out here, in there

out there, in here

Valand Academy 2014

out there, in here Valand Academy 2014 Editors Andrea Bodelsson, Kalle Boman, Gunilla Burstedt, Kjell Caminha, Sofia Gräsberg, Martin Hultén, Leslie Johnson and Paulin Nande Design Niklas Persson Cover Amanda Björk Thanks to Avalon Hotel and Litorapid Publisher Mick Wilson, Valand Academy Translation Dave Allen (pp. 60-61), Dr. Suzanne Martin Cheadle (pp. 14-18, 42-44 & 56-59) and Johan Öberg (pp. 6-10) ISBN 978-91-637-5367-1 © 2014 Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg.

Image and text courtesy of the artist.

Amanda Björk, III............................................................................................... Cover Preface............................................................................................................................4 Mick Wilson, In here, out there.............................................................................. 6 Sara Kruse, From Isolerad......................................................................................13 Cecilia Torquato, Unexplainable Photographs............................................. 14 Nevena Ekimova, From Deal with it!..................................................................21 Johan Öberg, Global performance....................................................................22 Jenny Simm, galleri plywood............................................................................... 24 Yngvild Saeter, Untitled..........................................................................................26 Mourl Ferryman, News from Valand.................................................................29 Dorna Aslanzadeh, From Repeating, Remembering, and […]...................31 Mara Lee Gerdén, Home—displacement.........................................................32 Lisa Grip, Untitled..................................................................................................... 41 Julia Boström, The Space between Out There and In Here.................... 42 Lotta Antonsson, Systematic Derangement of the Senses I....................47 Annika Karlsson Rixon, At the time of the third reading.......................... 48 Daniel Wendler, Wealth..........................................................................................51 Tyrone Martinsson, Arctic views—environmental concerns......................52 Linn Granlund, Disorder to Order......................................................................55 Kristina Iversen, The Transformation............................................................... 56 Anna Linder, Spermwhore—a film about longing for children.................60 Maja Hammarén, What if.......................................................................................62 Ellinor Lager, Wind Machine............................................................................... 65 Contributors.............................................................................................................. 66

Preface In the summer of 2012 four departments—the School of Photography, the School of Film Directing, the Valand School of Fine Art and Literary Composition, poetry and prose—merged into one new Academy within the University of Gothenburg: the Valand Academy was born.

In this volume you find writings, visual works, documentations fragments, and glimpses of research projects by students, teachers and researchers of the new Academy.

The Valand Academy is still in a formation phase. So, preparing for this publication, we asked the question: “What is going on in this place?” And: “With all the different arts under the same roof—what is it that could be shared?” “What is discipline specific?” “How does this place relate and appear to other places?” Initially, our working concept was “out there, in here,” as a way of stressing and widening out our own questioning. When, finally, we had put all the contributions togeth-er, we decided to reverse the concept in order to make it correspond better to the content assembled.

Hence, the title of this book: “Out here, in there.”

There is a rich variety of practice taking place in this new place. Some of it you will find represented here.

The works ask questions like: What is being familiar?

How do you tell about a difficult thing? What kind of

4

a place is Russia? How can one crawl out of one’s own room/skin? How to give birth to an unwanted child, or how to want a child and being unable to? How to write an artist statement? How to give access to art? What are humans doing to nature?

This publication is one of many possible mappings of the new Academy. This is only a partial view of the new academy. But nevertheless, the new Academy is taking place inside here.

You are warmly welcome, The editors

5

In here, out there When first thinking of how to respond to this theme— in here/out there—the contrast of private and public seemed to be an appropriate point of departure. Often the private has been understood as that which is internal, that which is inside and covered, protected from view, while that which is public has been considered as that which is externalized, that which is outside and exposed, made visible. In this sense the public art academy can be seen as an “out there”—a public space of visibility and service—while the private person can be seen as an “in here”—a private space of personal autonomy, of self-determined presentation or withdrawal from view.

This question of public/private or out there/in here seemed to give an opportunity to consider the public mission of higher arts education and the challenges presented when creating an artistic education in a segregated society—segregated along different lines: class lines, colour lines, age lines, wealth lines, identity lines, and so forth. How can a public academy be available to those without private privilege? How is a public academy integrated into a segregated society? How is a public academy kept intact and not lost to private ownerships? How is a public academy constituted by communities of private persons?

But in here/out there is more than this play of public and private. “Inside/Out” is a recurrent motif across much artistic and critical work on the question of cultural value, equality and difference. (I am thinking here

6

Mick Wilson

of work from the 1980s and 1990s such as Diana Fuss’s 1991 book Inside/Out.) Of course the theme in here/out there is also an acknowledgement that arts academies can become enclosed spaces withdrawn from view and they can risk being an “in here” that is unable or unwilling to face all the complexities of the “out there”—the wider social world. This is a reversal of the mapping of in here/out there onto the division of academy/wider world. (One might say in this word play that we have turned in here/out there inside-out.)

The rhetorical figure—the topos—of inside/outside is a classic site of the deconstructive play that gently (and sometimes fiercely) mocks a polarizing habit that constructs the world through binary oppositions: woman/man; objective/subjective; body/mind; us/them; gay/straight;­civilized/barbarous; black/white;­normal/ abnormal; correct/incorrect; present/absent;­in group/ out group; art/not-art; and so forth. Deconstructive play has perhaps fallen from intellectual fashion as we go out-with-the-old/in-with-the-new in the faddish unfolding of artistic and intellectual trends. However, the legacy of deconstruction—as a critical practice—has been to alert artists/writers/image-makers to the fugitive quality of meaning-making and to the instability of simple oppositions: in there/out here; public/private.

Deconstruction—in the scandal of Paul de Man—has also made us alert to the problems of strategic ambiguity in our public discourse and of withdrawal within our private histories.

7

Pointing to the rise and fall of cultural fashions and styles of thinking, such as deconstruction, points to another inside/outside dichotomy. It raises the question of whether we are “in” or “out” of keeping with the character or the tempo of our times. Some think an academy of arts should stand outside fashion cycles and the changing fortunes of ideas and markets.

Some think that the arts should seek to stand inside the charmed circle of an authentic aesthetic practice and so escape the heteronomous compulsions of inauthentic mass-market culture. While others think that the question of style is all important and we must attend to styles of practice, styles of thinking, rhetorical styles and styles of life—understanding this as something much more than the marketing of lifestyles.

The metaphor of inside/outside becomes temporal, rather than spatial.

Perhaps the nature of an art academy is to create new images, new metaphors, new thoughts, new styles of being and in the same moment to re-activate old images, old metaphors, old, indeed, ancient apprehensions of our conflicted collective being together in worlds divided by many many aches and many many longings. This new thought that re-activates an ancient one, can be seen in the poet Abdellatif Laabi’s 1980­ La Regne de barbarie (The Rule of Barbarism) smash the jars of honey slit the throat of black bulls on the thresholds of mosques feed thousands upon thousands of beggars

8

then I will come

to spit in your mouth burst your tumors banish your ancestral sufferings

The academy of arts can take “in here/out there” and turn it inside-out, turning it over again and again, but in turning, perhaps the academy may spill some honey on its many thresholds …

Coda I had intended to end my rhetorical play here, by moving from the images of in here/out there to the textual play of deconstructive reversals and by moving from the question of rhetoric to the question of poesis: But the text was overtaken. The title of the publication reversed its polarity, more cleverly than I could do, now becoming out here/in there. My colleagues then told me to risk moving from these playful questions to make more serious answers. And so: How can a public academy be available to those without private privilege? A public academy is one that is available to all when it does not demand that its students must have wealth in order to prepare to study there, when it does not call the accident of birth “talent.”

How is a public academy integrated into a segregated society? A public academy is integrated into a segregated society when it begins from three avowals.

9

When it avows that ours is a segregated society. When it avows that we are equal and apart. When it avows that we will work to always become a different “we.”

How is a public academy kept intact and not lost to private ownerships? A public academy is kept intact and not lost to private ownerships, when it is not a territory or even a mere place, when it becomes a work, an opus of many hands: students’ hands, teachers’ hands, lovers’ hands, yet-to-meet strangers’ hands, and so many more dirty artful hands.

How is a public academy constituted by communities of private persons? A public academy is constituted by communities of private persons when those private persons produce themselves as strangers to themselves, letting go of their cherished self-images to receive a strangers’ address. A public academy is constituted by communities of private persons when those communities of private persons will “come to spit in your mouth” and swallow your food in the same moment.

A public academy will speak loudly in private languages, speaking of many worlds, some worlds out here, some worlds in there, but always, all already, broken worlds.

10

Sara Kruse

13

I

dreamed about you last night. We were walking around.

I knew you were dead, but you didn’t seem to notice. I was so fond of you. You seemed to be mad at me. You were so bitter, my friend.

It was almost like when you were still living and we didn’t talk about your disease. Now we weren’t talking about you being dead. We were just walking around with something unspoken between us.

A man with an HIV-infected needle showed up and wanted to poke me with it. You seemed to think that he should. As if you wanted me to be sick too. Maybe to make me comprehend what you went through. As if you couldn’t forgive me for being healthy. For being alive.

I who had been longing to dream about you. Expecting a kind of dream I used to have when people close to me died. A dream where I could say good-bye and wake up relieved, feeling almost happy, able to let go. But instead I dreamed this terrible, awful, hateful dream and we didn’t say goodbye.

The man with the needle followed me everywhere and you didn’t want to help me. You seemed so angry.

I don’t know what this means. Is this me feeling guilty?

When you got sick, I got lost. You called me in the middle of the night and were so scared. You just ­wanted me to hold you, and I held you and you told me that you had cancer, but you never said that it was AIDS. Why didn’t I make you tell me? It might have helped, not keeping it a secret.

I remember us drinking coffee in the afternoon. I told you things about my life. You were sad and told me what you had gone through when J. died just five

14

Cecilia Torquato

months earlier. Then you told me that you had gotten tested and… And? You didn’t say anything else. I asked: Did it come back positive? I remember it as if you hesitated. As if time stood still. You answered: No. Was my face loaded with fear when I asked you?

Was it like I was begging you to lie to me? What did you see in my face? That I wanted a negative answer?

Because I did. I wanted you to be healthy.

My best friend, I wasn’t your best friend when you died. I never understood your loneliness. I should have stayed with you so much more. I who know that kisses don’t infect, I got tested. I who was still healthy, I once went into your room with a surgical mask on. I remember­­­ how you looked at me. I wanted to pull the mask off. But I didn’t.

People at your job were in a panic. The ones who had chosen not to get their kids vaccinated against tuberculosis were upset. Mad at you. Mad at me, ­ ­because I had been with you at the hospital. And like an angry mob, they cried out how irresponsible you had been by continuing to go to work and not telling them what was going on. Many of them got tested. And one of them who had visited you told the others details about how you looked when you were sick.

My dear friend, I wanted to forbid her from going to see you, but you were so happy when she came. You were so happy when anyone came. I was ashamed of her. I was ashamed of them.

You kept a notebook at your place with four names written in it. Four of your friends left their phone numbers so the nurses could call if something happened.

You who had had so many men around you when you

The video which is a part of the work Unexplainable Photographs can be found on vimeo.com/90070445

15

were healthy … now you only had women left. And one of these gossiped about your condition. A person’s innermost character comes out when it is confronted with death.

They sent for your mother. One month later, you died.

I inherited unexplainable photographs. Pictures of you with J. Pictures of you with other male friends.

Your mother gathered up all those pictures and gave them to me. I felt like she was trying to deny your life.

And I thought: She took care of you when you were going to die, but she didn’t want to know who you had been when you were living.

A long time later, I was hospitalized. It was for a completely different reason—I did not have a terminal disease and I was not about to die. But when my condition was at its worst, I was hooked up to machines; the doctors closely monitored my heart and eight people in green coats rushed around me. I couldn’t control my bowels and before we knew what was going on, I honestly thought I was going to die. In that moment, betrayed by my own dysfunctional body, I understood what you had gone through. I had just been moved to the cardiac intensive care unit when the man I lived with announced he was going out to buy a paper. Go buy a paper? My heartbeat was irregular; doctors with furrowed brows were glued to the beeping heart moni­ tor and he was going to buy a newspaper.

I looked at him with the same entreating look that you had once given me, when I had a mask on and was in a hurry to leave. Life that seems to be ending. life that goes on outside. He left and I thought that he had

16

seemed so bored. I felt like I had ruined his weekend.

Later, when everything was stabilized and I was alone in my hospital room, I cried. And cried. A man walked in. At first he seemed embarrassed at seeing me cry. Then he continued into the room, acting a little rushed. He told me he was an intern—even though he was not wearing a white coat or a name badge. He sat down on the edge of my bed.

The man told me he had to listen to my heart and stuck his hand under my hospital gown—without a stethoscope. He used his bare hand. I looked at him, and he saw the sharpness in my gaze. He knew that I knew. He got scared; I felt confused. Then he disappeared just as quickly as he had come. He had come into my room solely to touch my breasts.

The same day that I had lain in intensive care, I’d also been felt up by a stranger. So pathetic. So sad. I couldn’t cry any more. Everything had become so … ­ridiculous.

You gain perspective in strange ways sometimes.

During my days at the hospital, I thought mostly about you. About how alone you must have felt. But unlike you, I knew that I would get better, I wasn’t ­going to be drawn into illness for the rest of my life.

You knew that you were going to die.

My dear friend, I can’t forgive myself that I wasn’t with you every day at the end of your life. You are dead, but my love isn’t and it probably never will be, and even if we two never made love we just as well could have.

18

Nevena Ekimova

Global performance Pussy Riot emerged as a carnivalesque movement with a filthy message, from the underground, in 2012. They rapidly transgressed all kinds of borders and limits: between countries, of politics, music, sexuality, art theory, religion, philosophy etc. And most certainly between political and esthetical positions: their radical thinking and show off performances attracted ignorant liberals as well as uncompromising radicals in the West, and when it occurred, paradoxically, that the actions directed towards the patriarchal Russian orthodox church were grounded in religious faith, the esteem for them grew even among believers in their own country. Pussy Riots were doubly successful with their thoroughly reflected actions: They carnivalized the world and made it reflect, and they actualized the potential of contemporary art when it dares to actualize advanced reflection together with radicality, subjectivity and sparkle. This global carnival (in which the main indecency consisted in pointing out some similarities of Stalinism and the rule of the global markets) ended in December 2014 when Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina could leave their prisons, took of their carnivalesque balaclavas and begun working with humanitarian and political projects from a more traditional Russian, liberal position. There must be an end to carnivals.

22

Johan Öberg

It was a historical necessity that Slavoj Žižek would note Pussy Riot, and most certainly their charismatic chief ideologist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova—the Rosa Luxemburg of our time. Žižek initiated a correspondence with her of a similar kind that Russians in exile had practiced already in the 19th century. Within the realm of that genre—”letters from remote areas”—he wrote to her, optimistically, and soothingly, on January 2 2013:

1. http://www.theguardian. com/music/2013/nov/15/ pussy-riot-nadezhdatolokonnikova-slavoj-zizek

John Jay Chapman, an American political essayist, wrote this about radicals in 1900: “They are really always saying the same thing. They don’t change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and a mania for power, indifference to the fate of their cause, fanaticism, triviality, lack of humour, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of persistent radicals. To all appearance, nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honoured pitch is G flat.” Isn’t this a good description of the effect of Pussy Riot performances? In spite of all accusations, you sound a certain note. It may appear that people do not follow you, but secretly, they believe you, they know you are telling the truth, or, even more, you are standing for truth.1

23

24

Jenny Simm

galleri plywood is a plywood board (200×88×0,5 cm) It began as a photographic work for an exhibition where the plywood board, with accompanying photograph, moved out into the streets at night and into the gallery space during the day. The piece was inspired by poster culture and the photograph was printed in a standard copier machine and then pasted up on the plywood board.

After the exhibition period, the idea to offer the plywood board as an exhibition space to invited artists, shifted Jenny Simm’s role from that of artist to gallery owner. There is a set of rules, which is called the Galleri Plywood framework, in which it is written that the plywood board will move once a day during the exhibition period, as an outlet for the gallery owner interest in space and movement. galleri plywood is a non-profit gallery that works on a voluntary basis. It is a meeting place between art and urban space. A starting point for conversations about art, public space and what it means to combine the two.

25

Artist’s Statement You are welcome in this state.

26

Yngvild Saeter

Artist Statement Yngvild Saeter’s work focuses on the role and power of symbols and icons in contemporary culture. By utiliz­ ing puns as well as playing on the unifying power of icons, she creates large scale installations designed to make an instant impact.

She works and lives.

27

Mourl Ferryman

News from Valand A wha gwaan darlin tell mi sintin sweet Yu no ears de chatta deh pon de street?

Yeh man!

She tek errself go gwaan dung a Valand Seh sah ow she ave purpose seh sah ow she ave plan.

She seh she naah drylaan nah a chatta to Swede no matta ow lova or fambily plead She seh sah how Jahweh gif err seh she can an she gwaan go dung deh far she ave a plan.

Me seh, but wait wha can lang ole cow do?

She sheh eh eh watch me ow me gwan show you!

A laan me a til an a seed me a plaan an yu waan cum step ya tell me seh mi caan?

Chu gyal stop chatta ya foolishness dese art tings a stir up yuh brain to mess!

Yuh tink seh Babylonia care It gwain suck ya dry and den strip ya bare.

Hunuh tink is fe art dat me tek disya route?

Is in tocum dark dawta dis seed gwaan a fruit Yes Bwoy!

A now you fully overstand when me seh me ave purpose, how me ave a plan.

A wha gwaan darlin tell mi sintin sweet Yu no ears de chatta deh pon de street?

Yeh man!

She tek errself go gwaan dung a Valand Seh sah ow she ave purpose seh sah ow she ave plan.

Listen my daarlins and I’ll tell yu sumthing sweet It’s right the gossip out on the street.

I’m here at this artschool this place this Valand for I have a purpose now I have a plan.

How are you my friend, I will tell you something sweet, have you heard the / gossip out on the street? / Yes of course! / She has gone away down to a place called Valand saying how she has a purpose, saying how she has a plan. / She says she’s not a tourist nor there to chatter with Swedes, no matter how her lover or her family pleads. / She says how a divine Dread told her that she can, so she is going to go down there because she has a plan. / I said, wait a minute what can a tall, old cow do? / She just laughed and said watch me see how I’m going to show you! / Here is land I must till and a seed I must plant. Do you dare to step up and tell me that I can’t? / Really girl stop talking such foolishness this art thing has stirred up your brain to mess. Do you really think that you’ll make the artworld care? / It’s going to suck you dry and then strip you bare. / So you think it’s for the artworld I’m taking this route? / It’s in my future dark daughters this seeds going to fruit. / Yes Friend! Now you will create not just understand when I say I have purpose, how I have a plan. / How are you my friend? / I will tell you something sweet, have you heard the / gossip out on the street? / Yes of course! / She has gone away down to a place called Valand. Saying how she has a purpose, saying how she has a plan. Listen my darlings and I’ll tell you something sweet, it’s right the gossip out on the street. / I’m here at this artschool, this place, this Valand for I have a purpose now I have a plan.

The video work News From Valand is available on vimeo.com/88876623

29

Dorna Aslanzadeh

1. Ebba Witt-Brattström, “en kvinna tar till orda – Intervju med Hélène Cixous,” Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift, no 4, 1987 p. 14, my translation.

The fundamental basis of home is the community and the feeling of belonging. The good home doesn’t know of any privileged or left out people, no pets, and no stepchildren. Here nobody looks down on one another. Nobody tries to obtain advantages on somebody else’s expense, the strong neither oppresses nor plunders the weak. In the good home likeness prevails […].

Per Albin Hansson Prime minister of Sweden 1932-1936, and 1936-46

Home— displacement The French writer Hélène Cixous once said “language is my home country, and this goes for all writers.”1 In other words writing becomes a place to inhabit for those whose language doesn’t automatically imply belonging. Once upon a time this made sense for me. But the more I write, the more uncertain I grow. Writing is not a home, it is at best a negotiation of home.

A friend asked me: “But don’t you have a place to cherish, somewhere where you feel more at home than at any other place, perhaps where you grew up, in S…?”

I answered. “Sure I do, I feel at home there, but nobody else feels that way about me there, so, I’ve got a problem.”

Friend turns her head down.

I come from a place in the southern part of Sweden,

32

Mara Lee Gerdén

known for its fields of rapeseed and its racism. That is home. In between yellow rape and persecution. A thin edge, a moving border, wherever I live. Quote: “The border makes up the homeland. It prohibits and gives passage in the same stroke,”2 says Hélène Cixous. Gloria Anzaldùa might answer: “This is her home, this thin edge of barbwire.”3 When home is extending, stretching, there must be displacement, thus Trinh T. Minhha: “Displacement takes on many faces and is our very everyday dwelling.”4 This should not only be seen as an expansion of the private sphere into the public. Inscribing displacement into “home” makes its borders move, and could eventually make sense of why some of us shiver before this very word.

2. Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, transl. Cornell & Sellers (Columbia UP, 1993), p. 130.

3. Gloria Anzaldùa, Borderlands/La frontera ­(Aunt Lutebooks, 1978) p. 20 4. Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Elswhere, within here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event (Routledge, 2010), p. 12.

At home In the Swedish language, the displacement of home is integrated in the notion of home to the extent that we don’t quite notice it. This may be the case in other languages as well, but Swedish comes across as one of the few languages where a person who has never had a home might still persist in having had a home, all her life: barnhem [orphanage], fosterhem [foster home], daghem [daycare center], familjehem [“family home,” i.e. a family that takes care of others’ children], gästhem [guest-house], sjukhem [nursing home], vandrarhem [youth hostel], hotellhem [transitory home for homeless], avlastningshem [place where relatives put elderly or sick people for temporary relieve and

33

5. Victor Klemperer, LTI. Tredje rikets språk. En filologs anteckningsbok, preface: Charlotta Brylla & Otto Fischer, transl. Tommy Andersson (Glänta produktion, 2006), p. 58f.

34

rest], behandlingshem [place for diverse medical treatments], ålderdomshem [home for old people] etc.

The linguistic diaspora of the Swedish home is concealed by a presumptive intrinsic goodness that points directly into the heart of Swedishness: Folkhemmet [the Peoples home]. By means of the language use of the Folkhem, we are always at home, no matter how homeless we are. (My assumption that das Unheimlische [the unhomely, i.e., the uncanny] never had any enormous impact on Swedish readers could be referred to the fact that the word home, in Swedish, already is imbued by its opposite, without the detour around etymological speculations.) In Swedish, a home is far from always home, but just as often storage for those who don’t have one.

I think about this peculiar way of language. Ideology. It’s dangerous closeness to the observation of Victor Klemperer that the prefix “volk” suddenly was attached to everything and nothing in the Third Reich language use: Volksfest, Volksgenosse, Volksgemeinschaft, volksnah, volksfremd, volksentstammt…5 All other comparisons left aside, though I wonder: what is it that we so desperately want to cover up? What do we achieve by calling that which is exactly the opposite of a home—for instance an orphanage—home?

Well, the Swedish language hereby forces that which is foreign and away, to become a part of home.

Through a neutralizing language use it compels what is Other to merge into the Same. (This strategy seems to be coherent with other aspects of Folkhemmet.) This language use thus renders certain experiences of oppression and exclusion invisible, which hereby stay si-

lenced and mute within the Swedish language context.

I wonder, could this have anything to do with the formation of the subject? The becoming of a subject as it is described by Jacques Lacan? Short version: The human subject is born through the méconnaissance, the misrecognition that the infant experiences when seeing itself in the mirror and mistaking the perfect mirror reflection for him- or herself in an act of erring identification. In other words, the difference between the helpless infant body and the intact mirror image is set aside, and the infant assumes the image as him- or herself. Thus, not only is misrecognition fundamental for human identity, so is the erasure of otherness and difference, which might provide an explanation to some extent of why the repression of difference seems inherent in at least some of us (though I am fully aware that it doesn’t explain anything particular about Sweden).

“But what do you mean, you always had a home?”

“Children’s home, foster home, nursing home, do you call that home?”

“Well, it’s also home, another kind of home, but still a home.”

When homelessness doesn’t have a proper place in language, it moves restlessly between vicarious homes and haunts (in Swedish: hemsöker) them, becomes source of infection, destructive and spoils the neat language use that was supposed to give everybody a home.

The hegemonic standing of home in our language is symptomatic. It cannot be pure chance that the Swedish language happens to excel in appropriating otherness and that it with uncanny exactitude manages to

35

6. Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, p. 118.

36

bring home every shifting nuance of un-home. Why? I quote: “This is our emotional, our personal and political problem, the fact that we can’t bear exclusion.”6 Thus Hélène Cixous. And even though she claims she talks about people in general and their fear of descending into “les domaines inférieures,” I know that deep inside, she speaks about Sweden: “we can’t bear exclusion. We are afraid of it, we hate to be separated,” she says.

Cixous describes the Folkhem without knowing that she does, the beautiful vision that wanted to include everybody, even languagewise. She points directly to it’s very core, that no one be left aside, with no exceptions, and that no one should have to be excluded, but under certain conditions, of course: submission, homogenization, adaption.

Beautiful thought, but being situated in that language, incorporating an experience that won’t be pronounced or articulated, is dwelling next to madness.

The situation strikes you as even worse when trying to address a critique against a political language system whose intention so explicitly is to do good, and nothing else. Here a Henry Louis Gates quote might be in its place: “If you win, you lose.”

The idea of a country where everybody is supposed to feel at home all the time and everywhere and where every sign of exclusion is expelled, is at the same time beautiful and doomed to failure. Because there is one thing worse than exclusion, and that is exclusion that will be refused recognition.

And there is one thing worse than oppression, and that is oppression that will be refused recognition.

And there is at least one thing worse than difference, and that is difference that will be refused recognition.

Maybe that is the reason why our contemporary culture literally excesses in the production of artificial Others. When Otherness cannot be recognized, but instead constantly is renounced in the name of “we’re all alike,” Otherness will then be displaced and expressed in and through bodies whose otherness can be supervised. A field that excels in the administration and domestication of Otherness is popular culture; a domain where Otherness is subjected to supervision through a logic of consumption that disarms it’s subversive potential in order to let us consume it on a confortable distance and through forms that we immediately recognize. Thus the existence of constructed Others: How else is it possible that a secular culture like ours can manifest such an abundance of monsters, vampires, werewolves and living dead?

Trinh T Minh-ha often says: We can not content ourselves with asking for the “What,” we always have to ask ourselves “How,” before a word, a sentence, a question.7 How we enter a language, where we end up, and how meaning is incorporated with and through us, is not a matter of choice. However we can choose to listen or not to listen, we can choose to act on the fact that words and bodies always are situated in relation to other words and bodies, in various relations of power.

We can choose to close our eyes or not before that fact that production of meaning is a process, never stable, always on the move—a word that seems innocent in my eyes constitutes a deadly weapon for another body.

And the least thing you can do before this fact, is to

7. My own notes from the Ph.D seminar Postcoloniality and it’s Critical Tools, UC Berkeley, fall 2012.

37

cease weeping about it.

The optician: “But please you cannot wear those glasses, they cover up half your face!”

She: “That’s the point. If you have happen to have this face, in this country, you don’t want to be seen.”

She points to her face.

The optician: “Oh my God that’s so horrible please don’t say that, it’ll make me cry.”

Tears come pouring in the optician’s eyes.

She comforts the optician.

38

Lisa Grip

41

The Space between Out There and In Here I walk up the stairs and step over the threshold into Valand Academy so that I can be transformed.

After many years working in the field, I have chosen to become a student again in order to gain a time and a place that I hope will lead to reflection, artistic practice and development. I think about the conversations people have here, the language they use, and wonder how I will adapt to all of this. If language is power, do I have to learn a new language to be allowed in here?

At the seminar on political film held at Valand Academy足last fall, people talked about the need to minimize the distance between producer and editor, to let them be one and the same and thereby take control of the production. Does this also apply to the curator and the artist, to art and our contemporary society, to the academy and its students?

I come from a practical background, most 足recently from dramatic productions for children and young adults. In that field, we are constantly confronted with questions of the relationship between reality and 足theater, spectators and characters, the representation of our contemporary age and what we want to change about it. Do these same questions apply in academia, and if so, where do I fit in now that I am a student? In the theoretical realm, in the practical realm, or somewhere in between? In the space between inside and outside? Is that space hot or cold? Or is it just a little warm and hazy?

42

Julia Boström

In the fall of 2013, I participated in the conference that concluded the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, arranged in conjunction with ­Valand Academy. As a student of curatorial studies, I had hoped to gain a broader knowledge and deeper ­understanding of the art that was displayed as part of the biennial and also to be able to reflect more thoughtfully on it. I had believed that the conversations that took place at the conference would help me to develop my thoughts on the themes and on the role of art in our contemporary consciousness. But I quickly realized that hardly any of the participants were actually in dialogue with each other, and I spent my energy trying to unlock the ideas behind the monologues that were just theorizing on the theories. I felt alienated, ignorant and dense in spite of the fact that I have been dealing with artistic issues throughout my whole career. How many others felt the same way? How many sat there like I did, trying to crack the code, to break down the barrier of language in order to get over that threshold and access the ideas themselves?

I long for a serious discussion both of and with our audiences. If we hope that art will contribute to a ­reflection of our contemporary world, inspire debate or call people to action, we have to be able to meet the public on their level. If the language surrounding art is impenetrable, our audiences will feel unwelcome in and alienated from these discussions.

43

This issue makes me think of Virginia Woolf. For me, getting an education at Valand Academy is like having a room of my own, a space constructed of time and borrowed money. I have to try to manage this time well, and I have to dare to do, show and talk about art. The “room” where this will happen just might be in that space between practice and theory. But do we need to find a new and more accessible language with which to reflect on artistic practice? Is it the curator’s job to invent this language? What should it sound like?

Who should be allowed to use it? And whose duty is it to grind down the threshold to the academy?

44

45

Lotta Antonsson

47

At the time of the third reading Vid tiden för den tredje läsningen

Во время третего чтения

On June 11 2013 the Russian State Duma passed the third reading of a federal bill regarding prohibition of sharing “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships.” About twenty activists are protesting in front of the Duma. They are surrounded by the police and a great number of journalists. The proposition passes which means that the law will be applied as soon as it is signed by Putin. The purpose of the law is to “protect children from information that can bring harm to their health and wellbeing.”

Meanwhile sixty people gather on an island. It is the tenth anniversary of the camp, an opportunity to meet and socialize in a relaxed atmosphere. They are friends

48

Annika Karlsson Rixon

and lovers, some of them brought their children. Many have been here before and most of them know each other. Scattered camps are put up, fire wood are being chopped, campfires lit and people are cooking together. Joint activities are organized in the evenings: information exchange, discussions, and a yearly returning ritual with burning torches carried through the forest. A newly founded band from Moscow are playing, and one of the elder women, Elena, is singing her own songs with lesbian lyrics. Her songs are familiar and many sing along. The participants come from Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd, Arkhangelsk and other places around Russia.

49

Daniel Wendler

Amplified silences from a castle’s 36 rooms. The audio work Wealth is available on soundcloud.com/valand-academy/daniel-wendler-mfa2-wealth

51

52

Tyrone Martinsson

Arctic views— environmental concerns The Arctic is often talked about as the canary in the coalmine. This is due to its fragile ecosystem and its fast responses to environmental changes from global warming. The Arctic environment is changing fast, and its current state is critical and on the verge of ecological disaster. In Svalbard the evidence is clear. The warming air and sea is melting the seasonal sea ice and ice bound in glaciers. The landscape is changing and our perceptions and representations of the frozen far north are changing. To work for saving the Arctic, conservation of wild places and a sound relationship to nature, we need to start demanding a change to our lifestyle and our modern industrialised economy towards a real sustainable society.

The map, made by David Buchan, in this image is of Magdalenefjorden from 1818. The top images a (1872) and b (1896) and c (2012) are of the Hanging glacier, now gone. The images d (1926), e (2012), f (1872) and g (2012) are of Gullybreen, retreating fast. Working here I wondered whether the bay had looked that different from the Dutch discoverers in 1596 and Buchan’s visit in 1818. When did the more dramatic changes occur?

What will this place look like in 20, 50, 100 or even ten years from now?

53

Linn Granlund

Disorder to Order is a site-specific sculpture consisting of gravel placed on a concrete floor. The stones were collected from the streets of Gothenburg and brought into Valand Academy’s gallery Rotor2.

55

The Transformation Once upon a time I was a woman who became p ­ regnant without planning to. I hadn’t only become pregnant without planning to, I had absolutely planned not to. I had taken all the measures a woman can take to avoid it: I had taken the pill every morning, the one that makes your breasts grow and makes you bloated, that prevents the ovaries from releasing eggs into the uterus, that prevents the mucous membranes of the uterus from swelling up, allowing the egg to attach to the soft lining. But somehow it happened anyway; an egg must have been released and traveled through the Fallopian tubes and attached to the membrane that at that exact moment was filled with blood and ready to make a child. Whether or not I was ready was irrelevant. Without knowing what my body was preparing for, I let a man fill me and ejaculate inside me and give me the pleasure only a man can give when he holds your arms tightly and gasps and releases himself inside you. This man couldn’t know that in that moment, he had become a father. Nor could the woman know that in that moment, she had become a mother. They knew nothing but an embrace and a gush and a spasm, and the darkness that fills the soul afterwards.

*

She swells up. Her breasts ache and her stomach is gassy, she feels it bubbling and hissing in there as if

56

Kristina Iversen Translated by Dr. Suzanne Martin Cheadle

something is about to boil. When she doesn’t get her period when she should, she sits on the toilet, closes her eyes and cries. She swallows her sobs as best she can and goes to the pharmacy to buy a test so that she will know for sure. But her body already knows. When the line appears on the test, it pierces straight through her body, her senses.

Having the child is not an option; she has always known that she is not a mother. Today I know more than that, she says to herself. I am not only not a mother. Today I know that I am also a murderer. She looks at her grim face in the mirror and suddenly smiles.

How similar they are, these two words. Mother and murderer.

*

She is terribly naïve, this woman, for she thinks it is easy to commit murder. If not easy emotionally, then at least practically. She goes to the doctor, tells him what she has decided. He nods and does what doctors need to do so that women like her can have choices.

She goes to the hospital, gets the pills she is supposed to get. She takes two before going home. She lies when they ask her if she will be alone at home. “No, I have my husband,” she says. She doesn’t say, “But he’s away right now.” She thought that from now on, she has to be her own husband. The nurse nods. “You may feel

57

some discomfort,” she says. “If you have a fever or pain that continues into the day after tomorrow, you will need to go to the doctor.”

*

The doctor says that she is six weeks along. Along what? she thinks, and it feels like a purification as the blood gushes out of her in waves. Between contractions, she lies on the warm tiles of the bathroom floor and thinks dramatically: This is my sacrifice. She lies there all evening and all night and doesn’t feel any more sorry for herself than other times when she’s been sick. She follows her usual routines: makes a cup of tea, wraps a wool blanket around herself. Soon the sickness is over, it has left her. Had it been it male or female? She doesn’t know. He doesn’t get to know, either. She is still suspicious that he knows, that he can see that something is different. She goes around scared that he will suddenly see that she has become a different person.

*

The weeks pass and she feels a pressure growing inside her. Eventually, she no longer recognizes herself in the mirror. It is as if something has attached itself to the inside of the small of her back, something that is destroying the rhythm and balance of her body, making everything collapse. She goes to the doctor and says, “I don’t recognize myself.” “What do you mean?” he asks.

“I think the fetus is still inside me,” she says, and thinks about how dumb she must sound. She is scared that she is depressed, that all this shit has made her imbalanced.

58

She doesn’t want to be the sort of person who can’t have an abortion without developing posttraumatic stress disorder.

*

The fetus is still there. “How is this possible?” she asks at the ultrasound. “It might have been twins,” says the midwife. “Then the usual dose might have been too small. Maybe only the one came out.” Now some stupid half-dead little boy is floating around in her stomach and feeding off of her. He is three and a half months and too old for an abortion. “We advise everyone to deliver at this point,” says the midwife. “The fetus is likely brain-damaged from the abortion medicine.”

“And then?” the woman asks. “Then it dies,” answers the midwife.

*

So the woman goes up to the hospital again and takes more pills. And has more contractions. And then once again her body pushes out blood and flesh and the boy who might be half-dead or brainless. And then he lies there with his heart still beating. And then it stops beating. And then she gets to look at him. And then they take him away. To the trash, or to be buried alongside someone else. She cries and she sleeps and she wakes, and she will never be herself again. When she wakes, she is a different person; when she wakes, she has become a man. The man she has to be, for herself.

59

Spermwhore—a film about longing for children. By and with Anna Linder, Hanna HÜgstedt, Juli Apponen and Zafire Vrba. Cinematographer: Maja Borg.

60

Anna Linder

The story’s right to exist.

Whose stories are being told. Who is the storyteller.

Consider this.

The storyteller’s story. Who is being told.

Consider this.

Are they being told. Consider this.

Furthermore. Are they being retold.

Confined. Locked in. Hidden. Forgotten.

The room for these stories is someone else’s room.

Whose stories are being told there.

Consider this.

Conditions. Invisible rules. State of emergency.

Invisible stories in invisible rooms.

Visible stories in visible rooms.

Visibility. The act of making something visible.

Vision. Viewed upon. The sight of.

The preservation. The selection.

Availability. Difficulty.

Privilege. Privileged.

Forced occupancy. Multi-occupancy.

And meanwhile the fragility.

And meanwhile the vulnerability.

And meanwhile the fears.

The openings. Other rooms appear clearer. Defined.

Safer.

Meanwhile confinement. Thick walls. High ceiling.

Institutionalisation. Encapsulation. Transformation.

Location. Room. Time.

Received. Published.

Archived.

Told.

61

What if … you walk in just after people had sex in this room? … you walk in just after someone died on the floor? … you walk in just after a party where people barbequed a whole pig, ate it with coleslaw and margueritas, and eventually abused a guy? … you walked in just when the election was completed? … the table was set? … you walk in patterns, or approach the room improperly? … you squeeze along these walls, press your chest and legs against them, tongue out, licking the walls and floors, licking the stone plates? … you crawl, sleep, carry a bucket of water? … you pour out water, and keep pouring? … you run through the rooms, and after you two policemen and one security guard, who chased you down the subway escalator, to here? … something grew in the room: was it part of you? … it was a child that grew? … it was cells developing in another way? … you walk in just when a person cleans the room? … you were sexually drawn to the walls and floors, you didn’t recognize this force to swallow and penetrate the room, to become the room? … you looked down on your arm, and your skin was lighter or darker than you imagined, and the walls had skin?

62

Maja Hammarén

… you walked in over sand, looked for border police and took off your backpack right here, on no side of the border, couldn´t you name this land? … the room was filled with cattle and horses, the smell of fur, grass, animal droppings? … you moved through wolves, prowling, guarding, suckling wolves? … your shoes got stuck here, and you looked down and saw, where there used to be floors, there were now muddy fields, soil was stuck under your soles? … you had no habit of entering a room, or your body couldn’t be separated from the surroundings? … parts of the doorway were hanging on your back? … you had the same color as the room, you couldn’t separate your arm from the wall from your legs from the floor? … you felt a strong attraction to the room and you would lay down, and hump and lick and rub it? … you were made of stone, and the floor and you were stoned for decades and one day made a move— imagine these moves! … you jumped across the floors, little froggy? … you couldn’t enter the room, the vegetation was too thick and impenetrable? … the room reached on forever, and the vegetation would change over time when you moved further in, and eventually you would reach water and you’d tilt your long neck, shake your mane and a few flies from your face, and drink?

63

Ellinor Lager

65

Lotta Antonsson Artist and Professor Photography. Systematic Derangement of the Senses I (2010).

Dorna Aslanzadeh Master Student Fine Art. Repeating, Remembering and Working Through from the Group Exhibition As if Silence(s) at Tjolöholm Castle (2013).

Amanda Björk Bachelor Student Fine Art. Work in progress.

Julia Boström Master Student Film Curating. The Space between Out There and In Here is especially written for the publication.

Nevena Ekimova Bachelor Student Fine Art. From the series Deal with it!

Mourl Ferryman Master Student Fine Art. News from Valand is a work that was created when Mourl Ferryman moved from the UK to study in Sweden.

Mara Lee Gerdén Writer and Doctoral Student of Literary Composition.

Home—displacement is a text from Mara Lee Gerdén’s PhD project Skrivande som förändring – skrivande som ansvar.

Linn Granlund Bachelor Student Fine Art. Disorder to Order is a site-specific sculpture (2013).

Lisa Grip Bachelor Student Photography. Work in progress.

66

Maja Hammarén Artist and Lecturer Photography. What If is a text performed at the exhibition Even A Perfect Crime Leaves A Trace at Göteborgs Konsthall (2013).

Sara Kruse Bachelor Student Fine Art. From the series Isolerad.

Kristina Iversen Student Literary Composition.

The Transformation is a work in progress.

Anna Linder Curator and Researcher of Film. From Anna Linder’s re­­sear­ch project Queera rörliga bilder.

Ellinor Lager Bachelor Student Fine Art. Wind Machine.

Tyrone Martinsson Researcher and Lecturer Photography. Arctic views— environmental concerns from Tyrone Martinsson’s research project Retografi: en dialog med historia i ett arktiskt landskap.

Annika Karlsson Rixon Artist and Doctoral Student Photography. At the time of the third reading from Annika Karlsson Rixon’s PhD project State of Mind.

Yngvild Saeter Bachelor Student Fine Art. Utan titel was made during a course in creative writing.

Jenny Simm Bachelor Student Photography. gallery plywood.

67

Cecilia Torquato Film Maker and Lecturer of Film.

Unexplainable Photographs.

Daniel Wendler Master Student Fine Art. Wealth from the Group Exhibition As if Silence(s) at Tjolรถholm Castle (2013).

Mick Wilson Artist, Reseacher and Head of Valand Academy. In here, out there is especially written for the publication.

Johan ร berg Critic and Head of Literary Composition at Valand Academy.

Global performance is especially written and translated for the publication.