, the present and a methodological framework to ask current ambitions for the visual arts a set of questions to support people in that region. to describe what it was they believed TB & KC: Regarding where we are they had been engaged in and what now, how applicable could such a they had made. His questions were project be to the Gothenburg area or centred on a means to understand: even nationally? who Midwest had been, how it proceeded and what affects it produced.

JB: That depends on what is meant by ‘applicable’. My view is that models TB & KC: What is the current are rarely directly transferrable as ­situation there? they are generated by the specificiJB: I have loosely kept informed on ties of people, place and situation, dedevelopments as Rachel Bradley sire, need, knowledge and experience lives in the West Midlands and has but also opportunities and through established a project called New conditions that potentially are culturArt West Midlands, which supports ally, politically and economically speartists emerging from the art schools cific, including in terms of barriers in the region through an annual for development. However, particuexhibition and publication via lar tools may be applicable—methods partnerships with key institutions by which to examine the specificities and artist-led initiatives. Through of conditions and conditioning. Also, an essay in the 2014 New Art West the field of the artist-led is potenMidlands publication Cheryl Jones— tially confronted and confronting an

xix

even more developed neoliberalism than was identifiable during the initiating of Midwest, which would have to be considered more fully now. I think a series of recent publications are interesting in this way, such as Stine Hebert and Anne Szefer Karlsen’s anthology Self Organised1, Lane Relyea’s Your Everyday Art World2 and Institutions

by Artists,3 which all visit and discuss the current concerns of the artist-led amidst those confrontations.

TB & KC: We hear frequently about getting our own place, creating our own scene, our question is, how does servitude play as a role on it? What is the catch there? Do we have to create room for others in order to create room for ourselves later on?

JB: This is an interesting question in terms of the neoliberal, as it suggests whether self-servitude or catalysing conditions for others to benefit is at the heart of initiation. It’s a question that leads to others, such as how artists implicate themselves and others in the polis, or perhaps more accurately within the commons. In the final aspect of this question, you suggest that there is a chronology— other first, then self. For me I see it differently, more as a mode for interdependence—or relational—as opposed to independence.

TB & KC: Every situation could vary from time to place and circumstances, but what are the most common pitfalls when starting such an artistled project/space, programme or festival?

JB: As you say each circumstance, and of course the personalities involved inform the model, so I don’t know that there are common pitfalls as opposed to specific challenges to be met or barriers to be dismantled and opportunities to be generated.

I think a key factor to recognise is that the relations between sovereign notions of practice are antagonized by cooperative, collaborative and collective ways of working and so the culture of the artist-led continues to be an expanded field of practice.

Within this, the notion of autonomy co-exists alongside a dynamic that outlines that practice is multifarious, and for me that is not a pitfall but it is something that is to be considered.

It’s a much more complex issue than how one balances ‘one’s own work’ with the collective.

1. Hebert, Stine and Karlsen, Anne Szefer, Eds., Self-Organised. Open Editions, London, UK. 2013 2. Relyea, Lane, Your Everyday Art World. MIT Press, Cambridge, USA. 2013 3. Khonsary, Jeff and Podesva, Kristina Lee, Eds. Institutions by Artists. Projectile Publishing Society and the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres. Vancouver, Canada. 2013

xx

BIOGRAPHIES

Lotta Antonsson (pages 2, 14-15, 80) Born in Sweden 1963. Based in Berlin.

Master of Photography Programme Leader. Adjunct Professor of Photography lottaantonsson.com Sara Arnald (pages 34-35, inside cover) Born 1974 in Åmål, Sweden.

Based in Stockholm. saraarnald.com

Cora Hillebrand (pages 10-13) Born in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Based everywhere. corahillebrand.com Martin Holm (pages 58-61) Born 1985. Based in Sweden. mjholm.daportfolio.com

Dorna Aslanzadeh (pages 28-29, 48-49) Currently lives and works (in Sweden). dorna.aslanzadeh@yahoo.com

Mikael Demitr Lindegren (pages 70-73) Born 1974 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Currently works in Stockholm and Gothenburg, Sweden. m.d.lindegren@gmail.com

Jason E. Bowman (pages xvi-xx) Born in Scotland, lives in London, UK. Master of Fine Art Programme Leader Head of Subject: Fine Art

Linn Lindström (pages 44-47) Born in Luleå, Sweden. Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. linn.lindstroem@gmail.com

Thom Bridge (pages 4-5, 78-79) Born 1987 in Reading, UK. Based between Berlin, Gothenburg and London. thombridge.com

Rickard Ljungdahl Eklund (pages 64-67) Born 1987 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. rickardljungdahleklund.tumblr.com

Kjell Caminha (pages 56-57) Born 1987 in Teresina, Brazil.

Based in Gothenburg, Sweden. kjellcaminha.com

Kirstine Lund (pages 30-31, 50-51) Born 1975 in Denmark. Lives and works in Gothenburg and Malmö, Sweden. kirstine_lund@yahoo.com

Christian Dumky (pages 74-77) Born 1988 in Ystad, Sweden. Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. dumkybusiness.com

Mikael Nanfeldt (pages ix-xv) Director of Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Pål Henrik Ekern (pages 52-55) Born 1981 in Norway. Based somewhere. plenrik.com Thomas Eliasson (pages 68-69) Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. thomaseliasson.com

xxi

Martha Persson (pages 6-9) Born 1983 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. marthapersson.com Hannah Rosvoll (pages 26-27, 32-33) Born 1987 in Oslo, Norway.

Works between Gothenburg, Sweden and Sel, Norway. hannahrosvoll.com

Karin Sandberg (pages 40-41, 62-63) Born 1980 in Gustafs, Sweden.

Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. karinsandberg.com Frida Sandstrรถm (pages iii-viii) Artist, journalist and critic based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Coordinates the archive and newly formed educational board at the artist-run platform Skogen.

Esther Shalev-Gerz (pages 22-25) Born in Vilnius, Lithuania. Lives and works in Paris, France, since 1984.

Adjunct Professor of Fine Art shalev-gerz.net Marcus Stenberg (pages 36-39) Born 1985 Kalix, Sweden. Lives and works in Alingsรฅs, Sweden. marcusstenberg.se Adel Szakacs (pages 16-17, 42-43) Born 1982 in Cluj Napoca, Transylvania.

Based in Gothenburg, Sweden. adelszakacs.com Daniel Wendler (pages 18-21) Lives and works in Malmรถ, Sweden. soundcloud.com/daniel-wendler-3

COLOPHON EDITORS Thom Bridge & Kjell Caminha DESIGN Niklas Persson PRINTING Litorapid, Sweden This publication was made possible by the generous and continued support of Stiftelsen Fru Mary von Sydows, född Wijk, donationsfond.

ISBN 978-91-981863-0-7 PUBLISHER University of Gothenburg Valand Academy Vasagatan 50 SE-40530 Gothenburg www.artongbg.com www.akademinvaland.gu.se © 2014 Valand Academy and the authors Published in an edition of 500, to coincide with the conclusion of the exhibition Fast Forward at Göteborgs Konsthall curated by Jason E. Bowman, 10-25 May 2014.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All images courtesy of the artists, additional photographs by Thomas Schön (pages 18, 59, 64, 67, 72, 75, 76), Yngvild Sæeter (page 70) and Röda Sten Konsthall (page 71).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With special thanks to Katarina Andersson Winberg, Lotta Antonsson, Jason E. Bowman, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Mick Wilson and all of the staff and technicians at Valand Academy With thanks to Ann-Charlotte Glasberg Blomqvist, Maja Hamarén, Thomas Oldrell, Frida Sandström, Joakim Stampe, Fredrik Svensk, Hannah Rosvoll, Mikael Nanfeldt and the staff at Göteborgs Konsthall, and Avalon Hotel.

xxiv

xxv