Trikster Blog

If you’re into performance art, London is the place to visit over the next years as the research project Performance Matters kicks off a range of events with artists, theorists, and others doing good stuff. Run by Gavin Butt (Goldsmiths), Adrian Heathfield (Rohampton) and Loius Keanan (Live Art Development Agency) together with Owen G. Parry and Augusto Corrieri, Performance Matters is a thing to follow.

While I’m particularly excited about next year’s queer extravaganza under the theme of Trashing Performance (of which I’m taking part as an associative researcher, so I’m involved – no detached commenting here), this year’s symposium on Performing Ideas looks to be great as well.

If you’re in London between 2-9 October, look into the preliminary program on Performance Matter’s homepage. The workshops, lectures, panels, discussions, and performances includes a wide range of amazing participants such as Janine Antoni, Anne Bean, Wafaa Bilal, Maaike Bleeker, Silvia Bottiroli, Jonathan Burrows, Rose English, Tim Etchells, Matthew Goulish, Hannah Hurtzig, Shannon Jackson, Janez Janša, Joe Kelleher, Ong Keng Sen, Bojana Kunst, Boyan Manchev, Fred Moten, Rabih Mroué, Giulia Palladini, Peggy Phelan, Heike Roms, Lara Shalson, Julie Tolentino and many others.

On May 29 at 17.00 you are all invited to the opening of the exhibition Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive at Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Denmark.

The exhibition Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive is curated by Jane Rowley and Louise Wolthers, and “presents a series of spectacular, thought-provoking works that generate new narratives based on private memories and experiences beyond gender and sexuality norms. Using the potent and emotionally laden detritus of society, like found silent-movie footage, garments from the family past, and desecrated and fictionalised photo albums, the works in Lost and Found recreate, deconstruct and reconstruct the past as we allegedly know it, questioning the power structures that are created and preserved through the archives we’ve inherited.”

Participating artists in the exhibition are Elmgreen & Dragset (DK/NO), Mary Coble (US), Ingo Taubhorn (DE), Tejal Shah (IN), Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (CA), Conny Karlsson (SE), Flemming Rolighed (DK), Aleesa Cohene (CA), Kimberly Austin (US), Cecilia Barriga (CL) og Heidi Lunabba (FI), Al Masson (FR/DK).

At the opening there will also be a book launch of the publication Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive, published in conjunction with the exhibition. Edited by Mathias Danbolt, Jane Rowley and Louise Wolthers, this 160 page publication takes up questions of the archive, history writing, and memory from a queer perspective.

The book includes new articles by the influential cultural theorists Ann Cvetkovich and Heather Love, as well as articles by the editors, poems by Joe Brainard, and artistic contributions from the artists in the exhibition.

The book is avaliable for only 150 DKK. Order it by emailing Kunsthallen Nikolaj: sh@kunsthallennikolaj.dk or buy it online on Audiatur bookstore.

Yesterday, as a part of the documentary film festival CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, the artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset presented their theatre/film piece Drama Queens (2007), where different well-known modernist and contemporary sculptures play the leading parts. The play starts with some quite distressed sculptures, not comfortable of being removed from the white cube and put on stage in the black box of the theatre.

During the 45 minute performance, the overtly fallic and quite angry Untitled (by Ulrich Rückriem) meets the somewhat depressed and sulky Walking man (by Giacometti), while the chatty girl Elegy III (by Barbara Hepworth) get a slight crush on Cloud Shepherd (by Jean Arp). The hipster Rabbit (by Jeff Koons) wants to disco, while Four Cubes (by Sol Le Witt) resites theoretical statements. Suddenly a Brillo box enters the scene and all agree that it is quite queer…

While Elmgreen and Dragset’s Drama Queens represents a funny take on the art historical discourse on sculpture – from modernist seriousness to postmodernist (neo)pop – the Norwegian artist group Text Fukkers (Marte Hodne Haugen, Marthe Wathinsen, Espen Lomsdalen) takes this several steps further in their fantastic performance-lecture on “Minimalism and the Rethoric of Power”. Enjoy! (and thanks to Claws Talks for the link)

The Finnish queer journal SQS – Journal of Queer Studies in Finland has just released a new issue entitled Queer Eurovision.

The two guest editors Mikko Tuhkanen & Annamari Vänskä have put together an ambitious issue taking on Eurovision Song Contest from several interesting perspectives. As Tuhkanen explains in his introduction “Queer Eurovision, post closet”:

“The essays […] take up the post-outing Eurovision Song Contest as an opportunity to think through such issues as the cohesion and generation of gay fandom [Brian Singleton, Karen Fricker & Elena Moreo]; the constitution and disruption of heteronormative address and audiences [Mari Pajala]; the oxymoronic status of the idea of ‘queer nationality’ [Peter Rehberg]; the national temporalities that are performed and critiqued on the Eurovision stage; camp as the primary critical tool for the analysis of ESC’s queerness [Peter Rehberg & Mikko Tuhkanen]; and the possibility of camp’s lesbian specificity [Annamari Vänskä].”

The articles – which are predominantly in English this time – give several new perspectives on this annual event, that people love (– to criticize). In addition to the articles on ESC, the issue also includes an introduction to Finnish media artist Anneli Nygren by the the art historian Harri Kalha. In his text “Anneli Nygren. An Appreciation” Kalha reads Nygren’s work through the writings of Roland Barthes, interrogating the “queer aura that hovers about” her work. A personal introduction to this unique “folk video artist”.

SQS has once again delivered a fascinating issue of Strictly Queer Stuff (to borrow Kalha’s suggested title) – read on!

It is a special date today – 080808 – an event that apparently have made people go mad getting married. Luckily other people have used the date to more creative things. For instance the Swedish poet, designer, and photographer Oskar Ponnert, who released his fascinating (and somewhat manic) Project 8 at the web gallery Afsnit P today.If all these beautiful 8’s doesn’t turn you on, then do something creative yourself: Today is also The International Orgasm Day. Founded by aleXander hirka ten years ago, the day is meant to “celebrate body energy, ecstasy, pleasure, delight”…

Den 24. juni åpnet utstillingen Queer: begär, makt och identitet på Nationalmuseet i Stockholm.

Utstillingen belyser hvordan kjønnsnormene har endret seg gjennom tidene i billedkunsten. Som det står på museets hjemmeside diskuterer utstillingen “hur konst och bilder använts för att undergräva en heterosexuell norm och ger oss nycklarna till varför vissa motiv blivit gayikoner. Har äldre bilder av kvinnlig homoerotik varit avsedda för en manlig voyeuristisk (”fluktar”-) publik och hur är det idag? Frågan om vem betraktaren är diskuteras liksom vem och vad som inkluderats och exkluderats i konsthistorien.”

Dette er med andre ord et ambisiøst og viktig prosjekt, og det er sjelden en utstilling med tittelen “queer” setter fokus på nettopp den eldre kunsthistorien. Det er derfor spennende å se hvorvidt utstillingen klarer å vise “hur äldre bildkonst kan användas för att spegla samtida perspektiv och lyfta dagsaktuella frågor”.

Det er den svenske kunsthistorikeren Patrik Steorn som har kuratert utstillingen. Steorn er ansatt ved Centrum för modevetenskap Stockholms universitet, og utgav i 2006 den interessante og kritikeroste boken Nakna Män – Maskulinitet och kreativitet i svensk bildkultur 1900-1915, som tok utgangspunkt i hans PhD-avhandling i kunsthistorie.

Den 29. juli skal Steorn holde en forelesning med tittelen Könsöverskridandets konst – androgynitet och skapande genom historien på Nationalmuseet. Her vil man få en god mulighet til å høre Steorn i aksjon mens han queerer kunsthistorien og forteller om utstillingen.

Hvis noen har fått muligheten til å se utstillingen, må man gjerne gi en rapport her på Triksters blogg. For dem som ikke har mulighet til å se Queer i Stockholm før den lukker 10. august, får man nøye seg med denne smakebiten av utstillingen i museets reklamevideo: