As part of Month of Books, the Teen Advisory Boards at Index (Stockholm) and PRAKSIS (Oslo) will be joining PUBLICS for three days of conferencing where we will think, write, visit, present and workshop together. Conference In Character coincides with three public moments that are free and welcome for all.
On Friday at 4pm authors Ahmed Al-Nawas and Minna Henriksson and illustrator Ott Kagovere will give a talk about their new book Fake Star, published by Rab-Rab Press. Together they will present on their collective research processes, artworks, formal and conceptual ideas and collaborative processes that finally led to the picture book. Fake Star is a story about a plaster copy of a meteorite and its original; an emerging nation aiming to prove itself at the Paris World Exposition 1900. The book recounts the encounter between King Oscar II of Sweden and the Russian representative Prince Tenisheff at the Finland pavilion.
Al-Nawas and Henriksson have collaborated since 2015. In their work they examine history critically, politicising it through art. Their works are based on archival research and often include a strong element of craftwork.
On Saturday the program starts at 3pm with a presentation from curatorial studio Shimmer (Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma) to mark the launch of Curatorial Feelings, a book that collects arts practitioner, Eloise Sweetman’s writing from the past decade. Moving between prose and poetry, impressions and reflections, coursing through the writing is a commitment to their senses, to subjectivity and to social responsibility. The duo will be joined by Flis Holland who will deliver a reading of PEER-TO-PEER, a reading which forms part of Across The Way With… – an on-going informal online reading-aloud program on intimacy organised by Shimmer and para-hosted by PUBLICS.
Saturday program continues with an introduction by Rooftop Press. Their contribution to The Month of Books is a Superchair with a concise library of printed matter. If books are understood as gatherings of ideas, thinking and making, the Superchair provides a cozy, hospitable space to meet these ideas and make friends with them.
The selection of books hovers around the concept of lists, collections and gatherings as forms of artistic expression. Borrowing from the rule of the good neighbour, the book selection encourages browsing and free association as ways of intuitively wandering between titles.
Designed by the architect Ken Isaacs in 1967, the Superchair is a nomadic, multipurpose living structure. Based on a three dimensional grid structure that’s both easy and affordable to make, the chair originally sought solutions to inefficiencies of modern furniture design and a break with the prevailing cultural stagnation of individualism, capitalist expansion, and material consumption.
The event ends at 6pm with the performance of Parts (for Muuri): scores – a book of a score collected through a series of participatory events that resulted in drawn responses to the The Wall / Muuri sculpture as part of the Helsinki Biennial, 2021. The outcome of this process was later interpreted by Kalle Hakosalo and Tiia Toivanen using timpani drums and found objects and transcribed by Stephen J Webb. Parts (for Muuri): scores was conceived by artists James Prevett and Maarit Mustonen. At PUBLICS the score will be performed by flute-player Kaisa Siirala and the book will be available for purchase.
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Ahmed Al-Nawas is an art curator and artist. His praxis is informed by his location in the interstices of society, constantly examining and contesting the notions of margins and centre. Al-Nawas is co-founder of The Museum of Impossible Forms and Third Space.
Minna Henriksson is a visual artist who works with a variety of media, including text, drawing and print making. Henriksson is interested in covert political processes that appear to be neutral and natural. In 2017 Henriksson was awarded with the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Award of artistic work committed to the ideal of democracy and antifascism.
Ott Kagovere is a graphic designer living and working in Tallinn, Estonia. His close collaborators are Rab-Rab Press, Lugemik, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) and The Trojan Horse Collective. Ott also teaches graphic design at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
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Shimmer is a curatorial studio established by Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma in 2017. Shimmer is influenced by Shimmer, when all you love is being trashed, the talk by anthropologist and feminist theorist Deborah Bird Rose. Her learning pushes us to be humbled to pay attention and listen. In this way, we hope in our work the artworks, artists, audiences, and materials gather and stretch across and over time. Alongside our expanded exhibitions is our events program Sunday Mornings with, as well as Across The way with… an informal online reading aloud program para-hosted by PUBLICS, and an online mixtape On The Waves With…
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Flis Holland (FI/UK) uses sci-fi to find new ways to talk about crisis. They work with live performance, video, and texts, often using mobile apps and remote access tools. Recent highlights include a residency at Finnish Cultural Institute in New York (US), a solo show “Gravity Doesn’t Keep You Down I Do” (FI), and a video “Subserotic Bulge”. Their depressing story “Sigh-fi” was published by Kontur.
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Rooftop Press is a Helsinki based publisher of bookworks and multiples. Exploring publishing as artistic practice and publications as space for contemporary art.
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James Prevett makes things to gather around – objects, events, text, video that are often combined together as sculpture. He is interested in sculpture as means to explore the limits of minds and bodies, both personal and communal and he often works with other people. James lives and works in Helsinki, Finland where he is a Sculpture Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki.
Maarit Mustonen is an artist working with lens-based images, text, mixed media installations and performance. She often examines language and its relationship to image and body, and in this way creates connections with poetry. Her recent works combine books/publications with exhibitions and performing arts. She frequently works in collaboration with other artists and people from different fields.
Kaisa Siirala is a musician and a composer from Helsinki, Finland. She is interested in free expression and inspired by different world musics, for example Cuban rhythms and Hindustani melodies. As a saxophone and flute player her background is mostly in jazz and all kinds of Afro-American music.
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