SOCIÈTÈ RÈALISTE (FR)
The Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art launches the perfomative program City Excavations with an interactive presentation of the French artist duo Société Réaliste. At Hotel Scandic Rubinen, Société Réaliste talks about the politics of space, based on Soliton – a typological inquiry about Solitonism, commissioned by Ministère de l’Architecture. In this research, Ministère de l’Architecture has demanded to continue the work of the eminent physicist John Scott Russel on the phenomena of non-linear waves, by proposing to extend the analysis of Solitons to the field of the politics of space, and more precisely for analyzing activities like design or the erection of buildings.
The performance will be followed by a grand opening party for the City Excavations; drinks, mingle and music is on the menue!
Société Réaliste is presented in collaboration with Fredrik Svensk and Anthony Marcellini, as part of the project Ways of Transmission.
Venue: Hotel Scandic Rubinen, Addresse: Kungsportsavenyen 24
Time: Thursday 16 June at 6 pm
KATARINA NITSCH & PATRIK BENGTSSON (SE)
–We must defend ourselves, against the flow, against the floating state, dark forces and objects coming at us. We create a net, a defence and a resistance, a weave of thin but sticky threads. We gather information, we show you the way.
Katarina Nitsch and Patrik Bengtsson create a web-based work with threads out into the city of Göteborg. Based on how the internet is used for activism, information sharing and surveillance, the artists have created two characters – Owl and Fox – who lead the fight against an evil monster threatening the city. Via a liaison office in central Göteborg, they collect data; video clips from mobiles, texts and image messages sent in from their investigators spread across the city. The liaison office controls the investigators and gives them new instructions. Follow the work online at www.goteborg.biennal.org/doorway
Venue: Follow this work online at www.goteborg.biennal.org/doorway
Time: Friday 17 June at 10am–5pm
SYNNøVE G. WETTEN (NO)
In collaboration with SVEAS SFI, a group of women from different backgrounds that live and study Swedish in Göteborg, will gather for a common procession at Redbergsplatsen in Göteborg, exploring notions of sisterhood and group dynamics. Join a poetic performance that expands, regroups and develops into a dynamic demonstration – a symbol of poetic and feverish activism. In this work, Synnøve G. Wetten experiments with the documentary performance format. A call for a wild democracy in the form of a social sculpture.
Meeting point: Falkgatan 7
Ending point: Redbergsplatsen
Time: Friday 17 June 11am–12.30pm
MATTS LEIDERSTAM
The artist Matts Leiderstam studied at the Valand School of Fine Art in the 1980s and oscillated between Göteborg’s young art scene and the gay scene – two worlds that rarely overlapped. The art scene was dominated by painting, economic boom and the advent of postmodernism – while the gay scene featured cruising and disco, but also backlash, the AIDS crisis and death in the wake of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s. From memories and remnants and his own photos from this time, Leiderstam invites the researcher Arne Nilsson, author of Såna & riktiga karlar and En annan stad (co-written by Margareta Lindholm) to a conversation about the history of Göteborg’s gay scene and queer spaces.
Venue: Kungsparken, near Vallgraven (The Moat) just east of Viktoriagatan
Time: Friday 17 June at 2–3pm
JOHANNES SAMUELSSON (SE)
On a sightseeing boat on the Göta Älv river, the artist Johannes Samuelsson reads his essay Att skriva ett modernt äventyr (On Writing a Modern Adventure Story). Listen to a personal account of the construction and contemporary history of the Swedish East India ship Götheborg III.
The essay Att skriva ett modernt äventyr started as a video diary about a consultation at the local bank. It led to a five-year study of the story behind the East India ship Götheborg III. The ship is a replica of an 18th century East India ship, and was built in Göteborg in the 90s and 00s. This art and research project reveals both the fascination and frustration concerning what we know as the Göteborg Common Spirit.
Boarding: Lejontrappan, Brunnsparken
Disembarkment: Kungsportsplatsen
Time: Friday 17 June at 4–5 pm
& Saturday 18 June at 3–4 pm
MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM (US)
The artist Matthew Buckingham talks about Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and one of the foremost 18th century feminist philosophers. Based on his video work The Spirit and the Letter (2007), Matthew Buckingham tells us about Mary Wollstonecraft’s visit to Scandinavia in 1795. In her diaries, letters and books, Mary Wollstonecraft chronicles a poetic journey characterised by political change and feminist resistance.
Venue: Röda Sten Art Centre
Time: Friday 17 June at 6–7 pm
WILLIAM POPE.L (US)
The American performance-based artist William Pope.L will crawl from Linnéplatsen all the way to Masthuggstorget in the company of a large number of people. Pope.L is one of the most acclaimed performance artists on the international art scene, and this is the first time one of his works is performed in Sweden. The performance will be a physical experience of the City of Göteborg from an asphalt perspective.
The performance is organised jointly with www.365saker.se Would you like to crawl with us? Come and meet the artist at the meeting point, 11.30 am!
Meeting point: Slottsskogsparken, just behind Linnéplatsen
Time: Saturday 18 June at 11.30 am
ANNA SANDGREN
Is a place created by people? Or does the place create the people who occupy it? What happens when market forces increasingly take over the urban space? The artist Anna Sandgren creates a work at Järntorget that plays with sunlight and reflections, starting as a whispered dialogue that gradually spreads like circles on the water.
Venue: Järntorget
Time: Saturday 18 June at 2 pm
MAGNUS HAGLUND (SE)
In the spirit of the Situationists, author Magnus Haglund takes us on a psychogeographical walk around the city. By taking us to places where we can sense the presence of people such as William Burroughs, Erik Satie and Leif Elggren, he brings hidden stories to life. This walk with musical elements gives us a taste of the rhythms of the pop band Tages and the techno group Matmos, along with the magical tones of the child singer Christer Falkenström, famous from the movie Åsa Nisse på hal is (Åsa Nisse on Thin Ice).
Start: Valand School of Fine Art entrance, addresse: Vasagatan 50
Time: Saturday 18 June at 5–6.30 pm
THE NEW BEAUTY COUNCIL (SE)
Experience a carnivalesque group action that challenges our habitual notions and creates new collective memories of places that are destabilised and re-coded in a voyage of discovery through the twilight city. In this exercise we reclaim Gothenburg, trying our wings like moths and exploring the spineless, undefined, visceral, in-between, hairy, nocturnal side of life.
Come to Röda Sten Art Centre around 8 pm for further instructions that guides you on a choreography through the city. This work developed in collaboration with Wisp (Women in Swedish Performing Arts, or What Is Stha Problem?).
Meeting point: Röda Sten Art Centre
Time: Saturday 18 June at 8 pm
JANA WINDEREN (NO)
The Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen presents a concert based on recordings from Göta Älv river. With sensitive hydrophones, she listens to subaqueous life, sounds that give us information about the health of the river, and where the degree of pollution can be measured by monitoring the sounds from surviving insects. Jana Winderen’s unique compositions are based on sounds from several recordings along the Göta Älv river, in harmony with recordings of fish and insects from other waters. Together, they form a resounding choir of underwater life.
Venue: Röda Sten Art Centre
Time: Sunday 19 June at 1–2 pm
MÅRTEN SPÅNGBERG (SE)
Welcome to a concluding discussion led by the artist and choreographer Mårten Spångberg.
In times when politics has lost its ideological fundaments, when organization of life has become thoroughly financialized and capital operates on the basis of fast forward until shit hits the fan it is time to come together again. Come together not in order to save or improve something but instead to start from scratch without memories and without a plausible future. In the form of a picknick, The General Assembly sets the scene for a discussion about the various explorations that have been made in the city – prepare for unexpected conclusions and lively debates!
Venue: Röda Sten Art Centre
Time: Sunday 19 June at 2 pm
