Introduction – an ecology of things/thinking, p 3 Gate 1 - Making things matter, into meaning into matter, p 4
Today - Making spaces, making oneself at home, p 8 Yolking – time and value, p 10
Objects on the wall – practice & context, p 11
Axels tårar - Choreographies for changing the mode of conduct, p 12 Poetry and poetics, p 15
Poetic Procedures – hosting the touch and the voice, p 15 Pancor and Segula - signing of the sheets, p 16 The Stellar Blanket - poetics and poetry tools, p 17
Tiles & Titles - the human touch on words – voices form the universe, p 18 Through my mothers hands – a black box acting like a white cube. p 20
Introduction – an ecology of things/thinking
An ecology of things/thinking is a textual work, a document of my thinking and the things I have created during my master studies in fine arts at Konstfack. As the title and word suggests ‘ecology’, it is a material practice. I have called it a choreographic step entering this
education. With several motives and desires and with a ten-year background in dance and choreography, the main thread has been to look into the object and installation work I have been doing. in which objects, clothes and larger sculptures have been ways for me to
understand choreography not only entangled in dance but in everything. Concepts/words like hospitality, temporality and context are reoccurring topics of my inquiries, as I understand the human with great plastic qualities and potential. In my work I always need to consider the context, pre-conditions and conditions for a dance to emerge.
I see the body as both reading and writing machine, we cannot only produce text, dance and objects, but we also read and write the movement in between things, the larger choreography and the interwoven parts. Doing dance and choreography, my artistic practice blends these notions in both making objects or exhibitions, dancing for others or myself, writing poetry and curating events. For my master studies I needed to leave the more
spectacle-like parts of dance and performance out of my palette of expressions. I wanted to let the objects and installation work have more agency, still working with choreography. The situation/context – Konstfack became my field of study and from where I could speak/create from.
For this essay I want to put forward the different languages and materials at work during the process of both reading and writing an art object and the experience of art. The essay is structured with different sections where I write and examine the work,
background and possible theoretical departure points, starting from the first official work and ending with the last. I will discuss how I have made the work, my motives and interests, the results and reactions that followed. As choreographic step entering this master, this text is my footprints.
Gate 1 - Making things matter, into meaning into matter
Gate 1 was the first thing I officially showed in the group show Code together with my fellow
students in the first year of the Masters course. For the exhibition I wanted to use the old set design from my solo show MOPA - I disappear in darkness1 that also later had been made into miniature golf course set-up in The Poeticians – The Cat Café2. I found it fitting to revisit old work for a new beginning.
I made a gate, which was intended to represent a performative gesture of entry and exit. In the gate a portable coffee station was also
installed for the guests of the event, as well as a guestbook and some large sized playing cards with information about the work and me and some poetry. The material being part of previous work already has a history of recycling and rewriting. Originally the material was collected during my project
Squatting Sodom3 where I did a call out for used material. I got several meters of a fake grass mat (previously used as set design by the
Swedish feminist collective ÖFA). I also received used MDF boards from choreographer Sybrig Doctor (that was the leftovers from her Camera Obscura). This already used material became the material and sign of this new chapter in my life. The gate was constructed with 45 x 45 mm sticks then covered by the already cut boards and mats. Some boards also needed re-cutting to fit the new measurements of the gate. The gate is both a personal and artistic sign of the old and new, as well as an installation/choreography that people can go through. Neatly
1
MOPA – I disappear in darkness is the second part of the choreographic trilogy MOPA. It is a performance lecture about the previous part of the project MOPA – Preparing for battle. The lecture performance is completely made in rhyme
2 Second version of The Poeticians. This time as pop-‐up human cat café with a miniature gold course,
starting and ending with the installation Play by British artist Stuart Mayes.
3 Squatting is a self-curating project and performance where I live and work in space. The second time I did this
placed close to the entrance, the gate suggested also an entry to the exhibition, making a performative gesture to the audience, in general, and adding the semiotics of the
choreography of my own proposal.
Wanting to withdraw from making more clearly stated performances and letting the objects speak for themselves, this became the result. The only part I was
acting/performing in was the hosting aspects of being around and serving coffee from the side of the gate. Starting this MFA I wanted to continue my work around objects as tools for social interaction and/or a possible interface between humans. Not only pointing at the material anchor, that we are also made of material, but a way to convey and receive/transmit
knowledge. The body is equipped with five senses; these are all tactical machineries at work. Depending on context, concert, a theatre play or a comic strip etc., humans have made cuts in the line of what machineries to use. We live in a highly visual world. When we use our eyes to read text or images the eyes become the dominant vehicle for communication. But what I believe has happened is it makes the other senses less available. When most information is transmitted through the eye, other senses get shut down. I believe that the performative is also reading objects, things, sounds, and touch, not only text. When the subject navigates through time and space it is in relation to things and thinking. If everything is language and thinking is made possible through language, then feeling, touching, sensing etc., must be understood as a thinking too, an activeness with things. So when I see an object I read the object and I am with the object at the same time. What I mean by this is that I believe there is a closeness that’s being created in that moment. Which is a different relation than reading about an object later to encounter it. In the moment of witnessing an exhibition, being part of an event that has many layers of information there is always a multiple speaking and listening happening. It is from this place I want to work from. A choreography not engaged with dance, nevertheless engaging with several points of entry
There is meaning in the matter if we make it, humans subscribe value to things, some are obvious and some are really make believe. Some have qualities that are rare and specific like gold, some are merely signs of value. Objects have always been an important part of my choreographic work. I like to make stuff and I like to collect stuff. As somewhat of a hoarder (I have 6 large boxes of white porcelain objects to name one collection) the objects I collect are usually of low value. The objects insert themselves in an articulated or
understood process and sometimes not. As with the solo performance OF & OFF (2010) my fascination started with finding white porcelain swans at flea markets, at the same time there was a trend of having white walls at home, clean and neat. What I do with my trash, with my
old things, is give it value. I make a new history and create a new meaning for the object. Forming a stock of things, singular objects with similar attributes becomes a mass - a material. As understood with the social fabric, where different ideologies, identities, values and bodies are interwoven. These stocks of things are the beginning of an immaterial and artificial milieu. This process changes the objects into material qualities, thus changing the motives and possibilities when revisited or used in other contexts.
Working with dance and the bodies that dance, it’s clear to me that there is never a dance that hasn’t had its predecessor. In all bodies there are schemas of movement, inhibited and released, trembling and flushing out its interior. No one and nothing will ever be unmarked. It’s through the singularity of things that we open the matrix to the unknown and to the things we know, to expand, thus expanding ourselves. Not only do I think there is an ethics to be found in this expansion but there is also a momentum to ride and find. Through my years of travelling and living a somewhat nomadic life, I meet and come across many different ways of living. It humbles me and puts my life and myself in perspective. I believe this also creates a bigger and keen interest in understanding other ways of living. This creates empathy and a possible ethics.
I have said that “dance is a human affair”, and in its manifestation there is a history and a future performed in the now/present. The objecthood of a dance is maybe not hard to find, or the inverted subject inside shapes and rhythms. But rather than looking at a dance as closer to an object then subject, the dramaturgical curve is maybe more interesting if we take away any of the polarising attributes. If we think about a subject, an individual, an identity, a singularity the words carry different meanings and agencies to this “one thing” depending on the temporary psychological locality (the mindset of the person) – where the subject places its temporary steering and navigation, the “one thing” will move, relate, mutate differently. We move with what we know, but as with the saying; it’s just luggage.
If an exhibition has a pre-written path or not, there is always a becoming choreography of the audience, how they move in the space. What Gate1 proposes and what I wanted to produce slightly differently than the paintings or objects, perhaps was to create a more kinesthetic approach. When we move, we move through space. As attentive as we are as humans, noticing or not, these tentacle devices we have, sight, touch, hearing etc. – help us navigate through time and space. Moving through something, as with Gate1, the body starts activating a fuller awareness and reading of the terrain (the exhibition). What this
choreography then could do is to give this “full” body to the other things in the exhibition. With a more activated body than before the body/the reader/ the audience is more keen to
interact and change perspectives on the things it experiences because it has more options available, more body available.
In Gate 1 I specifically used old works and used material to make a new
beginning. The historic note of mine is equally important and not for an audience member, it depends from where you come from. Still, as a maker that chooses their material (clay, wood etc) depending on the aim of the work, I want to emphasise the lived experience as the place I speak from and perhaps the only thing I can truly share and invite people to. In a metaphorical sense I needed to first make the door to the house, before I could invite someone into the art I wanted to make.
Today - Making spaces, making oneself at home
Rather than only making objects or/and performances as my main expression in the MFA, I needed to look into the actual exhibition as field of study. A default or specific research on its own coming from dance and choreography (choreographing space) highly intensified with “the performative” - performance and performativity as one. Needing to understand the context and also my audience I wanted to put my work and myself out there. Through
exposing things they become clearer but also disruptive and discursive in a performative way when put in a confrontational paradigm as a
performance or exhibition can be. After the show
Code at Platform I decided to make my own event
and exhibition. I felt the need to understand the criteria and procedures of what it would mean when I show only my work. How the context and the idea of an exhibition performs for my work, and how the work performs for the idea (exhibition). I made a one-day exhibition in the student union’s gallery called Today. In the exhibition I presented a prototype of Yolking, the practice piece Objects on
the wall and the first official proposals of Through my mothers hands.
In almost all of my work, I am the host of the event. Hosting is not exactly the same thing as being the owner of a space. I see it a person making things clearer, establishing and making connections. As the host I insert movement and points of departure for the guests. Making links and connections to set the context for my guests to roam freely, discover and meet new people, and of course the art objects. As with a social happening, party or mingle, the host makes connection between people, which at first might be strangers to then become
acquaintances and possibly friends. The connection that the host makes can or should create interest with one another so a further deepening can happen between the two individuals. Similar to this, I’m there to explain and make connection to the art I have made. It is a social stroke on the art object to invest on the relational qualities, part of the experience. This is not necessary a thing I will continue with, as “I always have to be there”. But in relation to being in the school, my practice has been to listen, extract and make possible for me the knowledge that exists in school, based on my belief and pursuit of lived-experience and that this dictates
our choices in life on a much bigger scale then we think. I want and need to be there, as a way to access the thoughts from the visitors, seeing how they relate and look at the objects and so forth.
In November 2015 I was on tour with the piece Seven pleasures by Mette Ingvartsen, finding my colleagues and myself in the aftermath of the Paris attacks just one day after the attack in Paris. It has left a huge mark on me. It has made me question my actions and why I even do art. But foremost it has made me consider lived experience as knowledge, very different from the knowledge we can achieve through reading the news or seeing something on the screen. When the world looks like it does, how can so many people just continue living their
everyday lives? When all the knowledge is a click or two away from our fingertips, how can we not do things differently? I believe it is through the lived that we have to search, that our lived experiences dictate our choices. What I want to do as a human being and as an artist, is to live and let life affect me. And by making clear choices how I move in this world, in which areas, social networks, online and offline, I am the site of my experiences and knowledge production.
What I believe happens in any social space, is that there is a tone, there is a culture and a way in which people talk, think and act. Since I believe that my choreographic work easily could fit into the context of visual arts, my aim has not been to change career but to expand the field of research. By putting myself in a different space, my actions and thinking will slowly alter and clutch onto new surfaces, this is the choreographic step. I, as a singular being, unfold and expand differently depending on context. How I commit and make myself changeable within this space, with all its knowledge, desires and histories, is a choreographic practice. For this reason, I have made it a practice to visit other parts of Konstfack. Meeting other students than just the ones from Fine Art. I read gestures of peoples hand’s, their postures and what I believe are their desires and concerns, as well as listening and asking questions. People could probably give me attributes like curious and kind. I might be these things, but foremost it is something I want to be. I perform for myself and for others to create a chain and mode of relating, giving and receiving. To stay curious is important to me, and it’s something I can perform for myself to create curiosity. By being at Konstfack I create the circumstances and mindset for myself to change or expand.
Yolking – time and value
Made out of coloured silicon and the footprints of my Bloodstones shoes, the covering area around forms an egg-yolk- looking object. A filled yellow circle with footprints. The mobile piece is made for people to literally “step into my shoes” as well as to just stand in. Standing for the sake of just standing, being still for a moment or to stand and watch a piece of art or performance. The Blundstone shoes are intentionally used because it’s the shoes I have worn for many years already; they form a typical footprint as well as being a reference to the author. It’s both a “signed” piece and generic. Seeing the piece in action the most common response is
that the person looks at the footprints, steps inside and then returns the gaze up to the where the feet point (to the art, the coming experience). When stepping into the footprints, with a light touch the yolk performs a disruption in time where the gaze and posture gets re-organised for the viewer as well cushioning the spectator, almost like stepping inside a bubble. In a matter of seconds the piece makes a cut in the already established
choreography/sequencing – walking around looking at art, thus stopping the sequencing and pace of reading/looking. The posture, the gaze, the intention to the art piece – the
circumstances to witness the art gets changed for another pace, as if literally and
choreographically the person puts their foot down, to stand and resist moving for a while. Yolking, through its simple shapes and intention creates the performative circumstances for this, without the necessary motive from the spectator to change its pace or withstand outside pressure as the saying “putting one’s foot down” implies. It happens in the choreography and in the object, to change the time aspects of the choreography so that our perception of time can change and then also change how we relate.
Objects on the wall – practice & context
In Sweden there is saying, “you take what you have,” famously used by the Swedish housemaid, author and chef Kajsa Warg. Living a nomadic life, collecting things, close to hording I have made it a practice of finding new ways of using the things I find and collect.
Objects on the Wall is no exception. It is a practice where I use a series of objects and mount
them on a wall in a pattern resembling a kind of wallpaper. The objects can be a mix of my own collections4 or what is to be found in the space (in this case, Konstfack) As close to ready-made as it gets, still the objects arranged in this way also add another way and layer of reading. There is something comforting in seeing things in order. As a work that functions on the idea of series, there is a promise in the installation that it is the same everywhere you look with just small differences. The eye can rest and attend to the details or quietly meditate on the pattern and meaning of the objects. In my object-based performances, I have been using objects to transmit a constant
choreography of narratives. They might belong to the object, or the objects are used to change the meaning of the performed gesture. The intended use of the object is altered, changed, appropriated and twisted to create new meaning. In a way it is to create a territory for the object, making it closer to the idea of a concept. What I wanted with the Objects on the wall is different; the method here is to
somehow create a vastness, a structure that asks for zooming in on details - like looking at the ocean, singularity within a multitude is felt. Rather than producing a narrative or poetic image, Objects on the wall is utterly material and non-narrative. To listen/see and quietly be within the context outside its normal procedures and values.
Axels tårar - Choreographies for changing the mode of conduct
Axels tårar was my solo exhibition at Konstfack. I was given the space Vita Havet which is a large open exhibition space right when you enter the building, something in-between an exhibition space and a passing through space. I was also given the opportunity to have it I all by myself. My main concern with the space was the already established choreography of the space. I understand the space to have the intention and purpose to exhibit student’s work, but the many layers of choreography (movements of desire, education, needs, necessity, everyday life etc.) makes it also a transitional space. Axels tårar aimed at being both a choreographic work, while at the same time displaying the objects I have been making during my education. It was set in three unofficial installation acts, the opening being the third act and exhibition period being the results of these acts. I installed the objects during night-time so students, teachers and guests were greeted every morning with a “new” exhibition.
Act 0 - Monday morning. The space was completely empty.
Act 1 - Tuesday morning. The walls were covered with objects from the practice piece
Objects on the wall, but instead of filling the whole three existing walls I created a
hedge/horizon from the objects. On one wall I used cut sticks from old works by students and myself in the colours black, yellow pink and white. Arranged in a scattered pattern, the sticks looked a bit like ice cream sprinkles. The second wall and main/centre wall were used for the iconic red chairs of Konstfack, previously used in Today (also seen as the backdrop of the fountain that would later be installed). On the third wall I mounted used boards from my working table. The table is made so that the top boards can be used as a notebook and taken out. When the board is covered with paint or notes, I just replace it with a new one. Besides the walls, I also made a smaller installation slightly off the middle in the space, made out of the remains from Gate1 together with a large egg on a pedestal on top of it.
Act 2, Wednesday morning. The egg and the remains of Gate1 were removed and instead I parked my car on the opposite side of where the egg was placed. During the day I also made conscious decisions to be around and to be seen in the space, getting something from the car etc. The idea was that I was the sign of the author/human being part of the things that were happening in the space.
Act 3, Thursday morning. The fountain Axels tårar was installed, two Yolking pieces were placed around in the space as well as cut pedestals “growing” from around the area of the car.
Axels tårar - the fountain was in a way the centre piece and the grand finale of the unofficial installation performance. In oversized
measurement of an A5 paper, the
fountain had five red iron sticks in it with eight “flower eyes” welded and attached to them. From the eyes, water was led to drip and flow - as if they were crying. In the pool of the fountain, nine large chewing-gum-looking objects were floating around in the water. On the backside of the chewing gum, glass slides were glued and guests were invited to write notes, poems, and wishes and then to put then back in the pool.
The eyes themselves were the beginning of the fountain. In the summer of 2017 I was working in school and saw that they were rebuilding in the cafeteria. But not only that, they had taken down the large cloud looking installation that used to be on one of the pillars. I was quite shocked, seeing the piece that for me, and also for many others, is a sign of
Konstfack. The half-ball objects that made the installation had been taken apart and were laying in a dumpster. I first response and action was to ask if I could take them, it was clear to me I had to use them in some way and that this action could not been left to be unspoken of. After some research I found out that the installation was made as a degree project by interior architect student Axel Kårfors (also the origin of the title Axles tårar) and it had the name ‘Stucco Boom’. During the summer and fall I was trying out things with the remains of the installation and it wasn’t until the beginning of the process of my solo show that I decided to make a fountain out of them. The exhibition plays with the idea of an ecology of objects, where the identity and material perform a specific usage and manifestation. The objects are chorographical and performative. They have history and ways of usage. There is a never a clean sleeve or carte blanche/tabula rasa. When I look at movement, the subject cannot be taken away from the reading, the experience. It is clear I am filled with previous experience to have any kind of entry point to a new experience how ever uncanny and weird it might be. Therefore, I understand everything in relation. These relations can be segmented from before
or become new relations. This puts the work in an “ecological” matrix-like situation, clearly performed and worked on in Axels tårar where the objects are a mix of Konstfack and me, forming an exhibition-like environment. My aim for the exhibition was to insert and regurgitate the context itself. As if literally it was inside of me and wanted to come out, but through my body the shapes and order of things had dissolved and formed a new one. The choreography was an established one, therefore maybe hard to find or easy to miss. Aligned with the everyday movement of the space and the school, the pivotal point was the more surprising elements of the installation (a car, a new exhibition every morning, the fountain) and the objects clearly speaking to their inhabitants (teachers, students etc.), the red chairs, the sticks on the wall.
Somewhere down the line during these two years I made it a principle that I need to be present where my art is exhibited. To be in relation and to be the person
responsible or even the guilty one. Even if my aim in the school has been to withdraw from performance, at least in school, the artist needs to be present. It came as a reaction to find principles and ways to bypass the hectic and dispersed life and labour of the contemporary artist. There is also the ten years of working with my body that makes is hard to completely step aside, a process I am still in. Along with this and the many years of hosting being a crucial part and practice of my work, I made the decision to always be around. Hosting when needed or just present as part of the exhibition. I wanted to re-activate the space. That rather than a passing through space, it would create a rapture within the context/space for people to re-insert themselves in, or just as small sidetracks during the day, Axels tårar became an answer to this as well as a collection and portrait of my time spent at Konstfack
Poetry and Poetics
Poetry has been a choreographic field of study and expression in my work since I started my Master in Fine Arts at The University of Dance and Circus in 2012. I have worked and thought about poetry as something that exists similar to dance and choreography. That the vocalisation, the practice and the coming into being of a dance or a poem doesn’t contract the narratives/language, rather enfolds, expands, and proliferates it – a way to be with, and as an answer to the present. That poetry in its core is something you listen to rather then read, and that dance has that capacity too. Some will say poetry is impossible to translate, but when objects and gestures have more capacities to change meaning, we can start looking at the poetic potential of the material, as lived and part of a body that listens. I also want to stress the listening aspects and ways to be with meaning in the poetry work I have done, but also the listening qualities of my cat practice5 and that listening can be understood as an ethics. Poetic
Procedures, Pancor, Tiles & Titles and The Stellar Blanket have been works I revisited and
used as materials, performances and departure points for my studies at Konstfack.
Poetic Procedures – hosting the touch and the voice
Poetic Procedures is a choreographic format for my current interests and work. It started as an evening activity on Tuesday nights in Stockholm in the autumn of 2016 at ccap/c.off (this during my first semester of the MFA). I was hosting open dance classes for anyone to come and join. Simultaneously I was working on the coming performance of The wind escorts the
sky. The procedures and scores in the class were dedicated to poetry and formally consisted of
participatory choreographies and practices such as the cat practice and Tiles & Titles to name a few.
Two weeks after my solo show Axels tårar I decided to return to this format and the participatory principles to make a gallery version, adding to the title - Segula. (meaning word, action, or item of spiritual effect, talisman) The word was used to locate and situate the
5
The cat practice is a performative and performance practice. Started with a fascination of the cat when the cat “hit the internet” as well as being part of a lot of previous work of Pontus he formed a practice. The cat on Internet, as a social phenomenon, as a body that is neither human nor alien. The cat as a
companion/friend/witness/shadow to the human with these specific relations. A specific attention and presence of the performer is produced and becomes a contagious act. It becomes a rewriting of the gaze and the politics of attention. - the now stands in power, not as an infinitive, rather as radical shifts of focus and intention.
new Poetic Procedures, presenting the work as; “choreography as tool making, poetry/poetics, objects as social interfaces and time warping”. For the exhibition I was using my
font/typography Pancor to create symbols or sigils for independent words and short poems, using the white walls of the gallery as my sheets of paper. The symbols/sigils are made in illustrator out of existing letters from Pancor, then arranged to form the symbol/sigill. I then cut them out in 3 mm MDF boards, painted them black and put them on the walls. The exhibition hosted smaller one-to-one performances and participatory poetry hangouts. On the opening of the exhibition there were the exhibition of the “segulas”, as well as The Stellar
Blanket performance. The day after I made a poetry lunch using my project Titles & Tiles, and
during the course of the exhibition one could also get nail polish Rorschach counselling. For the exhibition I also added two Yolking and nail polish lamps hanging over one of the sofas that was in the space.
Pancor and Segula - signing of the sheets
Pancor started as a calligraphic practice deriving from simple doodling and sculpting the appearing and re appearing signs and figures in my notebooks. Calligraphy as a practice then turned digital, Pancor is a font, understood and used as a tool to enable other and new poetry. Through the possible inscribed meaning of the shapes, Pancor can be seen as a hieroglyphic attempt and a queering of meaning through writing, a digitalised universe as signature and poetics. The letters (signs) have semiotic and architectural qualities where the reading of a word or sentence can be layered/ordered/manipulated in more than just one meaning of the word or sentence. Already from the beginning I have been playing with more abstract symbols and signs that can be created using the different letters. Starting the Masters at Konstfack without any visual arts training, I took tools and practices that were close to me to understand my new home/context. I have been working on different ways in which Pancor can enfold the poetic material and interior of the work I have been conducting throughout the almost two years now, as one result Segula came about.
The Stellar Blanket - poetics and poetry tools
The Stellar Blanket is one of the outcomes from the project Writing Wounds to Heal. The blanket is made out of letter stencil plates in the size of an A8. They are laser cut in Plexiglas and assembled into a blanket used in a one-to-on performance, as well as The wind escorts the
sky. The blanket operates like a letter chart
where the letters are unordered. The heavy blanket is placed over the guest and me and gives a surprising comfort and intimacy when covering the two bodies. In a blackened space I use my phone to light the blanket from above, casting letter projections in the ceiling, producing an imagined starlit sky that becomes the score for an instant poetry reading. With one hand under the blanket I push around the surfaces and with the other one using my phone to “hover” around and above the blanket. Like a helicopter searching with a spotlight in an open terrain. My hands become puppeteering devices creating a layer of rhythm and mystique. Drawing from previous experience, as a practice of instant poetry writing/speaking, the letters are more like coordinates and points in space where I am in a constant reading and writing process. The letter “c” in the ceiling might become the word ceiling as a way to talk of the present or cat (as in cat being part of my artistic universe, or just as cat) or pushing the letter c closer to an “o” starting to form the letter coil or cover. In a fraction of a second I might have produced/uttered the sentence “covering the cats head”. The playful qualities and gestures; hiding under a blanket, story telling creates an intimate space. My experience tells me there is a comforting act laying down and getting covered by the heavy blanket. I think it makes the audience member relax into the present and to really follow the poem/game without being concerned about outside, past or future events. In this situation the person is allowed to just be and listen. A care for the moment and for oneself.
Tiles & Titles - the human touch on words – voices form the universe
Tiles & Titles is a collection of existing books with pasted mirror-foil covers that are the objects used in the performance and the piece Tiles & Titles. The mirror foil is a reference and homage to the notorious project The Swedish Dance History6 - a five series, self-published and authored book from some of the makers of contemporary dance today.
The collection of books is taken from my own library as well as adding from the list of literature mentioned in the film Fahrenheit 451 by François Truffaut. The Collection is intended to also form other temporary alliances. That the collection of books can be only female writers, books about the ocean etc. The project aims to unfold the multiple
understandings and universes inside of the book, together with the people reading from them. This is manifested through the poetry practice that is applied for the performance. By simply
6
TSDH was instigated by Impex, a Stockholm based collective dedicated to share and produce knowledge inside and outside of dance. The book is not owned by anyone but has been produced and marketed/distributed by people with relation to mychoreography - the masters in choreography at DOCH when run by Mårten Spångberg and affiliated people to PA-F,residency in St Erme/France
picking the first words that are randomly selected from any sheet of the paper, the person reading starts making an instant poem from the words. The first word/words that appear is the actual title of the poem. The person starts by announcing the title and then continue the reading/writing of the poem. The words can be altered to fit the rhythm and narrative of the poem. The word; orange could be changed to oranges, or filling the gaps with such words as “an” orange or “the” orange or even; she was wearing an orange shirt. Depending on what has previously been said. The practice produces both a listening quality because of the person reading the words for the first time, while simultaneously an engagement is created by the people listening because they are part of the same task, even though they are not the “poet” at that very instant. Since different people will have different words “popping up” to make the poem, the poetry is not only linked to the index of words found in any of the books, but also as an index of the person reading. It becomes a glimpse of the person reading and of the book. Reading poetry out loud for one another in this way is a performative principle for the work, and crucial a part of the listening aspect of the performance. The temporary group are listening to one person at the very breaking point of forming a poem. It can be hard, fragile and nervous. This is part of the performance. Because of the setup I believe it creates a humbler listening experience and a temporary we.
Through my mothers hands – a black box acting like a white cube
One method and tool to perform for myself and adjust into the MFA was to paint with nail polish on old dia-slides. I used this method before in previous performances, but on those occasions it has been to make visual constructions/scenery inside of theatres and installations rather than its own independent project. Nail polish is personally linked to my mother and many times used in performances I have made and participated in.
After painting on the diaslide I project the painting on a white wall - more like looking through a microscope, the intended paintings appear on the walls and I document it with a camera. The documentation of the
painting has then been used in several ways, occupied with the idea to exhibit them but not sure how. I first printed them on paper and mounted them on round MDF board, 15 cm in diameter with sticks in the bottom, making them look like abstract flowers. In the exhibition
Today I showed some of the documentation, but
printed on fabric and hung on the wall. Like a curtain with the image in the centre I mounted the fabric with magnets so that the frame (the white parts of the fabric) could be slightly movable to adapt to the natural movement of the fabric. Happy with this way of framing the images, but still not content to give the whole
spectrum of the work I decided to go back to the projector itself and the space needed for the images to be seen “in real life”, a darkened space. In the beginning of 2018 I made the
exhibition ’through my mothers hand - my way of painting - the park’ inside of the black box in school. It consists of five projectors showing different slides that the visitor can change, two white benches and a black sofa. Some of the projectors are hidden inside black pillars or standing on them as pedestals. In the leaflet book I made, I wrote:
“a black box acting like a white cube… a space for contemplation and curiosity with and experimental and louring nature.. In the darkened space the eyes looks for refuge in the projected painting while the body starts adapting to the new situation”
Making a bridge from contemporary dance to contemporary art, I needed the paint to have more meaning than just paint. Nail polish through its gendered meaning and my own preference and history became the paint I could use. At the same time as this work was carried out and exhibited, I was also growing my nails long. Playing with the notion of body and objects as one, and how the sign of long nails on a man could create other meaning but also continuously remind me of my mother, my female friends and maybe as one aspect of the feminine. Thus creating a own platform for inner discussions about these topics. As a way to be with my mother, nails and nail polish and the uncanny space where body/object/tool are so close that a clear distinction is hard to find.
Final note
The Paris attacks, what dance has taught me, my almost two years at Konstfack created the circumstances for this essay. I wanted to write the personal in front of, and before the
impersonal. To make, and understand what my motives have been, and how the circumstances have created the grounds for my actions. It is a practice of reflecting, and articulating ones needs. The idea, of what conditions life, and the numerous of ways the world has created for this, have been the field of study. An ecology of things/thinking is not only about me, and the things I have done, it is also the people I met, the different machines at school, the reception, the location in Stockholm, Stockholm, the culture of the school, everything. I am part of something and it is part of me. I can never be the sole author of the works I have made - still I am a singular thing. What conditions my actions, is also conditioning others things, and the results of this creates new paths and expressions. Looking at the world in this way, asks the question of what movement is interesting, healthy, nutritional for a larger spectrum then ones own life, rather than the opposite. Engaging with life creates a responsibility of life.
The choreographic step, stepping into other terrains (Konstfack), created the platform for my practice. That permeability of conditioned actions and thoughts, entities and subjectivities narrates the trajectory of my art and my thinking, everything is in relation, and everything is performative. Dancing, as in moving, is the site and the resilient quality to where I and how I move. Like a ghost, or the wind, haunting, animating and inducing the things that are there, and not there at all.
