Sculpturetalk V: The Expanding Field & the Collective as Strategy
Sisters of Jam in dialog with curator Karolina Pahlén and The Temporary Separatists. Presented by Snowball Cultural Productions: sculptureHUB / Josefina Posch
For our fifth Sculpture Talk we focused on sculpture as an expanding field and the collective as a strategy for improving visibility for women artists. Sisters of Jam talked with Karolina Pahlén and the exhibiting artists The Temporary Separatists.
S.O.J. also showed an excerpt from their video installation from Kate Millett Farm. “It takes a million years to be a woman”, video 10 min.
S.O.J. – Sisters of Jam was founded in 2008 by Moa and Mikaela Krestesen they have been working in interdisciplinary art projects using multiple media – photography, video, drawing, installation and text – in an ongoing investigation of community, solitude, historiography and continuity. Their work seeks to address a feminist dialogue over generations and geographies. A dialogue that is both virtual and allegorical; that reaches backwards and forwards and at the same time tells us something new. Sisters of Jam use collaborative work methods to overcome boundaries of genres and become wider, greater and stronger. www.sistersofjam.com
Karolina Pahlén is since 2010 curator for moving image at Borås Art Museum. With an education in visual art, film and curating at the International Center of Photography (NYC, University Collage of Arts (Sthlm) and the University of Stockholms , her curatorial practice focuses on the moving image as well as the creation of platforms for art and knowledge production. Amongst her latest curatorial projects are; the Screens & mirrors, exhibition at Borås Art Museum; Archaelogy & Exorcisms: Moving Image and the Archive, seminar and publication with Steven Cairns (ICA, London), the exhibition Syster in which Sisters of Jam participated and they are also collaborating in the project IN 21ST CENTURY ZESTERHOOD. http://systerboras.blogspot.se/2014/11/antligen-far-vi-ta-plats.html
The Temporary Separatists A woman*-identified artist collective that seeks to explore the use of collectivism as a feminist methodology in art practice.
Rose Gibbs uses sound intervention, sculpture and participatory performance as a way to consider the possibilities of consciousness-raising. Most recently she has used speech and the voice as a way to explore how iteration and re-iteration affects our feedback loops. She questions if we can become something other than we are, if we can escape our own reflexive loops, by experiencing and speaking other people´s words. She uses the voice to explore the space between the collective and individual experiences of identity, inviting participants to join communal readings. Similarly her objects become an invitation for group making, where the object can serves as a vessel for temporary community and conversation, creating a provisional space or carrier for a coming together in group action. All of these are attempts to reconsider the dual program of feminism: both a method that seeks to recognize gendered group treatment, while also finding a route to autonomy and liberation from such categorization, where these two aims are often felt to be at odds with one another. Her practice seeks to reflect and harness this oscillating movement in an attempt to disrupt ideological hegemony without resting easy.
London based Rose Gibbs has organized the discussions; Taking Up Space –Women Only Shows – hosted by The Contemporary Art Society and Central Saint Martins, as well as a Reproducing Motherhood at Shoreditch House. Recent performances have included Performing Protest, Becoming Radical and Slogans for Becoming at The Function Room London, and Invitation at Wysing Art Centre. She writes a blog for Huffington Post, and works with the grass roots feminist activist organization The East London Fawcett Group and in 2013 was director of The One Billion Rising Arts Festival. www.rosegibbs.com
Sofia Landström is a researcher with expertise in Exhibition Studies and Feminist Theory. She obtained her MA at Central Saint Martins and has curated numerous exhibitions in Sweden and London. In her practice she focuses on feminist methodology and alternative exhibition making. http://curatingjournal.com
The talk is part of the series of talks with sculpture focus organised by sculptureHUB / Snowball Cultural Productions during 2015/16 in collaboration with Galleri Box also supported by Göteborg Stads Kultur.
Martin Hultén