“The final year of Samlande tankar/Collecting Thoughts is here. This year our work culminates into a materialization of methods for acquisition and collection. Meaning what? I have been giving it a great deal of thought. To materialize something can mean to provide it with a body, make it tangible, even physical. I hope that a materialization will generate something that we can refer and return to, but that is still open to flexibility and renegotiation.”
Read the Monthly Letter #12 by process leader and curator Macarena Dusant here.
Samlande tankar / Collecting Thoughts is a project by Grafikens Hus with support from the Swedish Arts Council.
Suddenly it Happens! Exhibition and performance, 5-19 of September at the Public Art Agency Sweden
In the exhibition Suddenly it Happens! the artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian puts a selection from the Public Art Agency’s collection of prints in dialogue with a set of newly produced works consisting of lottery tickets, print sheets with dream poems, sound and performance.
The Public Art Agency Sweden’s collection of prints and Grafikens Hus’ graphic works created for the state owned lottery Penninglotteriet in the 1990s are examined as the artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian tackles questions about class, democracy and dreams. In a collaboration between the Public Art Agency Sweden and Grafikens Hus’ three-year project Samlande tankar/Collecting Thoughts, the artist explores the history of printmaking as artistic expression, as well as a means to portray social changes – in an exhibition and a performance.
Exhibition and performance at the Public art Agency Sweden
In the exhibition Suddenly it happens! the artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian begins in the history of the lottery and puts a selection from the Public Art Agency’s collection of prints in dialogue with a unique set of new lottery tickets. The idea is based on Grafikens Hus’ collaboration with the Penninglotteri during the years 1995–1998 when 75 graphic works of art were produced and then reproduced in miniature on each lottery ticket. The lottery as a phenomenon, with the task of bringing dreams and fantasies to life, becomes the starting point of a performance on September 17th.
The artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian connects graphics, the history of the lottery and the capitalization on people’s dreams in the exhibition Suddenly it Happens!. Just as a win or loss in a lottery can affect people’s lives, the artist allows the audience to decide the fate of the Public Art Agency’s graphic artwork through his performance.
For the exhibition the artist has worked with the concept of the absence of stories and haunting. How the absent voices within the collection thus haunt the archive and, by extension, a collective history. A spectre is haunting the archive. The work is part of Afrang Nordlöf Malekian’s ongoing residency at Grafikens Hus and a collaboration with Public Art Agency Sweden.
Photo: Paul Kokamägi/Public Art Agency Sweden.
Suddenly it Happens!
OpeningSeptember 5th 16.00–19.00
Place: Public Art Agency Sweden, Ateljén, plan 5, Kasern II, Svensksundsvägen 11 A, Stockholm
▪️ Performance during the festival Skeppsholmsdagen on September 17th
Time: two shows at 11.30 and 14.30
In the performance Afrang Nordlöf Malekian explores the relationship between profit and loss when it comes to collective assets. It is a dramatized raffle where the audience gets to play for a graphic work from the artist’s selection of the Public Art Agency Sweden´s collection of prints and the nine print sheets. In the performance an actor leads the lottery and portrays a ghost of socialism from 1970s Sweden. Here, the artist investigated how people’s hopes and dreams are exploited in a capitalist system and was performed for one day in September 2023.
The exhibition is open:
5 sept 16.00–19.00
12 sept 16.00–19.00
17 sept 11.00–16.00
19 sept 16.00–19.00
Welcome!
Long-term collaboration between the Public Art Agency Sweden and Grafikens Hus
Grafikens Hus and the Public Art Agency Sweden have initiated a long-term collaboration within the framework of the project Collecting Thoughts. The collaboration’s point of departure is the Art Agency’s collection of prints. Grafikens Hus lost its entire graphics collection in a fire in 2014. Since then, the museum has been working on building a new art collection. The process has raised questions about what kind of art is selected for a collection and what stories these works tell. Which stories are heard and which are excluded? In the Public Art Agency’s collection there are many duplicates of graphic works of art which are now transferred to Grafikens Hus. In this way, the artworks can be viewed by more people through exhibitions, mediation and research projects.
Graphic design: Johanna Burai in collaboration with Afrang Nordlöf Malekian. In the image art works by artist Birgit Ståhl-Nyberg: “Happy Boys” (1974), “Tunnelbanan” (“The Subway”) (1971) and by artist Berta Hansson “Lekande barn” (“Playing Children”) (ca 1970).
“This is the last monthly report before the summer holidays. The project term ends on August 31st; still, my mind is drawn to summarizing the year that’s gone by.”
June 2023
Read the Monthly Letter #9 by process leader and curator Macarena Dusant here.
Samlande tankar / Collecting Thoughts is a project by Grafikens Hus with support from the Swedish Arts Council.
Moving through the archive: Johnny Chang & MayDay Rooms
–> A Look at Critical Archiving and Organizing Access <–
Welcome to an evening, 8/6 5-8 PM, of thinking together on the possibilities of organizing archives and libraries from multiple perspectives. This program examines how different forms of gathering, especially from and for movements as well as marginalized communities generate various forms of agency, resistance, and collective un/learning processes. What are the various approaches, possibilities, and limitations of these practices?
Moving through the archive_ invites Johnny Chang and MayDay Rooms to discuss how knowledge can be collected from informal, critical, dissident perspectives. Through a lecture performance by Johnny Chang, and a public presentation by MayDay Rooms, we invite the public to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of collective, interdependent forms of gathering.
Elof Hellström, from Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, will moderate an open conversation after the presentations.
_ JOHNNY CHANG is a Taiwanese-American multidisciplinary designer and artist based in Stockholm. Moving between visual communication, writing, and artistic inquiry, his practice is concerned with circumstances of distance and diaspora, the politics of voice and listening, and processes of sense-making. His work inquires into conditions and entanglements of contemporary everyday life toward cultivating resilient capacities for sensing, feeling, and being in the present. His current residency research with Grafikens Hus is engaged with differently situated archives and libraries to investigate aesthetics of gathering, and terms and methods of access from urgent perspectives.
www.johnny-chang.info
_ MAYDAY ROOMS aims to safeguard histories and documents of radicalism and resistance by connecting them with contemporary struggle and protest, and by developing new free forms of dissemination and collective self-education. Our building contains an archive of historical material linked to radical history. Alongside our material archives, we create and maintain digital archives and databases of these histories, with the hope that these traces of the past might freely be taken up and put to use in present struggles. As well as housing an archive, our building functions as an organizing space for activists, social movements, troublemakers and radicals. We also run a full programme of events including film screenings, poetry readings, archiving workshops, historical talks, discussions, reading groups and social nights.
www.maydayrooms.org
_ ELOF HELLSTRÖM‘s work addresses issues of socio-political injustice in the contemporary city. He has initiated and is a member of various art collectives and self-organized initiatives such as the cultural house Cyklopen in Stockholm. Elof is one of the artistic directors at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus.
www.medborgarhuset.se
–> The program is a collaboration between Collecting Thoughts/Grafikens Hus, A Movement to Hold and Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus. Curated by Macarena Dusant/Grafikens Hus and Alba Folgado/A Movement to Hold. In collaboration with IASPIS. With support from Kulturrådet.
–> Accessibility
The event will take place in the library room on the ground floor of Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhuset. Medborgarhuset has a lift which makes the upper floor accessible as well. There are no obstructive steps on the ground floor of the building. There are larger wheelchair-accessible and gender-neutral toilets on both the ground floor and the upper floor. There will be other occasional visitors to other events in the house at the same time.
The event will be in English.
Keywords and translations will be available in Swedish.
If you would like to speak to someone prior to your visit to discuss your access needs, please contact: info@medborgarhuset.se
Find your way there:
Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus
Riksdalervägen 2, 129 32 Hägersten
Subway station: Hägerstensåsen
“I’m writing you at the end of April. There’s a sense in the air that spring is on its
way, not least as the light has begun its return. Within Samlande tankar/Collecting
Thoughts I’ve spent time on grants that will enable collaborations and events. Writing
grants entails fi guring out where a project might go, but it also means looking back to
the original conception of a project and, more concretely, seeing how it’s evolved.”
Read the Monthly Letter #10 by process leader and curator Macarena Dusant here.
Samlande tankar / Collecting Thoughts is a project by Grafikens Hus with support from the Swedish Arts Council.
Johnny Chang
Johnny Chang is a Taiwanese-American multidisciplinary designer and artist based in Stockholm. Moving between visual communication, writing, and artistic research, his practice is concerned with circumstances of distance and diaspora, the politics of voice and listening, and processes of sense-making. Through visual culture, publication making, and collaborative and performative methods of reading, he investigates ways of listening and voicing toward cultivating resilient capacities for sensing, feeling, and being in the present. He studied at ArtCenter College of Design (BFA, US) and Konstfack (MFA, SE). Occasionally teaches at Konstfack and Stockholm University.
Johnny will also be Artist-in-Residence as part of Samlande tankar/Collecting Thoughts.
“The year is drawing to a close, and I have just returned aft er some time in Chile,
that is part of the Global South. Moving through the capital, Santiago, I was reminded
of how social movements use visual art as a natural form of expression.”
Read the Monthly Letter #9 by process leader and curator Macarena Dusant here
Samlande tankar / Collecting Thoughts is a project by Grafikens Hus with support from the Swedish Arts Council.