Curator Elina Suoyrjö and artist Carola Grahn will present and discuss their practices and previous collaborations. In 2011, Grahn and Suoyrjö collaborated on Suoyrjö’s final project for Stockholm University‘s Curating Art MA program. The exhibition project discussed gendered power dynamics in relation to Suoyrjö’s MA thesis which dealt with gender and feminisms in artistic and curatorial practices. The talk intends to raise questions on how to relate feminist topics to one’s practice, work and in association with the audience—opening up further discussion.

Carl-Johan Rosén will present works relating to his search for the digital ‘Other,’ or the voice of the digital being. The ever-present question is: what does it feel like to exist as a computer software? This search had led him through different areas of theory and practice. From a post-anthropocentric predicament, to philosophy of science, to retro pie chart diagrams and computer programming languages. How can the voice of the digital Other be identified? If it is, what does it communicate? Rosén is curious about extraordinary communicative experiences with digital Others. When and how did they happen? Could a language be perceived? Was there communication?

The search for the digital Other has magnified Rosén’s interest in programming languages. With the book I speak myself into an object, he hopes to enable a different reading of computer code. A reading beyond or parallel to function and efficiency. A reading that might reveal something about the digital Other rising from the code once it is performed. But code also has political implications in a post-human perspective—where technology is shaped by programming languages, where technology shapes us and what we can become. Rosén searches for fellow readers to initiate a local dialogue about programming languages in the style of critical code studies¹.

1. http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology

Foxhole Meeting #7

Date: Thursday, 05.30, 2013
Time: 7-9 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

7 – 8 pm: Elina Suoyrjö & Carola Grahn’s presentation + Q&A
8 – 9 pm: Carl-Johan Rosén’s presentation + Q&A

Note: All meetings are open to the general public.

May’s Speakers

Carola Grahn is an artist living and working in Stockholm. She graduated from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm spring 2013. At the moment, her works can be seen in exhibitions 24 Spaces at Malmö Konsthall and the Royal Institute of Art Spring Exhibition. Her works have recently been exhibited also at Galleri Mejan, Centrum för fotografi, Konstnärshuset and Fittja Open by Botkyrka Konsthall. www.carolagrahn.se

Elina Suoyrjö is an independent curator based in Stockholm. She holds an MA in Curating from Stockholm University and MAs in both Art History and Gender Studies from the University of Helsinki. Her recent projects include the exhibition series Provrummet at Cigarrvägen 13 (Stockholm), One kind word can warm three winter months at Cité des arts (Paris), Volumi contrastanti / Kontrasterande volymer at Italian Cultural Institute (Stockholm) and In a World of My Own at Vinterviken garden (Stockholm).

Carl-Johan Rosén works with digital beings. He investigates what it means to exist in the world as a digital body and as a software process experiencing the world through electronic circuits. Work methods are synthesized from arts, engineering and academia, and the outcome varyingly presented as artworks, software and text. www.carljohanrosen.com

Image: Hon fejkade att hon inte kom / She faked she didn’t come (2011). Photo by Carola Grahn

For more information, go here.

In 1998, Charles Traub and Jonathan Lipkin published the essay “If We Are Digital” in Leonardo magazine. It describes a creative interlocutor, a term which resonated deeply with the kind of work Jen Lindblad pursues. Combining interests in art, design, poetry, fashion, technology and writing, and often serving as translator between two or more of the aforementioned cultures, Lindblad is sometimes left wondering if what she is doing is indeed curating. Is it curating just because she’s been trained as a curator? Does hosting a project online make it an online project? Does collaborating on a project make it truly collaborative?

Lindblad will begin by addressing her Masters thesis “Engaging Through Technology: Exploring Digital Strategies of Art Museums.” This essay formed the beginnings of her online project, which she (in homage to Traub & Lipkin) entitled If We Are Digital. IWAD is a discursive platform aimed at lifting up conversations about art, technology and audience engagement. Lindblad will also address current collaborative projects on Pinterest (Curator Attire) and Tumblr (Dear Tess,) as well as forthcoming seed-stage endeavors including a podcast (ArtMine) and a new reading circle (The Curators’ Book Group).

After graduating from her previous set of collaborators and network during Lindblad’s MA, she hopes to brainstorm with new individuals on future possibilities for working curatorially with other web platforms and, perhaps, spend time with a question she struggles with: can curating be casual, funny—or even fun?

Foxhole Meeting #6

Date: Monday, 04.22, 2013
Time: 7-9 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

7 – 7:30 pm: introductions / networking
7:30 – 8 pm: Jen Lindblad’s presentation + Q&A
8 – 9 pm: explore digital collaboration possibilities

Note: All meetings are open to the general public.

April’s Invited Speaker

Jen Lindblad is a Stockholm-based, New York-bred arts writer and curator. A graduate of Smith College and Stockholm University‘s International Master Program in Curating Art, she has been a longtime staff writer and editor at Art Observed and contributor to BOMB Magazine. To pay the bills, Jen dabbles in translation and copywriting, but her true passions are museum education, social media and digital technologies. Inspired by an internship at SFMOMA, Jen founded If We Are Digital, an ongoing series of Skype interviews conducted with art world professionals regarding the question: as the art world becomes increasingly globalized and digitized, how can, do and should we engage with art online? The casual nature of the chats seeks to provide a type of knowledge exchange, a curatorial method with which she most closely aligns.

Image: Ifwearedigital.com

For more information, go here.

Foxhole Meeting #5

Date: Wednesday, 03.06, 2013
Time: 8-10 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

8 – 8:30 pm: introductions / networking
8:30 – 9 pm: Eskil Loftsson’s presentation + Q&A
9 – 10 pm: one-night-only exhibition of artist’s selected works

Note: All meetings are open to the general public.

March’s Invited Artist / Speaker

Eskil Loftsson is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm; he has pursued studies at Konstfack in Ädellab / Metal Design (2010) and California College of the Arts (CCA) and has exhibited work at F12 Terrassen, Lydmar Hotel, Gustavsbergs Konsthall, among others. Loftsson incorporates ranging mediums into his work (e.g., sculpture, photography, performance art). His art is contrasting, harboring contradictions, careening between extreme expressions. In his Baroque-inspired sculptures, he combines dead, rotten animals with childrens’ toys, jewelry and casted genitals. For foxhole, Loftsson will elucidate upon his preference for carrion—why he likes the smell and texture of blood and guts, believing that everyone else should too. He will also discuss the newly invented “Infected-Relation-Prevention-Photo-Therapy” and the collaborative initiative “Spektakel” in association with the artist collective “Drömfakulteten” in which the artist founded.

Image: Sculpture (2013). Photo by Eskil Loftsson

For more information, go here.

Please join us for a literary evening of reinterpreted myth and lore, as three English-language novelists—Emily Breunig, Angela Mi Young Hur and Adnan Mahmutović—read from their work, inspired by folktales, legends and myth from Bosnia, China and Korea. The authors will “perform” their excerpts, thereby returning their literary texts to the original context of oral literature in Minibar’s interactive space. Cross-cultural as well as cross-genre, this event aims to explore how stories around the world continue to evolve as writers appropriate across languages, cultures and genres; to recreate storytelling in its most elemental form as a relationship between the teller and listener; and encourage writers, readers and curators to engage with literary text in contexts both old and new.

This meeting will address these questions, among others: What is gained or lost when literary art is presented in a shared public space for an audience? How does the experience of literature compare to an individual’s engagement with a text? What if the literary text is an appropriation of a traditionally oral art, such as a ghost story or folktale? What does it gain or lose when returned to its original context? How does a reader versus listener perceive a textual reading as opposed to hearing it performed? How does this inform a curator’s approach to presenting literary work in a non-textual setting—what potential can be mined from the performance of a text? What challenges present themselves for the writer, curator and audience?

» Foxhole Meeting #4
Date: Wednesday, 02.13, 2013
Time: 7-9 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

7 – 7:30 pm: introductions / networking
7:30 – 7:50 pm: Emily Breunig’s reading
7:50 – 8:10 pm: Angela Mi Young Hur’s reading
8:10 – 8:30 pm: Adnan Mahmutović’s reading
8:30 – 9 pm: Q&A

Note: All meetings are open to the general public.

February’s Writers / Speakers

Emily Breunig is a writer, teacher, runner and voracious reader. She was born in Houston, Texas, and promptly left for Connecticut—a pattern of frequent movement that pretty much sums up her life, up to and including the present. She attended high school in Orange County, California, graduated with a B.A. in English and a creative writing concentration from Yale University (2003) and took an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California (2007). While at St. Mary’s, Breunig was the recipient of the Jim Townsend and Agnes Butler scholarships. She has taught English and writing to elementary school students in China, community college students in Silicon Valley and career teachers in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Breunig is finishing revisions on her first novel A Ghost at the Edge of the Sea and lives in Stockholm with her husband and two cats. www.emilybreunig.com

Angela Mi Young Hur received her A.B. in English Literature from Harvard and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Notre Dame, where she was the Sparks Fellow and Managing Editor of the Notre Dame Review. She was then awarded the Sparks Prize: a year-long writing fellowship. Her first novel The Queens of K-town (2007) has been taught at U.C. Berkeley, University of British Columbia and University of Seoul. From 2008-09, she taught English Literature and Creative Writing at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea. An excerpt from Folklorn, her novel-in-progress, was presented at UBC and published in Stockholm University’s creative writing journal Two Thirds North. Additionally, she has published book reviews, author interviews, essays and has worked as a screenwriter, editor and copywriter in Stockholm. Angela Mi Young Hur is represented by Foundry Literary + Media.

Adnan Mahmutović (b. 1974) became a refugee of war in 1993 and ended up in Sweden. He worked for a decade with people with brain damage while studying English and philosophy. Mahmutović has a Ph.D. in English Literature and M.F.A. in Creative Writing; he is currently a lecturer and writer-in-residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. His stories have dealt with contemporary European history and issues of identity and home for Bosnian refugees.

About Texts

Emily Breunig will be reading from her recently completed novel A Ghost at the Edge of the Sea, a coming of age ghost story set in Shanghai dealing with questions of identity, dislocation, memory and culture clash. After losing his father, Will, a recent American college graduate, jumps at the chance to escape his old life and begin again in China. But once he arrives, he finds that Shanghai is not quite the city he expected it to be—nor are people from his past life content to stay dead. A Ghost at the Edge of the Sea also explores the complicated gender, linguistic and cultural tensions that Will encounters in contemporary Shanghai. Breunig will read an excerpt from her novel in order to catalyze discussion about what displacement and self-exploration means in this globalized, fractured world.

Angela Mi Young Hur will be reading a reinterpreted Korean folktale from her novel-in-progress Folklorn, which explores themes of inheritance—cultural, genetic and property—and incorporates Korean myths and folktales told in first person, “confessional” monologues. These revisionist folktales are anchored in a more personalized P.O.V. for dramatic and literary purposes, and to reveal the psyches of two major characters in the novel: the mother who believes herself to be a descendant of the original folktale heroines and thus destined to repeat their narrative lives, and her scientist daughter who wonders whether she is fated to lose her mind or her free will. The author will read one of these folktales and return a literary text to its original context of oral art and performance. Following this, she will discuss why and how she used folklore to explore themes of mental illness, migration and destiny.

How to Fare Well and Stay Fair is full of raw, intimate portraits of Bosnian stories about longing and survival, from Bosnia to Sweden and still further, toward an ever-elusive idea of home and homeland. There is a mix of funny stories about sad refugees and sad stories about funny refugees— all of them full of denial and pretence and hope and putting the past away and never really letting go. Almasa, the main character in most stories, is feisty and funny, and she suffers no fools. She will go to any length to take charge of her broken life and avoid being labelled a victim. Each story, although compact and unique on its own, is tied to all other stories—chronologically, emotionally or thematically. Together, they probe the margins of our contemporary history and give voice to people pushed to the edge of life. Adnan Mahmutović will read excerpts from two stories: “Vacation: A Travelogue” and “Integration Under the Midnight Sun.” Each piece puts two European cultures in dialogue and rethinks the notions of individuality, community and integration; these stories try to create a sense of pious-heresy in the relation between individuals and their complex cultures.

For more information, go here.

» Foxhole Meeting #3
Date: Wednesday, 12.19, 2012
Time: 7:30-9 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

7:30 – 8 pm: introductions / networking
8 – 9 pm: Kristoffer Svenberg’s presentation + Q&A

Note: All meetings are open to the general public. Feel free to stop by and introduce yourself! Holiday treats await.

December’s Speaker

Kristoffer Svenberg lives and works in Stockholm; he holds a MA in Fine Art (Art in the Public Realm) from Konstfack (2011) and a BFA from Gothenburg University in Photography (2007). Photography, representation and inquiries into ongoing mediation in connection to socio-political subjects are present in Svenberg’s practice. In the work Secular Surface (Surfing the Nations), he addresses the problematics of cultural imperialism by joining American and Swedish Christian missionaries in Sri Lanka. Surfing the Nations is a group of missionary surfers who use this sport as a tool and way to reach the unreached in “far away” countries. “To surf, maintain and conserve already-existing structures. History. Are surfers the New Colonialists?”

Svenberg is co-founder and active in The New Beauty Council project together with Thérèse Kristiansson, Annika Enqvist and Anna Kharkina. The New Beauty Council is a collaborative initiative using conversations, re-readings, art projects and curatorial methods to analyze public space—investigating how it can be both understood and utilized. Among other exhibitions and grants, The New Beauty Council was awarded the SA-Prize (2009) for “its valuable contribution to the public discussion on architecture” by the Swedish Association of Architects (Stockholm). Currently, Svenberg leads the project Mallrats with Index and Stockholm’s teenagers. Mallrats will investigate semi-public and private spaces in the city and address them as urban spaces via workshops and performance-based activities which critically identify and experiment with semi-public status.

Image: Minibar Artist Space. Photo by Jacquelyn Davis

For more information, go here.

» Kinda Open Site – Weekends of Dialogue
Date: Saturday, 11.24, 2012
Time: 7 pm
Location: Site Sweden (Studio)
Address: LM Ericssons Väg 26, 126 26 Hägersten
T-bana: Telefonplan

Image: SITE Studio. Photo by SITE

For more information, go here.

» Foxhole Meeting #2
Date: Wednesday, 11.21, 2012
Time: 7-9 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

7 – 7:30 pm: introductions / networking
7:30 – 8 pm: Ulrika Sparre’s presention + Q&A
8 – 8:30 pm: Aura Seikkula’s presentation + Q&A
8:30 – 9 pm: wind down

Note: All meetings are open to the general public. Feel free to stop by and introduce yourself! Fika & refreshments await.

November’s Speakers

Aura Seikkula (b. 1977) is an independent curator and researcher based in Stockholm. She is a guest curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos Nigeria and Doctoral candidate in cultural policies at the University of Jyväskylä. Current and recent projects include KOPIOITU a residency and exhibition program with Komplot Brussels and SIC Helsinki (2013); Show Your Sisu TV parody and performance event at the Baltic Circle Theater Festival (2012); the 6th Momentum Biennial Imagine Being Here Now, Moss Norway (2011); J.D. Okhai Ojeikere: Moments of Beauty survey exhibition for the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos and ARS 11 at Kiasma Helsinki (2011); Nordic Art Today, Loft Project Etagi, St Petersburg Russia (2011); Urban Studies event series and residency program in Shanghai (2010-2011); On Independence and the Ambivalence of Promise residency and exhibition program, Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos (2010). Seikkula has worked in curatorial positions at the Künstlerhaus Bethaninen, Berlin; NIFCA Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art and Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. Additionally, she has acted as guest curator and curatorial advisor in various contemporary art organizations. Seikkula is an associate curator at the Artist Pension Trust Ltd, the co-founder of SKY Finnish Society for Curators and member of the Finnish Arts Council’s Media Art Board.

Ulrika Sparre (b. 1974) lives and works in Stockholm and is educated at Konstfack (Stockholm) and Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam). Sparre works with installation, sculpture, photography, video, performance and sound. She has, among others, exhibited at Färgfabriken, Stene Projects, Gallery Niklas Belenius, Reykjavik Art Museum, Interactive Institute and has also undertaken a number of public projects. In 2012, Sparre participated in the exhibition European Horizons at the Tina B Contemporary Art Festival, Prague, as well as Independent People at the Reykjavik Arts Festival. She investigates the mechanisms, behaviors and social pattern that constitute our lives; her artistic practise explores subjects like individuality and the impact of the development towards individualism and consumerism in contemporary society. Sparre is interested in how non-religious and scientific beliefs are expressed in the secularized Western society of today; her starting point is how individualistic belief in oneself has replaced religious beliefs.

For more information, go here.

» Foxhole Meeting #1
Date: Wednesday, 10.17, 2012
Time: 7-9 pm
Location: Minibar Artist Space
Address: Hälsingegatan 33, 113 31 Stockholm
T-bana: Odenplan / S:t Eriksplan

Meetings are loosely structured as follows (subject to change) and will periodically expand to include relevant workshops, intensives and investigations:

7 – 7:30 pm: introductions / networking
7:30 – 8:30 pm: idea development / brainstorming / troubleshooting (i.e. work)
8:30 – 9 pm: artist / speaker presentations

Note: All meetings are open to the general public. Feel free to stop by and introduce yourself! Fika & refreshments await.

October’s Artists & Speakers

Nicola Bergström Hansen is an artist living and working in Stockholm. She has a BFA from the School of Photography in Gothenburg and graduated 2012 with a MFA from Konstfack. Much of her work relies on the use and appropriation of public archives as a creative tool to examine historical events which many try to forget or erase. Bergström Hansen is particularly interested in how we attempt to categorize, understand and define violence, trauma and difference. By methods of deconstruction, sampling and remixing, she attempts to find new ways of seeing and understanding.

Ami Kohara is an artist with an MFA in Art in the Public Realm from Konstfack and a BFA in Fine Arts from Musashino Art University (Tokyo). Kohara aims to create social environments in which people come together to participate in shared activities; she believes that experiences with food are able to expand limitations of one’s perception of reality by affecting the criteria based on one’s cultural background. Currently, Kohara is forming the cultural entrepreneurial project Låt Mig Smaka! in which she provides services in experience economy.

Mirko Lempert has worked for several film companies in Germany and Sweden. His work is mainly focusing on children and youth films and the possibilities Transmedia is offering to reach and interact with that audience. Since 2011, he lectures on topics as crowd funding and alternative distribution models for independent films, as well as giving a class on multi-platform storytelling at Stockholm’s Academy of Dramatic Arts. Lempert holds an MA in film production.

Anna Nordström is a textile artist based in Stockholm. Educated in Stockholm and Baltimore, she has an MFA from Konstfack. Her work emanates from collecting a wide range of materials and proceeds through various crafts on different skill levels. Nordström shifts between practices of patchwork, bookbinding, photography, sculpture, embroidery, illustration and drawing. Contemporary labour ideology and its surrounding politics are concerns in her work, as well as historical influences contributing to where we stand today. Nordström often uses popular culture as inspiration and to help identify standards and power structures.

Image: Minibar Artist Space. Photo by Jacquelyn Davis

For more information, go here.

1. Designed to highlight incoming Tomma Rum artists in Kil, the Paper Tape exhibition “The Beast Eulogies” can be viewed here. It includes creative responses and improvisations which adopt and expand upon the form of a eulogy to or for a dying or dead beast. Contributing artists are both Swedish and international;  they present new work inspired and influenced by their stay in Kil. To read more about Tomma Rum, go here or here.

2. valeveil is now working alongside the experimental Swedish artist Jonas Gazell (Umeå) who is an artist-in-residence at Tomma Rum in Kil. Gazell will contribute to valeveil‘s Tandem project in collaboration with curator Jacquelyn Davis to co-design and execute a new art project to be shared this winter.

Image: Gamla Slakteriet. Photo by Jacquelyn Davis

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Direct inquiries to info [at] valeveil [dot] se with CV and statement of interest.