ENACT

CONTENTS Introduction, Mick Wilson Enact, Alida Ivanov

3 4

Behjat Omer Abdulla Sara Anstis Rachel Barron Bianca Basan Ylva Bengtsson Rose Borthwick

8 12 16 20 24 28

Installation Views

32

Maria Buyondo Andreas Engman Hannah Giles Malin Griffiths Klara Källström Josefine Östberg Olsson David Arnar

50 54 58 62 66 70 74

Colophon

78

VALAND ACADEMY 2016 MFA Fine Art + MFA Photography

ENACT is the heading under which the final year MFA students in both Photography and Fine Art have gathered together to present some of the work that they have accomplished during two years of study at Valand Academy in Gothenburg. The term “enact” invokes both the sense of a role play or game, and the perhaps more urgent sense of taking action and operating in a world, a world in part produced by the performative agency of artists’ works.

The dynamic term “enact” clearly resonates with the vibrant energies of the exhibition itself, and the exhibited works that comprise this complex and exhilarating show. This energy is the one commonality that gathers these very different works, that range over mediations on the nature of images, the enigma of color, the phantasms of the body, the abyssal loss of those drowned while fleeing war, the strange dialogues of the everyday and certain longings for a transcendence, the critical interrogation of habits of power and authority, the uncanny shock and lure of mechanism, and the recurrent strangeness of images as a way of accessing and thinking through our worlds. These ideas, and many more jostle in a friendly counterpoint across the gallery spaces, reaching out for our attention in different ways, hailing us with different voices. It is striking that works that speak of an unutterable grief can live side-by-side with works that sing out in joy. That they can share this space of exhibition without occluding each other, without reducing the intensity and demand of each vision.

This cohabiting of different worlds within the modest space of exhibition, entangling but not obstructing each other, is itself an enactment of democratic possibility. There has been some discussion of late about the artistic life of our city: but that discussion pales when we turn to look at the artistic life and vibrancy that is enacted in this city by these artists and their many different works, works that call upon us to think more clearly, to look more carefully, and to speak less quickly.

Introduction

3 Mick Wilson, Head of Department, Valand Academy

Stina was my best friend when I was 13. We hung out in a girl gang of three together with Therese.

Stina admired her older brother and wanted to do everything that he and his friends did when they were our age. So, she would constantly make us do various nerdy things. This spanned from playing Quake (killed myself with a shotgun) to reading Tolkien (never got through Lord of the Rings because ZzZz), to pranks such as pouring acetone on your hands and then setting them on fire (I stopped after accidentally setting my polyester fake Adidas pants from Bulgaria on fire). At one point she bought about ten books on Drakar och Demoner (DoD) and wanted us to play. The whole premise for DoD is to make up characters to play and the gamemaster, Stina of course, would come up with an adventure and guide the other players through it. Stina decided on being an assassin orc with special wizard powers, while it was harder for me. I found myself a bit lost and entrenched in trying to make up a character; a feeling similar to how I view myself as a curator now.

Early on in the process of this exhibition I started playing around with the notion of role-playing, thinking about the roles we take on in our professional lives. As a curator of a thesis show I’ve had to revise my role because the process becomes somewhat reversed. Instead of being in charge of the selection of artists and artworks, I have 13 artists in front of me who in broad terms decide the content of the exhibition. Rather than choosing a theme and select artists who fit it, I had to go the other way around and extract a theme that would encompass 13 artists and photographers with 13 different expressions. How does this process fit into my role as a curator? And in extension it opens up the question: how do I have to tweak my role as a curator to fit this task?

Enact

4

Alida Ivanov, Editor / Curator

I decided on a different approach and wanted to take on an alternative role for this exhibition. In my head I heard the apocalyptic: “I have to renounce the curator and become someone different”.

The internet helped me in my search for a persona to find someone, or something else to be.

A method was needed. Stumbling over symbolic interactionism felt almost like guidance from the (digital) universe and from then on I started applying what I was reading immediately. One could view a group show as a kind of micro-society in which individuals (artists) interact with each other through objects (artwork) within the frame of institutions (Göteborgs Konsthall and Valand Academy).

This was a eureka moment.

The foundation of symbolic interactionism is the presumption that people act toward things based on the meaning that they have for them. These meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation. It is based on qualitative research: where every individual and institution in a society creates meaning through interaction. In the setting of an exhibition, meaning would perhaps equal a theme.

A person is seen as a social being in constant search of interaction. Instead of focusing on the individual it looks at how society and social situations, in this case the making of a group exhibition, cause human behavior. Activities between the artists become a central focus and channeled in how their works interact within the space.

A person is also seen as a thinking being. His or her action is not only an interaction with others but also something that happens within the person, for example feelings, values and ideas. This can be seen in each artist’s individual work. Through this, they are not thought to sense their environment directly. Instead, they define the situation that they are in. Environments and causes of the artist’s actions are determined through an ongoing social interaction and present thinking. They are always active beings in all processes.

Enact

5

Alida Ivanov, Editor / Curator

I started thinking back to my 13-year-old self: getting into the idea of being someone else. But my current 31-year-old self had a harder time accepting and navigating this new role. I felt the need of a gamemaster who could guide me through this adventure.

The meeting with the 13 artists took on that role, the studio visits started mapping out the way.

I came to the conclusion that I would view the studio visits as collecting data and getting to know my subject. My focus during the first set of studio visits were: Who are they? What do they want to accomplish? How do they view themselves? What do they know about each other?

Connections started surfacing immediately during the studio visits: practices dealing with encompassing systems (lingual, social, institutional, and architectural), social matters and then practices that deal with memories and moods. So, there are works that derive from the objective to the subjective, and works that aim in the opposite direction: from the individual experience to something more general. Even though these artistic practices differ, they are also in many ways two sides of the same coin, like a sawing interplay of the zeitgeist incorporating both the objective and the subjective. A visualization of the exhibition started materializing and I was back to being a curator.

Stina’s patience finally ran out after half a year, waiting for us to decide on characters. Therese and I went back and forth on whether to be elves, orcs, or humans, wizards or witches, hair color, what kind of weapons we would have. It all ended with Stina having a minor tantrum and just giving up on us ever playing DoD. And she never got to be the gamemaster.

Enact

6

Alida Ivanov Editor / Curator

The catalogue for ENACT was produced in collaboration with graphic designer Aron Kullander-Östling. It has a starting point in role-playing games and aims to reflect interactions on different levels.

The thread that pulls everything together is inspiration drawn from the aesthetics of the Swedish fantasy game “Drakar och Demoner”, running through the entire graphic identity for the exhibition at

Göteborgs Konsthall. Installation images from the show are at the center of the publication. On each side of the images, the artists are presented in questionnaires mimicking the sheets used to develop your characters in role-playing. The presentation consists of personal information, texts by every artist on another artist’s work paired together with images from different processes leading up to the exhibition.

1 Drakar och Demoner (Swedish for Dragons and Demons, in Sweden commonly referred to by the abbreviation “DoD”) is a Swedish fantasy role-playing game first published in 1982 by the game publishing company Äventyrsspel (“Adventure Games”, later renamed Target Games). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakar_och_Demoner)

Enact

7

Alida Ivanov Editor / Curator

Name

Website

Behjat Omer Abdulla

Date of Birth

www.behjaturl.tumblr.com/archive

Place of Birth

1 May 1976

Kurdistan, Iraq

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

Identity, war, displacement, trauma, migration, story and storytelling.

TITLE OF WORK

From a Distance

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing

40

Painting

8

MATERIAL

Photography

11

Drawing, pencil, and graphite powder on paper.

Installation Video

4

Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

2

The main focus of Behjat’s practice is the concept of identity,

Text

9

war, displacement, uncertainty, and falsification. His artwork, like any other image is an invitation to look. But by converting

Sound Research

12

the images from a photograph Behjat wants to encourage a

Collage

shift in the viewer’s understanding of the subject and to force

Textile

them to connect to the artwork in unexpected ways.

Printmaking

3

Conceptual

11

Other:

8

9

Andreas Engman

ABOUT

“Water is black… Blackness is complete, no room for anything else; complete with an untouchable purity. Blackness excludes everything – including you. You can’t participate in it, you can’t add anything to it – or affect it. Jumping in, entering this blackness, being surrounded by something that reforms endlessly, that can only admit you by disregarding you” 1 !

Water, this uncanny substance. Black, weird, enticing and frightening. I often seek out water to be near and stare into, when seeking solace, but I never really know what I’m looking at. It’s nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It has a connecting quality that rattles the very core of my being. Are the waters of my childhood memories the same as the blackness engulfing the Greek Mediterranean islands in the dead of night? If so they are surrounded by different worlds. I can only but try to imagine… ! There are black stains everywhere, a thin black veil of charcoal dust covering books, homemade brushes, pencils, photographs. It is like the studio is fixed in time, in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthly eruption. The air is filled with a pressing urgency. Small black particles are floating around in the space, as if they are fueled by a raging frustration. Behjat’s work is never shying away, always dealing with the catastrophic, where everything is at stake, life and death. Humando a word in latin meaning “burying” but also the word where humanity and humility stems from. “What does it mean to be human, burying, that is what the word humando mean in Latin”2. I’ve heard Behjat use the word humiliation many times, the shock and humiliation of being at a distance, and not being able to change anything. !

I often try to find an excuse to sneak away to his studio for a coffee, it’s always the best coffee of the day. On the walls I see drawings.

From a Distance

One of them is pitch black, still it’s getting blacker every time I see it. When I thought it was impossible to epitomize darkness more, it’s getting even deeper in its nothingness.

Next to it I see a child’s face, serene, calm and peaceful. But there is something deeply unsettling with its demeanor, creating an instant juxtaposition between someone calm, being at peace and someone just being relieved by death from the most excruciating pain imaginable. You can never tell. On the opposite wall a sheet of paper is depicting dark water.

It could be any water in the world. But not the type of calm water you wish for, but rather the unsettling kind, the ever-changing kind, the kind that refuses to tell you anything. When you try to ask it why, it changes its appearance and eludes you the answer. !

The boys are standing waist high in water. I ask Behjat the name of the water surrounding them, it’s the river Sarchnar, it runs close to his home town. The boys in the drawing are Behjat’s father, his uncle and their friends.

They seem like a mischievous little group, all of them staring at me, one of them is smiling.

Maybe just as mischievous as Behjat and his friends many decades later, when they visited the same place. They had secretly snuck away from home and walked the arduous way from the city to the river without telling anyone at home. Spending the day playing in the cool river they decided to do some fishing before going home. The river, sprawling with life, generously handed them a school of small fish which they carried in buckets of water the long trek back to town. When arriving home they were handed a slight dilemma, what to do with the fish now? Behjat came up with the brilliant idea. On every roof-top, of the buildings around town, a supply of fresh water was being kept and Behjat’s house was no exception. With little hesitation the decision was made, of course the fish should be

1 1

granted the relative freedom of swimming in their water tank. That done, a few days passed and when Behjat’s mother was using the garden hose, she was all of a sudden in for a surprise. !

– Behjat! I could swear I saw a small fish swimming out of the hose!

– No mum, you must be dreaming…

– Hmmm… !

Later that day the water thank was emptied of water and the little boys were busy cleaning its inside, so new fresh water could be put back in. !

Water carries different stories. Some leave you in utter despair while some bring you closer, through smiling recognitions of childhood memories. With minute marks of pencil on paper Behjat creates vessels that carry these stories and confront the audience, I can’t hide. They are sharp and with the utmost candidness they are slashing holes through my thick veil of privilege and ignorance and present me the world from which I can no longer escape.

1. Roni Horn, ANOTHER WATER, The River Thames For Example. (Steidl, Göttingen, 2011) 2. Simon Critchley and Cornell West In Conversation at BAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oB2eQmVFLY

SPECIAL THANKS

Chra Kader & Kesan, Lisa Donovan, Shwan Dler Qaradaki.

1 1

Name

Website

Sara Anstis

Date of Birth

www.saraanstis.com

Place of Birth

13 May 1991

Stockholm, Sweden

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

The desiring gaze, images of the body, survivalism, embodied knowledge, line, touch, paper.

TITLE OF WORK

In a green shade

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing

28 MATERIAL

Painting Photography

4

Charcoal drawings on paper,

Installation

16

birch plywood, plants, ribbon,

Video

1

metal and other mixed media.

Performance

8

Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

3

Within this space built with an erotic and escapist imagination,

Text

18

the desire to live alone in nature is mediated and prolonged through the acts of drawing and display. The distance between

Sound Research

15

bodies that hinders even the most intimate of encounters is

Collage

1

renounced with solitude while the return to nature is idealized with meticulous abandon.

Textile Printmaking

2

Conceptual

4

Other:

1 1

1 1

Behjat Omer Abdulla

ABOUT

“Each of us is a ‘place’. Every woman, man, child, old person is a habitable space that moves and unfolds; a ‘place’ corresponding to time, a geography, a volume and a colour.

Whole cities build with bodies open and closing like doors.

Lights that blink.

In a green shade

You are familiar with my fascination with text and the importance I give to the written word, in its most organic sense, due to its similarity with the body, with the way the human being grows and expands. One simple letter is like a cell charged with memory. It may seem, a priori, that they can have nothing in common with each other in view of human personality and notable differentiation in shape, but this tiny letter in associations with others starts to form words, and these association with others give rise to texts, which in association with others proffer ideas, and these in further association give shape to the thoughts that nourish cultures and religions, traditions and so on…

In short, the whole world! Or foundational stone, around which the temple was build, around the temple the city, around the city the country, from the country to the world, the world to the universe, and so on and on… it’s the idea of expansion from the smallest of things, from the association of diverse elements for the purpose of constructing a more complex body. A complex body like ours formed of eyes, fingers, ears, hair, feet, arms, lungs, heart, and so on and so forth… elements that when compared to each other do not appear to have any relationship to one another, but in association do in fact perfectly articulate one single organization: the body”.1 1. Jaume Plensa, from the exhibition guide published to coincide with the exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2011.

1 1

SPECIAL THANKS

Markus Torgeby, Love Jonsson.

1 1

Name

Website

Rachel Barron

Date of Birth

www.rachelbarron.co.uk

Place of Birth

14 April 1989

Glasgow, Scotland

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

Architecture and the urban environment, color, patterns and diagrams, reflective and transparent materials.

TITLE OF WORK

Blueprint

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing

3

Painting

4

MATERIAL

Photography

12

Pink and iridescent vinyl,

Installation

23

aluminium, steel, spray paint,

Video

2

digitally printed silk,

Performance

1

fluorescent fabric panels.

Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

12

Blueprint is a site-specific installation that highlights the

Text

2

existing architectural language in dialogue with its history.

Sound

3

Deconstructing and reimagining structural elements,

Research

14

fragments of the work leave traces throughout the building, disrupting typical viewing patterns towards an extended

Collage Textile

6

Printmaking

7

Conceptual

11

Other:

perception of the space.

1 1

1 1

Josefine Östberg Olsson

ABOUT

For me to experience Rachel Barron’s installations are like walking into a dialogue with and between forms, colors and sites, but also the processes and tensions between them. In these meetings, I ask myself the same question as always when encountering a work of art; what reality is presented in the work, is it one I could see myself existing within, and if so how.

Rachel’s installations make me think of how easy it is to move and stretch different materials’ functions and significations; metal, textiles, architecture and contexts, everything is changeable and fickle. Like when the reflection from the water hits a window, and how the surface of the window through this meeting becomes something else than a window, if only for a little while.

Blueprint

When I think about it some more, I realize that all materials and items only exist through its own borders, walls, a ceiling and my own body. Everything can be moved and changed, get new functions or meanings. And it is not just the physical surfaces that are changeable but also the process and the tension in between. A body may as well become an event, a crime or a love story.

To exist in Rachel’s installations is for me an experience where I become strongly aware about my own physical presence and at the same time gets invited to focus as much on the ceiling, the room, the colors and the shapes that surround me. For me it is like being invited to a dialogue and at the same time being prevented from seeing, to define.

1 1

SPECIAL THANKS

Nathan Clydesdale, Elinor Gustafsson, Ossian Gustavsson, Andréas Hagström, Saskia Noor van Imhoff.

1 1

Name

Website

Bianca Basan

Date of Birth

—

Place of Birth

24 Nov 1990

Iasi, Romania

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

Film Text Literature Fiction

TITLE OF WORK

The More I Think About It the More We Rewrite the Beginning ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

5

Spot light, printed paper,

Installation

3

shelf, vinyl letters.

Video

70

Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

An essay film in four chapters that alternates between private

Text

5

and public spaces, allowing issues of translation, language

Sound

2

and creativity to emerge. Chapters without a linear narrative,

Research

10

oscillating between discourse and poetry.

Collage Textile Printmaking Conceptual Other:

5

2 2

2 2

Rachel Barron

ABOUT

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

The More I Think About It the More We ...

THE ONLY SOLUTION IS ANOTHER REVOLUTION

Curiosity.

A liminal space between art and science, art and history, art and philosophy.

The blurring of boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, between imagination and reality; visible and invisible, material and immaterial.

December 1989, Romania: the distant chanting of protesters.

THE MORE I THINK ABOUT IT THE MORE WE REWRITE THE BEGINNING A winter scene. Suspended time. A tram moves through an undisclosed location.

Memory. Distance.

Cryptic, layered, fragmented.

A domestic interior. A hybrid space.

The construction of an image through the intertwining of narrative structures, the composition of objects within installations, the activation of the viewer’s imagination.

An observation into the inner lives of characters, without ever crossing paths.

Navigation.

Geographical imagination. Collective memory. Parallel worlds.

To investigate and to analyse, to look closer, form connections, create meaning.

The relationship between human and machine.

FOOTNOTE(S) AS A PORTRAIT

The collapse of distinction between different languages; merging, fragmented.

The table exists as an ongoing space of research and reflection, excavation and analysis: a collage of images, writings and appropriated material. Exploring the relationship between language and object, a constellation of data proposes connections between subjects across multiple disciplines.

Systematic, transient, in flux.

The tension between past, present and future. The disruption of linear time. The passing of memory through generations.

Inside of us exists another world.

Words inscribed on the wall, handwritten in black: a dialogue, equation, manifesto, subtitle. A poetic fragment, an index, an insight into the artists’ mental process.

YOU WRITE WITH YOUR HAND BUT IT’S YOUR GENERATION’S ARM Micro history as both method and subject.

2 2

SPECIAL THANKS

Gabriella Pettersson, Marta Szpunar, Gunell Kulieva, Andreas Westerberg, Tommy Spaanheden, Talel Dayekh.

2 2

Name

Website

Ylva Bengtsson

Date of Birth

www.ylvabengtsson.com

Place of Birth

4 March 1984

Gothenburg, Sweden

EDUCATION

MFA: Photography

AREAS OF INTEREST

Perception, space, place, experience, abstraction, light, emotion.

TITLE OF WORK

Från en reflektion till en annan (From One Reflection to Another)

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

60

Installation

15

Video

5

Ink-jet prints, Plexiglass.

Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

An interest in light as an aesthetic and visual element has

Text

recently developed into an investigation of the artificial language,

Sound

relations between forms of light and emotional and perceptual

Research

references. Reflections from artificial light sources have been

Collage

photographed onto a standard white sheet of paper. Central

Textile

is an attention between forms of light on a surface, to how the

Printmaking

individual awareness steer the experience of the light.

Conceptual Other:

20

2 2

2 2

Malin Griffiths

ABOUT

From One Reflection to Another

The source of all seeing.

The root to the existence of photography.

It is transparent, changeable, weightless. It can reflect, penetrate, reveal, dematerialize and dazzle. It gives everything their colors.

It bounces against objects, reflects its surface and when it reaches the retina, colors are made.

Here it has been caught on paper. Frozen so it won’t escape or fade away.

Because that is what it does. It’s in its nature to transform. To Perform. To reveal.

These white sheets of cotton fibers have been dissolved into incoherence.

Like chameleons they carry the image of what is behind them. They lead me to an inner space where I have been before. Whispering memories dated with colors.

Recalling of sensory experiences.

Nightwalking.

The sun shining behind eyelids.

An enchanting sunset from my first long journey abroad.

The spot from a street lamp that makes you visible during a terrifying bike ride home in pitch black darkness.

Solitariness. Littleness. Fear. A dream. Space.

2 2

SPECIAL THANKS

Per Fritz, Gunvi Bengtsson, Cecilia Sandblom, Gustavo Perillo Nogueira.

2 2

Name

Website

Rose Borthwick

Date of Birth

www.roseborthwick.com

Place of Birth

9 Feb 1983

Leeds, United Kingdom

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

Specifically framed encounters, the mediation of artwork with audience, potential of social opportunities through art, collaboration, activating

TITLE OF WORK

space.

Conviction and Validation

ARTISTIC PRACTICE %

5

Drawing

MATERIAL

Painting Photography

5

Mixed media installation:

Installation

10

carpet, video, booklets,

Video

10

monitors, monitor stands,

Performance

10

seating, display stand.

Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

Conviction and Validation deconstructs the artist’s experiences

Text

10

and subjectivities following a series of self- initiated meetings

Sound

10

with American Mormon missionaries in Gothenburg. She

Research

10

creates a space for the audience to consider the dynamics at

Collage

10

play between the parties with differing desires, and the often

Textile

complicated divides between reader, listener, audience,

Printmaking

participant, narrator and speaker.

Conceptual Other:

Collaboration

20

2 2

2 2

Sara Anstis

ABOUT

There were piles of open books on Rose’s desk but she had no desire to continue reading any of them. The war-like hammering of fingers on keyboards coming from the adjacent rooms was driving her mad. She locks her door in a hurry, descends the grand staircase and walks onto the cobble street.

As she pauses to look at a sunbeam two Mormon missionaries walk by. She looks after the pair wistfully and quickly decides to run after them. They give her a card. On the back, they’ve written how to get in touch.

That night, after Rose has kissed Rabbit goodnight, she has a dream. Or is it a vision?

She is standing in a tropical forest. Mango trees sway luxuriously with the weight of ripe fruit and red and blue hawks circle over the dense canopy. Under a philodendron plant sits a woman in white. She senses that this woman knows everything about her. Nevertheless, she calls out: “Hiya! You alright?”

Conviction and Validation

She walks into the jungle and comes to a clearing with a lone tree in the center. Laying splayed out on a long branch is a panther licking the spaces between his toes. His tongue recoils when he notices her and he begins to intone: “You remind me of someone, you know. I knew her a long time ago when I lived further East in the jungle and sunned myself on trees spicier than this one. She really bothered me, this person. She said she was one thing but I knew she was actually something else.

Wouldn’t that bother you?”

“No, not really. Would you like to take this ambiguity tolerance test?” She holds out a pencil.

But the paw-licking resumes after a long glare and Rose continues on her way. “What a strange place this is,” she thinks to herself, “where all the creatures I meet want to talk about me.”

The figure beckons her closer. “Rose,” she says in a low voice that makes the sun shine brighter, “Are you an artist? This is the land of perpetual holiday and only artists are allowed here.”

“I fell asleep and here I was, I…” But the woman had already disappeared.

3 3

SPECIAL THANKS

Yvonne Carmichael, Nathan Clydesdale, Amelia Crouch, Ulla Hvejsel, Cara Tolmie, Klas Trollius.

3 3

32

Name

Website

Maria Buyondo

Date of Birth

www.mariabuyondo.com

Place of Birth

15 Sept 1982

Moscow, Russia

EDUCATION

MFA: Photography

AREAS OF INTEREST

Moving images

TITLE OF WORK

An Attempt to Make a Perfect Play

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

5

Installation

10

Video

60

Film montage

Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

This film montage is a collaboration between myself and my

Text

grandmother, now 89, who once was a performer in the

Sound

former Soviet Union. The film explores my grandmother’s

Research

5

youthful dream of becoming an opera singer and her present dream of performing on stage again.

Collage Textile Printmaking Conceptual Other:

20

5 5

5 5

Klara Källström

ABOUT

An Attempt to Make a Perfect Play

The Optician Maria’s grandmother has the sky in her coffee cup and her arm is a helicopter blade.

Maria’s grandmother has a task to do and not a moment to lose.

The optics bring the light to a single point and the ray can be so strong that it can cut through metal.

The camera is a scalpel that slices through everything.

The film rolls like the rain falls.

There’s a tree walking around in the rain, it rushes past us in the pouring grey.

It has an errand. It gathers life out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.

There it is, quiet on clear nights waiting as we do for the moment when the snowflakes blossom in space.

Tomas Tranströmer, The Tree and the Sky, from New Collected Poems.

5 5

SPECIAL THANKS

Drottningholms Slottsteater, Fredrika-Bremer-Fรถrbund, Adlerbertska Stipendiestiftelsen,

5 5

Hannah Giles, Ram Krishna Ran.

Name

Website

Andreas Engman

Date of Birth

www.andreasengman.se

Place of Birth

26 April 1979

Landvetter, Sweden

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

Institutional critique, affect, performativity, critical pedagogy.

TITLE OF WORK

The Institute for Potentiality and Actualization Taxidermy of Speculative Gestures – a 21-day Conference

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing Painting

MATERIAL

Photography

Performance, installation.

Installation

16

Video Performance

24

Ready-Made

13

The Institute For Potentiality and Actualization is hosting a

Sculpture Text

6

21-day conference, which aims to explore hierarchies of knowledge production and alternative ways of creating

Sound Research

DESCRIPTION

17

meaning. The conference as an experimental site will attempt

Collage

to move across registers of promiscuous criticality, relativist

Textile

prioritization, exuberant imagination, critical fascination,

Printmaking

curricuralized nervousness and embodied fallibility as

Conceptual Other:

24

strategies for speculation.

5 5

5 5

Bianca Basan

ABOUT

The Institute for Potentiality and Actualization

An inventory of non-existing words . blue spit wall yellow scarf hands bruise .

I’m dressed in a yellow blouse, as yellow as the sun is sometimes. Yellow is the color that is associated with jealously, the most clichéd associations attributed to yellow. Because I’m wearing color I think I’m supposed to feel a certain way. Color affects your affect. I suppose it’s a joyful color. When I was small I had a ring that changed its metal color depending on your emotions, mine never changed.

JAUNE. MUSTARD. YELLOW. GALBEN – a pile of words for one color –

Regarding color, a while ago I read an article in which it was acknowledge that we feel more than the existing number of words available in the English vocabulary, or in any vocabulary. The idea is that we experience “things” that don’t have a skeleton yet. Instead, we are used to put them into the skeleton of pre existing words. For instance I said yellow and it was instantly understood as color. It seems as words have a “ready-made” skeleton under which they hide, completely ignoring the spectrum of the unimagined bodies in which words can exist. What if what you feel is not what you speak? When to prioritize the intuition and when the meaning?

What will happen if we repeat the word?

It will go on a loop until the meaning of it disappears. We are going to filter it through our bodies, becoming the word yellow, destroying it, and giving it birth into another form.

Once we repeat it the skeleton disappears and meaning is collapsing.

We are getting lost and getting lost is a dangerous finding, she said.

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SPECIAL THANKS

André Alves Barbosa, Kjell Caminha, Sebastian Jensen, David Magnusson, Luísa Nóbrega, Tobias Wessely,

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The feminist pedagogy group + The performance group at Valand Academy.

Name

Website

Hannah Giles

Date of Birth

www.hannahgiles.co.uk

Place of Birth

12 Dec 1991

Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia

EDUCATION

MFA: Photography

AREAS OF INTEREST

Metaphors of memory, remedies for forgetting, capturing and preserving the ephemeral, translating time, unconventional photographic processes, investigation and

TITLE OF WORK

experimentation.

The Nature of Memory

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

50

Exhumed negatives,

Installation

25

lightbox, sound installation.

Video Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

The Nature of Memory is a sound installation and a series of

Text

buried negatives, documenting the initial transitions of a wild

Sound

5

space in Sweden into a housing complex over the course of one

Research

year. The work, although photographic, invites deterioration

Collage

as opposed to preservation and becomes an analogy for losing

Textile

a space and the memories of it.

Printmaking Conceptual Other:

20

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Ylva Bengtsson

ABOUT

The Nature of Memory

I’m weather-beaten in a losing battle punctured by nature, becoming organic.

The air in here ages me, ungracefully.

Crooked frames and cracked glazing Slithers of wistful window gazes glint in borrowed light.

A has-been, a once was, the leftovers, bleeding, oxidising, a few remaining, a waste of space.

I will remember you - will you remember me?

Entropy increasing.

How long before I’m dust?

— Neglected Space, Imogen Heap.

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SPECIAL THANKS

Farid Chaouch, Maria Buyondo, Ylva Bengtsson.

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Name

Website

Malin Griffiths

Date of Birth

www.malingriffiths.com

Place of Birth

11 Nov 1973

Hallsberg, Sweden

EDUCATION

MFA: Photography

AREAS OF INTEREST

Birds, nature, identity, time and memory.

TITLE OF WORK

The I in You

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

Ink-jet print,

47

walnut-wood frame.

Installation Video Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

10

In my work I am interested in contradictions; places, both

Text

6

inner and outer bearing dual roles. This project examines the relationship between a mother and a daughter and about how

Sound Research

30

youth is often represented as beauty, innocence and perfection,

Collage

as the ephemeral perfection in a flower before life evaporates.

Textile

Most often unlike the young persons own experience.

Printmaking

4

Conceptual Other:

3

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Maria Buyondo

ABOUT

The I in You

Reader!

You who shall hold in trust my poetry, appreciate or hate it, walk past it or pay it absent-minded attention,

find it grim or difficult,

never perceive it,

desire, but never find it;

are you already longing for the wooden fish that

shall be shown you later on,

have you put your weapons under the bed,

arranged sufficiently beautiful stones on

the coat you wear so that

you’ll be held still at the table,

is the house, that large, empty

body, protected

by sunshine now,

are you wreathed at the stool, prepared,

bound to your dead mother,

have you fallen asleep in a hat or skirt,

and the door,

has it been shut against the night,

is the mist consigned to its vale beyond the river,

are the trees with their flocks of fruit Tethered, reader, in that case,

shall we take it as read?

The hour has now struck.

From Deliria, by Mare Kandre.

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SPECIAL THANKS

Stiftelsen AAA, Olivia Griffiths, Matthew Griffiths, Charlie Griffiths, Teachers, Classmates.

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Name

Website

Klara Källström

Date of Birth

www.klarp.se / www.b-b-b-books.com

Place of Birth

15 April 1984

Ås, Jämtland

EDUCATION

MFA: Photography

AREAS OF INTEREST

History, documentary, visual culture, current media events, politics, myths.

TITLE OF WORK

The Last of the Lucky

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

50

Photographs on newsprint

Installation

20

and vitrine with newspaper.

Video Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

In 2014, in the streets of Havana, Klara Källström met a man 13

Text

who turned out to be one of Fidel Castro’s former private

Sound

photographers. In a city deficient of most photographic

Research

equipment, he helped her find some film rolls from the brand

Collage

Lucky. They were given to her, accompanied by the following

Textile

words, “These are the last rolls of Cuba”.

Printmaking

In collaboration with Thobias Fäldt.

Conceptual Other:

Publishing

17

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6 6

David Arnar Runólfsson

ABOUT

The Last of the Lucky

Few countries are romanticized as much as Cuba. People want to go there to see the Cuba of their imagination, or the Cuba of Ernest Hemingway, the classic cars, the rum, the cigars and the music. It is a country that has resisted the effects of globalization better than most and retained its culture and unique character despite a global increase in tourism. Yet the doors are opening up and change looms in the air.

Having become familiar with Klara’s other work and person over the past two years I’m convinced it was no mere luck that united her with the last of the Lucky film. The investigative way in which she approaches her subject, leaving no stone unturned, was bound to lead her, and only her to this film. Che Guevara once said that: “Revolution is not like an apple that falls when ripe, it must be pushed”. This is what Klara does in her photography. Thus embedded in Klara’s last films from Cuba are two layers of history intertwined. The perspective and experience of the photographer and a history of a place physically written into a roll of film by age come together and create this work that reflects Cuba’s fascinating, yet troubled, history.

The series makes no predictions for the future and the images can be experienced without a predetermined destination in mind, yet they clearly represent the end of an era.

“It’s good to have an end but it’s about the journey.”

– Ernest Hemingway.

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SPECIAL THANKS

V-tab, Lars Källström, Thobias Fäldt.

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Name

Website

Josefine Östberg Olsson

Date of Birth

www.josefineostbergolsson.se

Place of Birth

1987

Tynderö, Sweden

EDUCATION

MFA: Fine Art

AREAS OF INTEREST

Situation-based ethics, infrastructure and public spaces.

TITLE OF WORK

Shift into a Racing Strip in the Still of the Night

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

10

Light, sound, flag,

Installation

10

metal and performance.

Video

10

Performance

10

Ready-Made

10

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

10

Josefine Östberg Olsson’s work is based on a fascination and

Text

10

curiosity for high speed and disorderly conduct. Posing the

Sound

10

potential of a car race along Kungsportsavenyn in central

Research

10

Gothenburg, she seeks to challenge the entrenched morality of this public space.

Collage Textile Printmaking Conceptual Other:

10

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7 7

Rose Borthwick

ABOUT

As I type this I’m sitting in my studio. It is late and I can hear the sounds of a car engine revving as the driver sharply increases its speed, racing along the Avenue. …RRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRUUUUUUUR RRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUU RRRRRR RRRRUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMRRRRR RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMM MMMMMM...

Shift into a Racing Strip in the Still of the Night

Strong, resistant and assured. I am convinced and seduced by her presentation. Her work is often titled ALL IN CAPS. No doubts, and you aren’t presented with an opportunity to. I am convinced and prepared to place my bet, hand over my cash, participate in the RISK.

I am thinking about my classmate Josefine Östberg Olsson, and this task we must fulfil for the publication. What to say? Will this text achieve FULL POTENTIAL? (I hope so, there has been a threat of FAST PHYSICAL ACTION) … Östberg Olsson’s practice confronts what it is to be human; she addresses notions of DESIRE, CHOICE and CONTROL. As audience we are unwittingly placed in a position which will involve ethical and moral reasoning, relative to the situation we are placed in…

Behaviours, moral judgment and ‘definitive’ concepts are and will be CHALLENGED. Gambling, car racing, booze smuggling, the Swedish Public Employment Service and Phase 3; all have had their methodologies, aesthetics and vocabularies appropriated and repurposed by Östberg Olsson. Working with performance, installation and drawing she presents and reconfigures elements from these structures, and creates a product, an experience; a brand to subscribe to and affiliate oneself with. Östberg Olsson stages a space which simultaneously offers an uncompromised vision yet a space for inter-subjective reflection and response. She makes a place for us to consider grey areas, fluidity of boundaries and roles, and to play along with her in this game.

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SPECIAL THANKS

Patrik Roos, Andreas Westerberg, Arne-Kjell Vikhagen, Nicklas Östberg Olsson Per-Olof Östberg, Zara Zetterquist,

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Snöfrid Caldeborg.

Name

Website

David Arnar

Date of Birth

www.davidarnar.com

Place of Birth

8 May 1980

Reykjavik, Iceland

EDUCATION

MFA: Photography

AREAS OF INTEREST

Photography, life in a world going through social, ecological and economical crisis, landscape, history, mythology.

TITLE OF WORK

Impact

ARTISTIC PRACTICE % Drawing MATERIAL

Painting Photography

40

Installation

10

Video

5

Pigment prints, wood.

Performance Ready-Made

DESCRIPTION

Sculpture

The images shown here are a part of a larger body of work on

Text

5

glaciers from Icelandic literature. The work seeks to explore

Sound Research

glaciers in Iceland and are accompanied by pieces of text on

15

our changing relationship with nature and the texts put the

Collage

images in context to a time when the glaciers had a larger

Textile

impact on people’s lives than the people on them.

Printmaking

15

Conceptual

10

Other:

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7 7

Hannah Giles

ABOUT

Impact

A large body of ice moving slowly down a slope, or valley, or spreading outward on a land surface.

A ​large ​mass of ​ice that moves ​slowly over ​land, especially down the ​side of a ​mountain, often ​moving r​ ocks with it and ​changing the ​shape of the ​land.

A slowly moving mass or river of ice formed by the accumulation and compaction of snow on mountains or near the poles.

A large body of ice which flows under its own mass, usually downhill.

A great body of ice that is sensitive and in a state of constant flux, offering insights into the rate of climate change.

A large mass of ice that is commonly thought to be lifeless. But is reported by natives as an almost living, breathing, shifting entity in ways most unlike any other.

That which is capable of encasing the past underneath layers of snow and ice.

A natural structure that has the ability to summon feelings of both wonder and terror simultaneously in those who experience it first-hand.

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SPECIAL THANKS

Jamie Johnston, James Hafsteinn, Henry Snรฆbjรถrn, Margaret Anna Freyja, Ian Van Coller.

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COLOPHON ENACT Valand Academy 2016: MFA Fine Art + MFA Photography

Printed in an edition of 300. www.enactvaland.com www.akademivaland.gu.se #enactvaland16

Editor: Alida Ivanov Design: Aron Kullander-Östling Printing: Printografen, Halmstad Image Edit: Stefan Jensen Proofreading: Andrew Young Publisher: University of Gothenburg Valand Academy Vasagatan 50 SE 40530 Gothenburg Legally responsible publisher: Mick Wilson

© 2016 Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg All material courtesy of the artists and writers.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-91-983378-0-8 Acknowledgments: This publication was made possible by the generous and continued support of Stiftelsen Fru Mary von Sydows, född Wijk, donationsfond.

Thanks to: Mary Coble, Denise Langridge Mellion, Katya Sandomirskaja, Ebba Stymne, Dragana Vujanovic, Sophie Vukovic, Mick Wilson and Niclas Östlind.

Special thanks to: Mikael Nanfeldt, Liv Stoltz and the rest of the team at Göteborgs Konsthall.

All the participating artists.

Drottningholms Slottsteater.

Image credits: Thomas Schön (pp. 32–48, 57) Patrik Roos (p. 71) Additional credits: Tomas Tranströmer, The Tree and the Sky, from New Collected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, 2011 (p. 52) Imogen Heap, Neglected Space in Sparks, Megaphonic Records 2014 (p. 60) Mare Kandre, Deliria, from Swedish Women’s Writing 1850–1995, Athlone Press, 1997 (p. 64) 78

THANKS! Lotta Antonsson Petter Baggeryd Kerstin Bergendal Jason E Bowman Kjell Caminha Robert Carlsson Mary Coble Pär Fridén Alyssa Grossman Hans Hedberg Alida Ivanov Stefan Jensen Aron Kullander-Östling Samuel Malm Denise Langridge Mellion Mattias Persson Dan Sandkvist Kalle Sanner Thomas Schön Joanne Tatham Julia Tedroff Camilla Topuntoli Mick Wilson Niclas Östlind

/ VALAND ACADEMY 2016 MFA Fine Art + MFA Photography