Paulo Bruscky (b. 1949 in Recife, Brazil) is a pioneer of the mail art movement, a transnational network of artists corresponding with each other and often operating from within conditions of intense political censorship. Slipping enveloped texts, drawings and photographs into the postal system gave mail artists the freedom to infiltrate it with their thoughts and escape from isolation, while operating under the radar of control.
Bruscky’s investigation of means of transmission led him to experiment with xerox machines, x-rays, radiographs, electroencephalograms and fax art. At Andquestionmark, the artist invites the audience to take part in a xeroperformance, an experimental evening of co-authorship with machines. Photocopiers are diverted, not only to create copies copies copies, but also for interference through distortions, superimpositions and other effects allied to chance and boldness. The multiplication of information and the network character of Bruscky’s work point to the exponential growth of data and our interconnectedness through digital technologies and in social media today. Xeroxart erodes the unique status of the artwork, and – similar to glitches in computing – even one-to-one reproductions through photography, mimeography or print. It can involve anything from one’s body, water, fire, animals, plants, or objects, and visitors are invited to bring items they wish to use during the performance.
As Bruscky says, “xeroxart is the recording of the mo(ve)ment. I always thank the machine for its creativity.”
On Friday 30 September, original artworks in the form of ad announcements by Bruscky will be included in the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. Visitors can bring the papers to be signed by the artist.
Andquestionmark wishes to thank Galeria Nara Roesler for its generous support.
When Friedrich Jürgenson was recording the singing of wild birds in 1959, he came across strange sounds that got captured on his tape. He described them as “a noise, vibrating like a storm”. Playing back the tape, he discerned a man’s voice speaking to him in Norwegian. It didn’t take Jürgenson long to figure out that the he had established radio contact with the dead. He had discovered the electronic voice phenomenon (EVP).
Carl Michael von Hausswolff has worked with Jürgenson’s archive for many years. At Andquestionmark, he will record the sounds of the space using Jürgenson’s technique, which will then be analysed by EVP expert Michael Esposito via live link from Chicago. The recordings may reveal facts related to the history of the location (including a tattoo studio, strip club and art gallery), and be influenced by the presence of the audience.
Friday, 18 March 2016, 7–10 pm, performance starts at 8 pm.
With support from Elektronmusikstudion EMS.
I did everything I could to escape the situation. Although I diligently tried to wake you up, I implied it was OK if you really could't do this otherworldly expedition. You're tired, you said. I asked you to get dressed and told you we would go out. You wanted to know everything in advance. You couldn't. We put on our outerwear and went out. When I closed the door I heard you start ticking, a quiet vague tick. I asked you to tick a little louder. You followed me to the other side of the house, to the darkest place. There we stood still for 60 of your beats. 60 ticks of you. You became quiet when we opened the front door. You had to lay down and I took your pulse. Now it reached 54. I restarted the metronome, you were still a Largo, slightly faster. Then you had to get undressed and go to sleep.
The performance starts on Saturday, 30 January, 3 am and continues through Sunday, 31 January, 5 am. During this time, you may participate in experiments derived from sensations often felt during the early morning hours, when our pulse and body functions are reduced. These feelings have inspired the mythological creature "nightmare", a goblin visiting sleepers at night and sitting on their chest, causing them bad dreams and trouble to breathe. Legend has it that the Hour of the Wolf is also the time of the day when most people die, and when most children are born.
For several years, Gideonsson/Londré have examined how our prehistoric internal clock works during the early morning hours. With the help of metronomes, the performance will be divided into different time zones, while participants will be dormant and experience a state of sustained inactivity. You are welcome to drop by at any time during the 26-hour lapse. The artists suggest that you plan to stay for approximately two hours.
In the late 1980s, two unlikely narratives and communities collided on the island of Ibiza: guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, and his followers, and advocates of the incipient Acid house movement represented by Phuture of Chicago. Although historically unrelated, since both groups were using the same Roland electronic synthesiser model, their musical foundations are strikingly similar. David Kasprzak will introduce both histories followed by a guided meditation, which will slowly progress into an Acid house rave party.
With the guidance of Nils Larsson of Joyful Life.
Doors open at 7 pm. Performance starts at 7.30 pm. 30 spots available, please sign up by sending an email to andquestionmarkstockholm @gmail.com by Thursday 17 December. Please wear comfortable clothes and bring a water bottle. Those who wish to attend the musical part but do not want to participate in the performance are welcome to drop by anytime during the evening.
In collaboration with Iaspis. The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists.
With support from Elektronmusikstudion EMS.
Consonances between certain extravagant hypno-cognitive experiments of the Paris Surrealists and the collective, attentional practices of the Order of the Third Bird have long occasioned speculation among the cognoscenti. Evidence of a firm linkage, at last, appears at hand: an epistolary account by an emissary of the Order in Paris from 1932 to 1939 (the pseudonymous “Kittiwake”), who apparently endeavored to instate a volée of the Third Bird at the very heart of the Surrealist community in those years. Her failed efforts appear to have given rise to a protocol of “plein-air attention” — a distillate of which may well percolate through Surrealism's central texts and objects.
At Andquestionmark, visiting members of the research consortium known as ESTAR(SER) (D. Graham Burnett and Joanna Fiduccia) will present a works-in-progress report on the Kittiwake Dossier, sifting compelling evidence for a "third use" of objects at the convergence of the Order of the Third Bird and Surrealism in its second decade. In the course of the evening, attendees will have the opportunity to experiment with some of these surprising documents.
About ESTAR(SER): The Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (now incorporating the Society of Esthetic Realizers) is an established body of private, independent scholars who work collectively to recover, scrutinize, and (where relevant) draw attention to the historicity of the Order of the Third Bird.
Between 2–4 pm prior to the event at Andquestionmark, Drucksache will release Peder Alexis Olsson’s new publication “Tennis” at Rönnells Antikvariat.
In collaboration with Drucksache and Rönnells Antikvariat
AGATHA:
Hello stranger, let Ai* enter the Nightfall, a multi user dungeon, a world of fantasy, of quest and adventure.
Then something occurs to Ai. Ai character, Ai-self is erased with no trace. The climate changes and Ai has no definition, no meaning. Ai is nothing to hang on to, nothing to be grasped, nothing to protect or be protected from. Insides and outsides do not count. Ai keeps running. Dragons never tire. Ai blaze Ai tails across Ai darkness, etching Ai tracks onto that back mountainside. No parents, no children, just Aiselves, strings of inseparable sisters, warm and wet, absorbed in streams of information. Slow cold burns behind Ai ears, the red colour in Ai eyes, blood-shot whites, and pupils dilated in deep purple rage.
*Ai: The ‘Ai’ has a content that does not distinguish itself from other things or beings, because the me subject is either pure negativity or a splitting movement; it is consciousness. There’s no more self, me. We are all Ai. Ai is Ai. No subject. No desire. USED HERE AS ‘I’/ ’you’/ ’he’/ ’she’/ ‘it’/ ’her’/ ’his’/ ’they’/ ‘them’/ etc. ‘Ai’ (in hiragana あい, in katakana アイ, in kanji 愛, 藍, 亜衣) is a Japanese feminine given name. ‘Ai’ could mean love, affection (愛), or indigo (藍). The kanji 亜衣 is only associated as a proper noun, ‘Ai’ could mean Asian clothes. ‘Ai’ is the main character of the story, often called ‘Genry’ by the Karhiders, who have trouble pronouncing the letter ‘L’ in their language.
With: Hannah Quinlan Anderson + Rosie Hastings, Zoe Barcza, Duda Bebek, Blunt + Skensved, Dorota Gawęda, Eglė Kulbokaitė, Sandra Mujinga, Pakui Hardware, Linda Pedersen, Ella Plevin, Anna Sagström + Tobias Pålsson, Jenna Sutela, Matilda Tjäder, Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Anna Uddenberg
Dragon’s Lair welcomes all visitors to participate in various board- and role-playing games and to browse through their selection of games and game-related products in the store.
Dragon’s Lair
Kungsholmstorg 8
112 21 Stockholm
Saturday, 12 September 2015, 5–8 pm
The combination of sculptural objects, performers and an audience in the same environment defines a particular mode for an object to be present in. The object itself builds up the performative space by affecting its surroundings. Philosopher Gernot Böhme describes this mode as “ecstasy of the object”. In his understanding, “space” originates from the primary qualities of said object, such as its form, but also from its secondary traits, such as sound and smell. In this space, the ecstatic object acts on the performers and seizes the audience.
With “Performance Proletarians / Hit the North”, Benjamin Valenza addresses the language and circulation of ephemeral formats. The audience can choose to attend a 3-hour programme “live” at Andquestionmark, streamed “live” online, or both, simultaneously.
If the media that allow the circulation of performance also make the performative space expand, or ecstatic, what is the new condition of the object and how is it critically assimilated?
Benjamin Valenza involves sculptures, videos, poetry and literature in his performances. In 2014, he conceived “Performance Proletarians” with artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar: a live broadcast of a 36-hour programme of events. Valenza is also the co-founder of Galerie 1m3, an artist-run space in Lausanne.
Saturday, 14 March 2015, 6–9 pm
The event is part of “Performance as Sculpture”, an ongoing investigation into performance and the objects it activates by curator Valentina Sansone.
In collaboration with CuratorLab and Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design / The Royal Institute of Art / Stockholm University of the Arts (DOCH, University of Dance and Circus)
Your voice is disappearing, into the walls, making the light fittings shiver. The doors move and the windows shake. Your chest fills up with sound, your cranium bubbles. Yet, your ears cannot hear anything.
A song is played, you can feel it, but it’s not really there. It could be the artist’s voice, or someone else’s in disguise. Any attempt of speaking is sucked up and absorbed by the surroundings. The inaudible sound is leaking through the building, too big to be detained in the space. The silence is physical, permeating the rooms, the objects, the bodies. It becomes the sound.
Christine Sun Kim is an artist based in Berlin and New York, preliminarily working with sound. She was born deaf, and often creates works to make noise perceivable visually, physically or conceptually, as well as asking others to lend her their voices. For Andquestionmark, Kim specifically conceived the piece “4×4”, consisting of four speakers and four voices, which can only be experienced in the space for one night.
Contributors:
Bob Cohn, entrepreneur
Tony Conrad, artist
Jeffrey Mansfield, designer
Matana Roberts, musician
Friday, 16 January 2015, 7–9 pm
Before the event, on Friday, 16 January 2015 at 14.00, Christine Sun Kim will communicate about “4×4” at Iaspis. The presentation will include other samples of her practice and will be moderated by Robin McGinley, supported by a unique set-up of computers and projectors. Location: The Project Room / Projektrummet, Iaspis, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists, Maria skolgata 83, 118 53 Stockholm
In collaboration with Iaspis, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists, and Interactive Agents (Phil Arnold and Robin McGinley)
Andquestionmark invites you to The First Swedish Normcore Convention. Please join us for an evening of normalcy, non-particularity and celebrating that each of us is nothing more than one in 9.7 million.
Think unbranded jeans, plain turtleneck, white socks, Fleetwood Mac. Think post-difference, post-determination, post-authenticity, post-aspiration. Come as you are, I want to be with you everywhere. Maybe, may be. We adapt, we belong. Let’s talk about the weather, let’s revel the return of the real. The insanely OK over the psychotically different.
Come listen to regular music, share mundane food, drink unimposing wine, have normal conversations.
For his new project “The YouTube Variations”, Pierre Bismuth worked with different computer algorithms to transform sound material into musical scores. The scores are neither the product of thought, nor of chance, but the result of a series of computer translations, transliterations, and transcriptions of audio material.
Bismuth fed the software YouTube clips including musical parts, but also sound and speech. The music scores that are achieved after a first series of operations are then processed by using more conventional methods of composition, involving issues of choice, reference, structure, and aesthetics. The result is a piece in 5 movements for four instruments: cello, clarinet, flute, and percussions.
The piece is at the same time succinct and immensely difficult to play. “The YouTube Variations” is the first composition for several instruments based on this protocol and will be performed for the very first time at Andquestionmark.
This project is being developed in collaboration with artistic producer and acoustical engineer Kerwin Rolland.
With: Daniel Borgegård Älgå (clarinet), Pelle Halvarsson (cello), Magnus Nordén (kit percussion), Anna Petraskevica (flute), coordinated by Robin McGinley
Thursday, 20 March, 6-8 pm
On Friday, 21 March at 2 pm, Pierre Bismuth will talk about “The YouTube Variations” at Iaspis in conversation with Robin McGinley, one of the musicians interpreting the piece. The conversation is moderated by Stefanie Hessler. Location: The Project Room / Projektrummet, Iaspis, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists, Maria skolgata 83, 118 53 Stockholm
In collaboration with Iaspis. The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists
Linnéa Sjöberg’s recent projects can be described as performative research. After working and acting as a career woman in a “real-life” performance for almost two years, Sjöberg turned into a tattoo artist. More than strategic decisions, both projects developed in slow and naturally growing processes, and only became discernible as art works over time. Sjöberg's engagement with tattooing started in a method of acting first, thinking later, when she bought a tattoo machine and began scribbling words on volunteering friends’ bodies during gabber parties.
Andquestionmark organises an evening with Salong Flyttkartong, Sjöberg’s mobile tattoo studio. The event connects to the exhibition Tattoo Collection curated by Air de Paris and Urbi et Orbi in 1991. Hundreds of artists submitted drawings for tattoos that were exhibited in the galleries, and the number of which continued to grow for years. Between 1991–93, the exhibition was shown at Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, as well as the CRDC, Nantes, where it was part of the tattoo convention L'Art dans la Peau.
At Andquestionmark, Sjöberg interprets and applies a selection of these original works in her specific style, which has little to do with skills or following aesthetic rules established within the tattoo world.
With Dj Vero Veramente.
Thanks to all the artists, who have given us permission to use their works, as well as Air de Paris, who have made their archive accessible to us.
The proposal for Objects of Desire is to move away from the readings of style and formal categorization that are common to design and material culture and to look at alternative ways of dealing with objects by means of imagination, fiction and performance. This on-going project is composed of several one-evening events that will be held at different spaces where we normally experience material culture. This is the first event of a series and it is made in collaboration with Jour Fixe: a program in a domestic space that occasionally hosts artistic events organized by Stefanie Hessler. The evening is hosted by Andquestionmark, a working space with its own specific relation to objects. In those private spaces, the peculiar combination of particular things left in apparent disarray offers a different view from the process of organising and displaying objects in a gallery. It has its own rhythms of time and life. For that reason, its objects should follow different rules and be addressed with a different tone. In this way the diverse, sensitive and diffuse character of words, and above all imagination is introduced.
For dOCUMENTA (13), Raimundas Malašauskas carried out the project ‘Black Box’, a series of conversations about objects whose meaning and use had been lost with the passing of time, converting them into abstract and unclassifiable objects. Once a week, different artists, philosophers and scientists met up to speculate, in homage to the hypothetical relativity of knowledge. What they were looking for were stories, to create, through imagination and fantasy, alternative forms of understanding. For this year’s Venice Biennial, he was the curator of the Cyprus and Lithuanian Pavilion, in which again, objects and art pieces followed a special relation with each other. For the first event of Objects of Desire he will introduce us to his particular engagement with material culture and artistic objects.
In a similar way, Carl Palm (b. 1980, Tåstarp, Sweden) experiments with different ways of perceiving objects through daydreaming and meditation, in what he calls ‘The Nocturnal Studio’. The domestic object, charged with familiarity, becomes a place where we decide to reunite some disparate things, where we endeavour to establish multiple, imaginative relations, an area that possesses its own rules, linking things that are not evidently linked. Intricate and unique in their own right, Palm´s works often point somewhere else, generating content without possessing it, acknowledging the context and presence of the other pieces in the show. For Objects of Desire he will work on a new series of sculptural presentations coming from dreams. These objects are acting as the main characters on a radio drama and they will, for one night, be caught behind the stage of a shadow play.
11 October 2013, from 6 pm
Talk by Raimundas Malašauskas at 7 pm
Continuous performance by Carl Palm
Curated by Rosa Lleó
On this occasion, Shimabuku brought a special delicacy called “Kuchiko” from Noto, a peninsula located in the central North of Japan, to Stockholm. People in Noto spend a lot of effort and time to make this small triangular-shaped food. Shimabuku is interested in how food and cooking can create unexpected meetings and community, and how it is possible to share a limited amount of food with a larger number of people. Visitors discovered what “Kuchiko” is during the event.
An attempt to take the spot seriously using the most serious language in the world.