TheDora Miracle García inRed Tensta Love (Theoria) AsA new part film of Theby Magnus Eros Effect: Bärtås Art, Solidarity Movements11.6 –28.9 2014 and the Quest for Social Justice 16.5–7.10 Norra Sidan Norra

översätt Konica Minolta 1 Dora García Red Love This atmospheric installation, rich Inspired by Alexandra Kollontai, in references, plays on the mission, with contributions by Konstfack’s almost transcendental purpose, and CuratorLab and others urgency of Kollantai’s life and work, As part of The Eros Effect: Art, something which is shared by many Solidarity Movements and the Quest revolutionaries and artists like Kazimir for Social Justice Malevich. The stairs originate in a 16.5–7.10 2018 museum with a different but no less passionate mission, The Museum of Dora García’s new work Red Love is Jurassic Technologies, which was inspired by the Russian author, feminist, founded in 1989 by a husband and wife activist, political refugee and diplomat in Los Angeles. The museum is defined Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) who as “an educational institution dedicated propagated for radically transformed to the advancement of knowledge relationships between women and men. and the public appreciation of the Free love and camaraderie were at the Lower Jurassic”, a term not further core of her thinking, as expressed in explained. In this exceptional museum, her novels and essays. As an influential which is reminiscent of a cabinet of figure in the Bolshevik party and curiosities with a collection holding commissar for social welfare in their artistic, ethnographic, scientific, and first government, she not only set up historical objects, some exhibits remain free childcare centres and maternity unclassifiable. Part of the collection houses, but also pushed through rights are a set of maquettes of wooden for women including divorce, abortion, staircases, one of which came to be the and full rights for children born out of model for the staircase in Red Love. wedlock. At the time these were unique measures which were soon overhauled While Kollontai herself became the by Stalin, who did not appreciate inspiration for the character Ninotchka this attempt at ending “the universal in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1939 film comedy servitude of woman” by challenging both by the same name, famously played by economic and psychological conditions. Greta Garbo, the film W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism is another foil, and García’s exhibition consists of a wooden Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once from cage-like structure with a door leading 1937 gave the exhibition its cage. into a space furnished with a big table Made in 1971 by Yugoslav director and chairs. This stage-like space is Dusan Makavejev, W.R.: Mysteries being used for various purposes during of the Organism mixes documentary the exhibition period, including by passages with fiction while dealing participants of Konstfack’s CuralorLab with communist politics and sexuality. programme for their final projects. The life and work of the psychoanalyst Strong light emanates from a lamp Wilhelm Reich feature in the film, which suspended from the ceiling, casting was banned in Yugoslavia. Like both distinct shadows on the floor which has Kollontai and The Museum of Jurassic been painted white with a red square in Technologies, W.R.: Mysteries of the the middle. The square is not perfectly Organism exemplifies how radical rectilinear, just like the angular shapes imagination can be set in motion. Here in Kazimir Malevich’s paintings. The we also find a certain kind of dissidence, lighting bear likeness to scenes in the both heroic and unheroic, as well as film W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, failure and exile. All of them are themes and the cage takes its form from the film which reoccur in García’s oeuvre. You Only Live Once. García’s research-based practice is At the other end of Tensta konsthall’s concerned with modes of political main exhibition space there is a resilience and the production of wooden spiral staircase on which a subjectivity. She is often drawing on selection of books has been placed. psychoanalysis in her work, specifically

2 the theories of Jacques Lacan. Kollontai representative in Oslo and Mexico and is yet another dissident figure whose eventually also in Stockholm, in 1930– biography and philosophy of action 1945. Here she became a public figure, provides an example of emancipatory befriending for example many members politics to the artist. Other such figures of the feminist Fogelstad group. are the philosopher Félix Guattari, the psychiatrist Franco Basaglia and artist Among her most read texts are and theorist Oscar Masotta. They The New Woman (1913), Make are all in some sense deviants, who Way for Winged Eros (1923) and have experienced marginality. While The Autobiography of a Sexually relating to them either through real Emancipated Communist Woman or fictional characters, García scripts (1926), as well as the short novels interventions and installations that Vasilisa Malygina (1923) and Red Love transpose these various authors into a (1927). The latter is a psychological presentation to the wider public, mixing study of sex-relations in the early politics, performance and the formation Soviet period, which has given García’s of subjectivity. Like a continuous exhibition its title. Vasilisa Malygina inquiry, García’s work is invested in the was published together with Three performativity of speech and actions Generations and Sisters under the title and their particular qualities as political of The Love of Worker Bees, which was tools. Her approach to the exhibition widely read in the west throughout the space reflects the structural problems 1960s and 1970s. of this emancipatory process, frequently using performative devices which Make Way for Winged Eros was challenge the viewer. written as a response to many letters she received from young workers Kollontai was a pioneer of political with questions on how to conduct life engagement and writing on sexual under socialism. She describes how politics, at the same time as she historically different material conditions fought for workers’ rights advocating a have determined and regulated love participatory organisation of production. and sexual relations in society. While While leading a highly unconventional The New Woman deals with the life for a woman of her generation, with psychological aspects of an emancipated two divorces and an active professional, working woman belonging to no one sexual, and emotional life, she worked but herself and yet a member of directly with women workers during community based on trust and solidarity, the years leading up to the October The Autobiography of a Sexually Revolution. She engaged specially with Emancipated Communist Woman is an social and emotional emancipation, account of her own experience. The critiquing bourgeois family relations. three stories in The Love of Worker After serving as the people’s commissar Bees, written in an unadorned prose of social welfare in the first Bolshevik with proletarian readers in mind, which government, she was seminal in a gives examples of the tensions between group called the Workers’ Opposition old ideals and new sexual lifestyles after who soon after the revolution criticised the revolution, as well as the power of the party for being too removed from solidarity between women. the workers and for quickly becoming too bureaucratised. After that she was García has also dedicated a certain gradually side-lined within domestic amount of her work to love, in various politics, and thanks to her previous ways and together with different experience as a political refugee in people. The 2009 performance The Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Romeos was designed to take place in and Norway — and her language the context of an art fair, but has also skills — she was given tasks abroad. happened during an art collector’s As the first female ambassador in the party and will happen in a whole world, Kollontai served as the Soviet city, in Trondheim, this summer. The

Konica Minolta 3 performance is set in contexts where passionate debates on what the Army kindness, charm, and good looks are of Love should be, those who have then professional tools, something that received plenty of love, and therefore can be exchanged for something else are made equals, are sometimes ready as a trade on goods. These features to go from receivers to givers. and abilities help buying or selling something else. Posters with photos At a time when universal emancipation of the performers are distributed in again is on the agenda, with the situation in question, informing intersectional approaches as powerful the visitors that a group of young and tools, it is an interesting moment to attractive men are out there being revisit Kollontai’s legacy. How can we paid to be lovable, kind, and attractive. today relate to, portray and engage Their job for the evening is to make critically with this historical figure and people feel special. The question of the her deeds? What is to be learnt from performance is: now that you know that Kollontai’s political practice and personal those young men are paid to be nice to life? Contrary to the idea that equality you, will you accept this niceness? Will it has been achieved, García argues that, mean that the feelings between you will reading Kollontai we learn that the always be fake, only because there is a fight still has to be fought, and that money transaction? Are you ready to change will not happen without love. accept their attention because well, why As Kollontai herself wrote: “Imagine a not, as long as it lasts, it seems like a fair society, a people, a community, where deal? there are no longer Mashenka ladies and Mashenka laundresses. (…) Where Army of Love, an ongoing collaboration there are no parasites and no hired with the writer Ingo Niermann, is about workers. (…) Where all people do the an army of people willing to give love same amount of work and society in — all-encompassing, sensual, familiar return looks after them and helps them and comradely love — to those who do in life. (…) When Mashenka, who is now not have enough of it. In short, people neither a lady nor a servant but simply a who have an excess of love and are citizen, becomes pregnant, she does not ready to share it with those wanting have to worry about what will happen love, who for whatever reason — for to her or her child. (…) Society, that big example sickness, social marginality, happy family, will look after everything. handicap and age — are lacking it. Love is an emotion that unites and is Borrowing heavily from Kollontai and consequently of an organising character Charles Fourier, and the basic notion (…) Only the ideology of the life-style of that the ideal of love in the West is the new, labouring humanity can unravel closely related to the idea of property, this complex problem of emotion.” they pursue the idea of common love. Love should not only be directed to one For the academic year 2017/2018 person, but to everyone — as the great Konstfack’s CuratorLab and Tensta equaliser, love needs to happen between konsthall engaged in a collaborative equals and one makes people equal by research project on the life and work loving them. In this regard, García and of Kollontai. The research project Niermann have actively researched the acted as a spring board for García’s possibility of an army of love, a group new work, using reading sessions as of people with a certain behaviour a major tool. Each of the four reading code and the characteristics of an sessions hosted guests bringing their army, in the sense that the Christian suggested reading, presentations and Church has been compared to an topics for discussion, including the army: selfless, collective, serving the writer Agneta Pleijel, the medical doctor, common good, tied by duties of honour writer and activist Shabane Barot, artist and companionship, each individual Petra Bauer with researcher and critic part of a greater body. Mostly carried Rebecka Thor, political philosopher out as workshops with exercises and Michael Hardt, writer and philosopher

4 Oxana Timofeeva from the collective Chto Delat?, Aaron Schuster, García herself and the initiators, i.e. head of CuratorLab Joanna Warsza, researcher Michele Masucci and Tensta konsthall’s director Maria Lind.

Self-presentation: Dora García was born in Spain and studied in Amsterdam. As a young artist she moved to Brussels where she lived for 16 years. She participated with the real time theatre in public space The Beggar’s Opera in Sculpture Project Münster in 2007, where the character Charles Filch made his first appearance in her work. She has always been interested in anti-heroic and marginal personas as a prototype to study the social status of the artist, and in narratives of resistance and counterculture. In this regard, Dora García has developed works on the DDR political police, the Stasi (Rooms, Conversations, film, 24 min., 2006), on the charismatic figure of US stand up comedian Lenny Bruce (Just because everything is different it does not mean that anything has changed, Lenny Bruce in Sydney, one-time performance, Sydney Biennale, 2008) or on the origins, rhizomatic associations and consequences of antipsychiatry (Mad Marginal book series since 2010, The Deviant Majority, film, 34 min., 2010). In the last years, she has used classical TV formats to research Germany’s most recent history (Die Klau Mich Show, documenta 13, 2012), frequented Finnegans Wake reading groups (The Joycean Society, film, 53 min., 2013), created meeting points for voice hearers (The Hearing Voices Café, since 2014) and researched the crossover between performance and psychoanalysis (The Sinthome Score, 2013, and Segunda Vez, 2017).

Konica Minolta 5 Love is Revolutionary of Love. This project is an initiative of a friend, Ingo Niermann, together with An interview with Dora García by his friends. I don’t normally do collective CuratorLab, edited by Martyna works. But Army of Love was extremely Nowicka interesting to me and in a way Maria’s offer and Amy of Love came together.

I think the reason why Maria invited CuratorLab: Have you, in your work, me to become involved with Alexandra always been interested in love, Kollontai, was my work in the 2016 relationships, and how the sense of Gwangju Biennale. I recreated the belonging shapes and influences social Nokdu Bookstore where the 1980 structures? I guess one could see this Gwangju Uprising was incubated. part even in one of your earlier works Revolution in Korea, which my work such as Heartbeat? related to, was in a way not so far off from the October Revolution that was Dora García: My background is quite lived and described by Kollontai. All heavy and conceptual, this is a kind the revolutionaries were very young of art which I loved as a student and people ready to sacrifice themselves. it still has a huge impact on me. In Those people who fought and died were the beginning my main focus was the between 15 and 25 years old, with the structure of art, the relation to the majority of of them being younger than spectator. I was always interested in 20. During the uprising you could have questions of language and philosophy, had all kinds of romances, revolutionary formal questions, feminist or women romances. All of a sudden the norms issues were never explicit in my work. I were subverted. You didn’t have to always thought of my work as very dry, care about the social status of your I was never interested in telling stories relations, you simply became aware of specific people, love or even sex, of your own mortality and everything not at all! So I would say my interest in changed. It had a huge impact on both love started when I realised the political older women, who saw their kids going potential of those things. to death, and younger women, who grabbed this opportunity to question It was sometime around 2008, when I the patriarchal structures. It was one of did a work in Australia on Lenny Bruce. those situations, when many paradoxical Because of that I started to research things come together and then explode. counterculture in Australia and actually That changes everything. The Gwangju realised counterculture came hand in Uprising has been compared to La hand with the gay liberation movement, Commune in Paris in 1871, having the that both politics and revolt link to same effect in Asia as Europe. sexuality and sexual habits. In a way sexuality was something belonging to the private realm which could immediately become subversive.

CL: Was the link between sexuality and politics the reason why you became interested in Alessandra Kollontai?

GD: Actually, I became aware of Kollontai’s existence some time ago, but I had never read any of her texts. When Maria Lind suggested that I should have a look at Kollontai’s writings I was very occupied with producing my work Army

6 CL: You mentioned very briefly that you CL: Now, as you approach your became interested in love through your upcoming exhibition in Tensta konsthall, conceptual practice, when did you start Red Love, what in Kollontai felt relevant to recognise this kind of political and to your own interests? broader potential? Can you talk a little bit how your interest in love changed DG: The fact that she was so ahead during those 10 years? of her times. She mentions in the 1910s and 1920s things that would DG: I have to say that when I think about be broadly discussed in the sixties or it now, I am surprised I didn’t recognise even seventies. Or now. There are few the subversive potential of sexuality specific things that struck me in her earlier. Of course, it has to do with writings: equality of men and women, where I come from; in my generation progressive views on marriage and female artists were very often interest- family, the idea that you cannot have ed in representing women’s sexuality. a revolution without women and a I was always horrified by this notion conviction that true freedom for women and I did everything not to be classified can only be achieved in a socialist state. as a female artist, doing women art, I totally cut any reference to my female There is also the similarity I came condition. I absolutely didn’t want to be across between Kollontai’s ideas and invited to female art exhibitions. Those the women’s movements in South prejudices completely blinded me to all America. When I was doing research in other possibilities. South America I realised that women’s movements there avoid identifying My interest in love changed as the as feminist, because they consider politics changed. For instance, in 2008, feminism to be white and European and when “the personal” started to become they don’t want to be identified with present in my work through the project that. White European feminists are their in Sydney on Lenny Bruce, Obama was oppressors, not their sisters, therefore then a presidential candidate, sub- they don’t want to identify with feminist sequently he won the nomination for the fights. The notion of class in Kollontai’s Democratic Party and all of a sudden writings is also something very present it seemed like things were going to be and in contemporary South America it OK. What I call “the personal” are the has been shifted from the notion of the LGBT, civil rights movements, which I proletariat to the notion of colonised have always supported, which are part non-white people. of my life experience. But in relation to my work experience, my interest in love Another thing would be the clearly coincides with Trumpism. degeneration of Kollontai’s ideas in socialist countries. In 2006, when I did The notion of love is currently very research work on the political police in much embedded in politics. One of the East Germany, I focused as much on movements against Trump is called sex as on politics. In the GDR women “Revolutionary Love”, another “The very often had children with different Love Army”. The first one is related to partners since they didn’t have to women’s movements (what has already depend on their husbands for their been named Fourth Wave Feminism) income and divorce was not stigmatised and the last one is calling simply to — therefore it was socially accepted love Republicans, love your opponent, to have several partners throughout because it is love that will conquer. your life. Next to that, the system of However, the main force today is hate nurseries, schools, and child care was and many people think only love can wonderful; you could put your children conquer it and as stupid as it sounds, there from the age of three months it is probably right. Hate is all about and pick them up at night. Those facts manifestations of insecurities; it is only created a situation of relative freedom through all kinds of love that you can and independence for women, but one overcome those. in which children grew distant from their parents and too devoted to the State.

Konica Minolta 7 Therefore, it sometimes happened interested in how you reflect on that in that children denounced their parents your work. to the State, if kids considered their parents’ devotion to the Party was not DG: I have never been very fond of the convincing enough. body… Even in Army of Love I always get out when they start the physical part. I don’t know where that comes CL: Are those relevant things in from. I’ve always been very interested Kollontai also the reason why her in other sexualities but I am very project did not work? conventional, sexually speaking.

DG: Sometimes Kollontai seems very As I have already mentioned, I always naive about women leaving their separated my personal life, my children to the State, which is interesting motherhood and my work. I have never for me. I come from a Catholic country done with my children anything related where this would be an absolute evil. to art which is quite rare. When women Nothing comes before family, your duty artists have children, often, their kids is always to your parents and nothing feature in their work too. This has else. For those people it must have been never been the case with me, but at the quite different. When you are brought same time my kids have always been up as a socialist your duty is to the with me when I work. I never found it Party. Those people who denounced problematic to work with them; I never their parents saw themselves as heroes. felt they hindered me from anything. On the one hand being an artist and When I spoke to some socialists from having children was always something those times, they always said that in the natural, and one the other, they never sixties and seventies they considered appeared in my artistic work. I think that the socialist countries a model in the body is not something very present women’s liberation and abortion rights. in my work but language is. Of course, Most of them did not realise where it language is always related to the body could lead. In East Germany there was so I can’t say that the body is absent. the case of a woman who was active in a One could say that I am interested in resistance, a fighter for democracy. She language piercing through the body, was also a feminist and a member of a which is how Jacques Lacan defined the women’s movement. When the Berlin unconscious. Wall fell and Stasi archives opened, she discovered that her husband had been informing on her since they met. They CL: My next question would be had been together for fifteen years and connected to the language you use — they had kids. She immediately left him. the terms you use. Your work in Tensta The funniest part was the interview with konsthall is called Red Love. How do her husband who still didn’t understand you understand “red love”? the problem — he thought about his actions as something done to protect DG: For a long time, I wanted to call the her. So I think about this State taking exhibition “Revolutionary Love”, but I too much over family relations as a total felt it was too long. I knew I had read this degeneration of relations. He could title somewhere — “Red Love” comes see himself as a husband, lover and from an article on Kollontai by Michael informant at the same time. Hardt. When I decided to paint the floor red, which is referencing Malevich, I made up my mind to call the exhibition CL: With the appearance of Kollontai, Red Love. The double meaning of the the body comes into the picture much word “red” has always been interesting more than any of the other ideologists for me. Communists flags are the most of the period. One could say that she beautiful flags because there is so much introduces a body into politics. I’m red in them… When I was a teenager I

8 was always wearing Russian t-shirts, DG: I think plenty of other things communist propaganda t-shirts. I was happened during those last 100 years. unaware, and I just thought they were Something that changed a lot was AIDS. beautiful. I remember my teachers saying we were conservatives because we didn’t have I chose the title also because I think that as much sex as they did. With AIDS in the idea of love as a revolutionary force, mind you had to be much more careful, which encourages self-organisation, is you always needed a condom, if not, interesting. Of course this idea is not nothing happened. That somehow wiped new, it has been present in the history carelessness out of sexuality. of humanity for a long time. Before working on Kollontai for this project, I Another factor would be the explosion of was reading Charles Fourier who has the pornography industry. It’s something quite a different stance on love. that makes me extremely uneasy, but I still don’t have a stance on pornography Kollontai doesn’t consider sexual or prostitution. I understand of course preferences other than heterosexuality; where prostitution comes from, and I she suggests that other options would think it’s disgusting, and I wish it did be detrimental for a Communist society. not exist. But it does and it perseveres. Contrary to her, Fourier thinks every It’s naive to say that it’s bad and we possible sexual preference is perfectly should ban it — it is a hyper complex fine and a fundamental part of the phenomenon and to say that it is the individual as well, and he points out ultimate hetero-patriarchal exploitation that to repress any sexual drive always of the female/other body does not has terrible consequences. For Fourier, get us very far in practical terms of however weird you consider your desire, reducing misery and abuse. And in your needs can be accommodated, you relation to pornography and the way to will sure find people who like the same be empowered by it, I love the concept thing. Fourier came close to inventing of post-porn, I’ve seen a lot of it, but it’s Tinder imagining this kind of structures, hard to say if I take any pleasure from the phalansteries, where the Priestess it. Sometimes it is charming but most of of Love would be communicating with the time they are bad and boring films other Priestesses of Love to match and they don’t arouse you sexually at all. people according to their preferences. Even my students say that the problem Fourier is meticulous. Everything is a with post-porn is that you never get multiple of four, but his ideas are truly excited. Any kind of movement that revolutionary and very much related wants to use porn as a way of liberation to a sexual revolution. In a way they doesn’t seem to work really. are much more radical than what Kollontai had in mind. The idea that Anyway, I don’t think we are anywhere there is absolutely nothing strange to near a revolution in sex. I think on human experience, that nothing can the contrary, we are in the process of be called degenerate, that nothing that involution of sex. There are societies, gives pleasure is bad, is amazing. Even like in Japan, where the problem now it sounds challenging. Of course, is that people are not interested, curiously, we are now in a much more they prefer things other than sex. I conservative period than we were 30 or remember this quote, not sure whose 40 years ago. it is, saying something to the extent of: “The worst thing that can happen to a sexual fantasy is for it to come true”. I CL: Do you think today that 100 years think people have decided that sexual after the October Revolution, but fantasies are much better, safer and also 50 years after May ‘68, we are at cleaner than the real thing. So maybe another turning point as far as love and that’s going to be the future, I don’t sex are concerned? know.

Konica Minolta 9 CL: As structure and language seem almost expressionist use of light. There very important to you, we wanted to is a cage, based on the one from the ask you about the moment in your movie W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism work where you test the structure or (directed by Dušan Makavejev), which narrative which you have created with is a kind of Communist counter-culture. the public. How do you control it? Do Inside the cage there is a working room you keep track of how the public reacts which I imagine as Kollontai’s writing to or absorbs this narrative? room. It is pretty symbolic, because of the light spreading from the inside of the I don’t have to control that. This is cage. something that happens to every artist, you never know how people are going Then there is also a staircase as stairs to react to your films or novels, and at are a classical Freudian sublimation some point you just have to let go. The of desire, but here they also refer to way I usually work facilitates feedback “Stairway to Heaven” and notions of more than other traditional models. Cosmism. The staircase I’m using is For instance, I started developing my based on one from the Museum of works on the internet, making blogs, at Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles a time when those things didn’t really which is quite an interesting place. exist. In those prehistoric times of the It’s not Russian but they are referring internet we created structures which to Soviet space travel with a special allowed people to give feedback and get room devoted to dogs that were sent to information about those projects which space. The construction of this museum only a few people could see live. Indeed is all about make-believe, it feels like because of this I was also interested in a magician’s cave, full of shadow play. how things are thought and narrated. In So in the case of Red Love in Tensta many of the works that I made later on, konsthall, the structures are both for example the one at Sculpture Project sculptural elements and they are rich Münster, the feedback was part of the in symbolist associations. It’s really a work — the internet space was provided stage, it’s really meant for things to to the audience, they could follow the happen there. adventures of The Beggar (http:// thebeggarsopera.org/). They could communicate with him and that way CL: How does Kollontai fuse with people became part of the novel. Russian Cosmism which you briefly mentioned?

CL: The follow up question would be DG: It’s not that I want to fuse it, one about the structure you have in I’m interested in using it as a way of mind for Tensta konsthall. What is it looking at Kollontai. Cosmism relates and how does it refer to Kollontai? to the idea that Russia did not produce philosophers, but novelists. Their novels DG: I understand the structure present often contained this vision of Russians at Tensta konsthall as kind of a stage. as “a chosen people”, endowed with a You can use it as a backdrop for mission for the whole of mankind. Those activities and performances. It’s a tendencies were present in Russia in structure that inspires, colours and the 19th century, but also earlier, before unifies everything you do, almost like Cosmism began. The name “Cosmism” a campaign image which gives a house stems from the outreach of this mission: brand to all activities that will develop Russians were to save not only Earth, inside it. This stage design is almost but also the cosmos. Cosmism was very symbolically related to Kollontai, to the important for the development of space idea of mission as church-like mysticism. missions. Awareness of a mission that The space also relates to the story of would change humanity is fundamental the avant-garde — you have Malevich also for the October Revolution. on the floor; you have a very strong,

10 In a way it’s amazing that the October nobody shoots! You talk to people who Revolution worked. Everything was read different things and have a totally against it! How is it possible that a different take on reality, because they proletarian revolution triumphs in believe what they read, and they read a a country with no proletariat? The bunch of lies. I think any kind of fiction Cosmist credo, this mix of visionary can make people aware of things and absurdism and mysticism, present later therefore can change them. on in Eastern European science-fiction (Stanisław Lem, brothers Strugatsky) certainly played a role in the October Revolution. The idea that Russian people have a duty to mankind, a universal mission, was already there.

CL: If we are talking about giant utopian visions, let’s get back to your work. Do you think about your work in relation to change and hoping to provide possibilities?

DG: I think art does change the world, but in ways we are not aware of. I’m not interested in what is commonly known as socially engaged art, although I think all art is socially engaged. I find the works of many socially engaged artists troublesome, because I really know just a few which have no contradictions. I think art operates and performs change by thinking of individuals and a mass is always made up of individuals.

I feel there have been books and films that really changed the way people think. There is The Man in the High Castle, a novel of Philip K. Dick which plays with the idea of a book changing the world. We are given the choice to choose between different versions of fiction in history but the very fact of being able to imagine another way of seeing things, different from the one imposed on us, is already a change. It becomes even more interesting right now with the notion of “gas-lighting”, very present in the United States within the Trump administration. You see something with your own eyes and you are told that it’s not true. I saw police beating people who were voting in Barcelona and then the news said the police got hurt because people threw themselves against them… Yes, they got hurt, because they were beating people, it’s not like you can get shot if

Konica Minolta 11 Contributions by the participants Wednesday 16.5, 11:00–14:00 in CuratorLab A B C 15.5, 16.5, 19.5 Tensta konsthall Author, workshop leader: Johanne Tuesday 15.5, 15:00–18:00 Lykke Holm New Gospel Curator: Malin Hüber Starts at Sergels Torg, continues on the way to Tensta konsthall In a time when the female position Artist: Alicja Rogalska is (hopefully) being redefined, what Curator: Martyna Nowicka voices will rise to the surface? It all starts with language. How can the New Gospel is a radical feminist employment of the female voice function manifesto inspired by Alexandra as a mechanism of interference within Kollontai’s writings and contemporary the patriarchal structures of today’s feminist theories, delivered by society? performers — missionaries, spreading the news of a new kind of society to Led by author Johanne Lykke Holm, unassuming passers-by. The performers this reading workshop draws from will play the role of street preachers, the character of the witch as an but instead of proselytising the coming empowering feminist position that of Christ or the end of the world they refuses stigmatisation and oppression will preach a post-gender, post-work by autonomy. The workshop strives and truly egalitarian society. The project to create a sisterhood; a safe space aims to explore the gap between faith to explore, identify and enact the and rationality, religious and political possibilities of the performative voice, a beliefs, propaganda and information voice that is yet to claim its space. in the age of post-truth, increasing secularisation on the one hand and the Johanne Lykke Holm (1987) is an author rise of religious fundamentalism on the based in Copenhagen. Lykke Holm runs, other. Hekseskolan together with the author and poet Olga Ravn: a writing course The performance will start on Sergels that, from a feminist position, critically Torg and continue on the way to Tensta engages with power structures. Lykke konsthall, culminating at the opening Holm has also translated the works of there. Maja Lee-Langvald, Lone Aburas and Yahya Hassan from Danish to Swedish Alicja Rogalska is a visual artist living in amongst others. Albert Bonniers Förlag London. Her practice is interdisciplinary, published her first novel, Natten som collaborative, and focuses on social föregick denna dag, in 2017. structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works in Malin Hüber is a curator and a producer specific contexts creating situations, who works at the intersection of moving performances, videos and installations. image and art. Her projects attempt to practice a different political reality here and now, create space for many voices to be heard and to co-exist, whilst collectively searching for emancipatory ideas for the future.

Martyna Nowicka is an art critic and curator based in Cracow, where she currently runs the project space Handbook for City Dwellers.

12 Wednesday 16.5 14:30–15:30 The Digital Domestic Dora García’s installation Artist: Antonio Roberts Curator: Aly Grimes

Since the birth of the Internet in 1989 the speed of its development has led to a radical shift in the way that ‘the home’ appears today. The online domain continues to infiltrate the physical world, downloading itself into our homes through the ‘internet of things’ — a phenomenon best described as ‘the colonisation of the domestic environment by similarly networked products and services intended to deliver convenience’. Drawing inspiration from cultural theorists Hannah Arendt and Helen Hester, Antonio Roberts examines the impact of automation, smart devices and digital assistants on domestic labour and hypothesizes how we will operate in the home in the years to come.

Antonio Roberts’ artistic practice is critical of the ways in which proprietorial systems, more specifically copyright; exist to suppress creativity instead of their stated aims of protecting the rights of artists and encouraging innovation. The Internet has provided the opportunity for mass copying, redistribution and remixing of content — profoundly changing the way culture is produced and shared, thus sparking legal battles that still rage on. His practice asserts that sharing, remixing, and copying is central to the way in which artists create work, both historically and in the age of the internet. He graduated from Birmingham City University in 2011 with a Master’s Degree in Digital Art in Performance, and is a curator at Vivid Projects in Birmingham where he runs the Black Hole Club artist development programme.

Aly Grimes is an Independent Curator and Co-Founder of Stryx project space in Birmingham.

Konica Minolta 13 Wednesday 16.5, 17:00–19:00 Saturday 19.5, 12:00–15:00 Ask Alexandra Bodies of Water Dora García’s installation Tensta konsthall Artist and curator: Sophia Tabatadze Artist: Pontus Pettersson Curator: Hannah Zafiropoulos Alexandra Kollontai was nicknamed the ‘Valkyrie of the Revolution’ Bodies of Water is a choreographic reflecting her strong position among the installation by Pontus Pettersson in leadership right after the Revolution in collaboration with Hannah Zafiropoulos. 1917. But not long after, around 1923, It takes Alexandra Kollontai’s writings she was removed from office and was on love and Astrida Neimanis’ sent to various diplomatic missions. How Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a much power did she still have at that Body of Water as a starting point for an time and to what extent was she using embodied exploration into fluidity and her intelligence, strength, and charms being-in-relation. to secure her own survival? Being aware of historical and gender derived Water flows between, and through, factors surrounding the life and work bodies — its molecules have strong of Kollontai, to whom should we ask the cohesive forces; a tendency to stick questions that we still have about her? together. If I perceive the water in Wouldn’t it be best to ask her directly? you, perceive you as water, how might In a performance comprising a séance, my relationship to you change? How a board game, and a family constellation will engaging with you on a liquid participants of CuratorLab and the level change the way my body, and general public are invited to interact the collective body, moves? Through with the spirit of Kollontai. We will make such forms of aqueous embodiment, a direct contact with Kollontai through different state of love may be actualised: Sophia Tabatadze. fluid, movable, creating the context for new forms of communality, a radical Sophia Tabatadze was born and raised ‘we’. in Tbilisi, Georgia. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at the Rietveld The installation is the product of a Academy in 2002. Since thenshe has collaborative, embodied research been operating within two worlds, process with participants from a series Western Europe and Georgia, a country of open dance practices in Stockholm striving to belong to Europe whilst being and London. It will be performed by a deeply rooted in Asia. Her practice is group of dancers as part of the public that of an autonomous artist in Western programme of Dora García’s exhibition Europe, and curator in Georgia, where at Tensta konsthall. she organises projects through the organisation GeoAIR, founded by her in Pontus Pettersson is a choreographer, 2003. dancer, and artist based in Stockholm.

Hannah Zafiropoulos is a curator, writer, and researcher living in London.

Konica Minolta 14 Saturday 19.5, 15:00 David Horvitz is an artist based in Los LOVE LETTERS Angeles. His expansive and borderless Tensta konsthall and other locations body of work is presented through Artists: Jeremy Bailey, David Horvitz, the forms of photographs, books, BAÇOY KOOP performances, memes, or, through the Curators: Nicholas J. Jones and use of ‘mail art’, with postal dispatches. Alessandra Prandin BAÇOY KOOP (Printing, Duplication Alexandra Kollontai vigorously and Distribution Cooperative) conduct challenged accepted societal norms archival research into mimeograph of her time, attempting to inspire her printed dissident material leading to comrades towards a brighter shared collectively produced printed matter, future. Love Letters brings together actions, and installations. The members three artists who echo Kollontai’s of BAÇOY KOOP are Fatma Belkis, critique of market based hierarchies, Nihan Somay, Özgür Atlagan and İz as a collective challenge of today’s Öztat. sophisticated mechanisms of power and control that standardise communication, Nicholas J. Jones is an artist and the dictating the information we encounter, founding director of PRAKSIS (Oslo). whom our thoughts reach and even Alessandra Prandin is a Paris based how we meet. Each of these three independent curator. interventions subverts modes of contemporary propaganda from With support from SAHA. different areas of daily life (online marketing, lectures, unsolicited-mail) to replace their usual seductive intent with generous, poetic acts of resistance.

Visit www.theyoumuseum.org to opt in for Jeremy Bailey’s online intervention The You Museum which replaces big- data fuelled online advertising banners with purpose-made works of art. David Horvitz’s mail project To You, the Wind subverts the premise of unsolicited mail, instead offering the gift of an artwork posted directly to residents living near to Tensta konsthall. Istanbul based BAÇOY KOOP’s (Printing, Duplication and Distribution Collective) performance, Sweet Confiscation, (held 19.5 15:00 at Tensta konsthall) draws on dissident produced literature to help negotiate their elusive position between two extremes of utopian escapism and revolutionary struggle.

Toronto based new media artist Jeremy Bailey scrutinises the promises made by the tech industry and start up culture, playfully subverting the language and methodologies they employ to highlight fundamental issues with marketed forms of “progress”.

15 Saturday 19.5, 16:00–17:00 Saturday 19.5, 17:00–18:00 The Struggle within the Struggle: The Spacing Love — Decolonising Eros: The Stockholm Chapter Politics of Love, Loss and Mourning of Public space around Tensta konsthall the Plural Performative Performance, 2018. 35–40 min Dora García’s installation Artist: Sally Schonfeldt Speaker: Dimitrina Sevova Curator: Dimitrina Sevova Talk/lecture, 2018, 35–40 min

The artist calls for an action, We need a new space for love(s), of appropriating the technical strategy (a) decolonised Eros(es) that needs of demonstrators manifesting in public continually to be re-invented, re- spaces in which a megaphone is used constituted and committed to. Spacing to address those gathered marching or is a concept that gives consistence to assembled on a particular site. In her these ephemeral and temporally based performance, Schonfeldt subverts the practices, borrowed from Judith Butler intended usage of this political tool by and her conceptualisation of love from bringing it both into the exhibition site the perspective of the affective politics itself as well as into the public space. of the performative, or the political The artist questions the potentiality of affect of love — plural performativity. language as political speech, not simply This talk critically interrogates why as a rhetorical device and declaration, and how love can be a self-organised but in terms of its performative and power for a new politics of economic somatic quality encompassing the voice possibility and plural performativity. and (deconstructive) uncompleted How does a political concept of love gestures. This idea alone could be taken interact with ‘a politics of ubiquity’ and as a poignant symbolic for the actual ‘a politics of place’, and the performative content of her political speech — the actions that constituted a queer feminist under-recognition and relative obscurity critique of political economy, and open within historiographical practices of the up a politics of economic possibilities contribution of women revolutionaries to and a new political plural performativity left-wing struggles. as a proliferation of difference? What are the conditions of knowing outside This performance is firmly situated of the logic of possession, especially within Schonfeldt’s artistic practice. on the backdrop of the on-going neo- Since 2013 she has compiled an liberalisation and cognitarisation of on-going archive that examines the our daily lives? The aim is to open up contribution of women revolutionaries a space of reflections and a shared to left-wing struggles. The material for language and embodied practices, Schonfeldt’s speech becomes an acute where speaker and audience can example of performing the archive, collaboratively discuss and propose which in itself speaks to the necessity ideas. What might be a language of of archival practices coming from economy of love and difference as an an outsider position, or from those exploratory practice of thinking politics, excluded from history. economy and knowledge differently? How can we not only imagine but also Sally Schonfeldt is a Zürich-based artist actually perform different economies? who was born in Adelaide, Australia. She is concerned with notions of memory Dimitrina Sevova is an independent and the tension between the subjective curator born in Varna, Bulgaria, and and objective experience of it — both living in Zürich. She currently curates within a personal and public context. Corner College, an independent project A process-based methodology allows space in Zürich’s District 4. her to evolve works intuitively, using theoretical texts or research as an impetus for aesthetic displays. https://www.sallyschonfeldt.org/

Konica Minolta 16 Reading Alexandra Kollontai The dismantling of the total institution and the restitution of the residents Session 1: Thursday 7.9 2017 – Michele right to make decisions on their life Masucci – Tensta konsthall lies at the centre of the fight for a more democratic psychiatric care. This Session 2: Monday 10.11 2017 – Dora struggle informs the most dystopian García – Konstfack narratives written in the first half of the twentieth century, such as We, 1984, Session 3: Monday 13.11 2017 – A Brave New World; where the total Shabane Barot – Tensta konsthall institution is the State, and the inmates are the citizens. In all of them, the State Session 4: Friday 23.2 2018 – Petra control over the residents’ sexual life is Bauer and Rebecka Thor – Tensta– imperative – to control sex is to control Hjulsta Women’s Centre the world. Again, not so far from the total control that the total institution Session 5: Monday 14.5 2018 – Oxana imposes on residents in psychiatric Timofeeva – Tensta konsthall asylums, where the elimination of sexual impulses is a condition for “the cure”.

Session 1: Thursday 7.9 2017 Why is totalitarianism so obsessed with Michele Masucci – Introduction to the the sexual, private lives of citizens? Why life and work of Alexandra Kollontai is the path so narrow for the adequacy Tensta konsthall for sex and affection? It would seem as if love was a dangerous destabiliser. The first session begins with reading And indeed love and revolution has been Kollontai’s text Make way for Winged acknowledged as a formidable pair. Eros: A Letter to Working Youth and from there traces back and forth in Revolutionary love only happens Kollontai’s life and other writings. between equals (Kollontai), but Writer Agneta Pleijel, whose 1977 conversely, love equalises, liberates, and play Kollontaj was staged at the Royal guarantees a person’s worth. Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in 1979, directed by Alf Sjöberg, participated in With these considerations in mind, the the seminar, sharing her memories from project Army of Love started a couple of and current thinking about the play and years ago, as a constituent community its staging. debating the implications of considering love a common, asking who is concerned with this form of commonality, and the Session 2: Monday 10.11 2017 paradoxical relations that derive from it. Higher Seminar Dora García – On Revolutionary Love Reading: as a Possible commonality – When the Political gets personal by Konstfack Andrea García-Santesmases –On Charles Fourier’s Queer Theory by In 1961, Erving Goffman published McKenzie Wark Asylums: Essays on the Condition of the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Optional further reading: Other Inmates, coining the term “total –Le nouveau monde amoureux by institution” as those institutions deciding Charles Fourier everything about the life of those with –Parody and Liberation in The New residency within that institution (the Amorous World of Charles Fourier by inmates). And given the institution made Jonathan Beecher all the decisions concerning the inmates’ –Sexual Relations and the Class life, this naturally meant they did not Struggle by Alexandra Kollontai decide anything about their own life.

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Session 3: Monday 13.11 2017 Kollontai, in her writings, imagined and Shabane Barot – Love and Opposition promoted a radical change in sexual Tensta konsthall life, an Eros appropriate for a society in which property relations no longer For the third session, together dominated human relations. The focus with guest Shabane Barot, parts of was in particular on her notion of “game Kollontai’s post-revolutionary work was love”, taken from Grete Meisel-Hess, read. The text The Workers’ Opposition, and also compare Kollontai’s ideas with published in Pravda in January 1921, those of Andrei Platonov, expressed in the official newspaper of the communist his satirical brochure The Anti-Sexus. party, and banned only two months later, was read. The text is a critique of the Aaron Schuster bureaucratisation and centralisation Aaron Schuster is a philosopher and of power within the Communist Party. writer, based in Amsterdam. He is the Kollontai was one of the leaders of The author of The Trouble with Pleasure: Workers’ Opposition, and the text she Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (MIT Press, wrote was meant to expound their ideas 2016). He is a former fellow at the ICI publicly before the tenth congress of the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, and Communist Party in March 1921. at the Center for Advanced Studies, Rijeka, Croatia; in 2016 he was a visiting Building on the reading from the first professor at the University of Chicago. session in September the collection His writing has appeared in Cabinet, of novels Love of Worker Bees first e-flux journal, and Frieze, among other published in 1923 was read. Here, journals and publications. He is currently Kollontai turns to fiction to examine the working on two books: Sovereignty, relations between the sexes in a society Inc.: Three Inquiries on Enjoyment and swaying between the old and the new. Politics (University of Chicago Press) and Spasm: A Philosophy of Tickling Shabane Barot is a medical doctor, (Cabinet Books). activist and writer. Barot was one of the organisers of the event Marx 2013 at ABF (The Workers Educational Association) and member of the editorial board of the journal Fronesis. Barot is a reader of Alexandra Kollontai and has written articles on Kollontai for the Swedish weekly newspaper Arbetaren and Fronesis. She is one of the members of CMS, Centre for Marxist Social Studies based in Stockholm.

Higher Seminar – Thursday 22.2 2018 Communist Eros – Aaron Schuster Konstfack University

Though in the West the idea of sexual revolution is bound up with the social movements of the 1960s, the October Revolution was also a sexual revolution, bringing about significant legal changes in Soviet society as well as provoking debates about the nature of love, sexuality, and the family and the place of sexuality in the revolutionary struggle. In this seminar the focus was on how

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Session 4: Friday 23.2 2018 Higher Seminar – Tuesday 8.5 2018 Tensta Hjulsta Women’s Centre Comradely Love as Organising Principle Hosts: Petra Bauer and Rebecka Thor – Michael Hardt Konstfack University And all is yet to be done The theme of the intervention was Throughout literature, art and political imaginaries. In the session the political theory, the practice of love Swedish socialist Women’s movement and its strength remains a recurring from the early 1920’s was used as a preoccupation. The concept of love can point of departure, what future they be described as that social power and imagined and how that relates to both drive for association necessary for the Kollontai’s ideas and our past and production of something in common. present. Love is a force of social cooperation that is different than other concepts such For the fourth session there were as solidarity in that it extends beyond a no preparatory readings, instead, in rational calculus of interests, comprising addition to having lunch together, a text several forms of relations and remains was read and discussed. non-spontaneous as it’s both historically and materially determined. Petra Bauer works as an artist, filmmaker and professor of fine art in In this seminar, Hardt explored how the Stockholm. She is concerned with the Bolshevik revolutionary and minister in question of film as a feminist political the first Soviet government — Alexandra practice and sees film as a space Kollontai — and her critique of love where social and political negotiations based on property relations, should can take place. Petra graduated from be abolished to invent a new love, a Malmö Art Academy in 2003. Between love beyond property, regardless of 2007 and 2010 she studied Cinema at whether sex is involved. During her Stockholm University. She completed own time, Kollontai’s call for free love her PhD dissertation, Sisters! Making and proposals to transform traditional Films Doing Politics, at the University family relations in communist society College of Arts, Crafts and Design, were deliberately misinterpreted by Stockholm in 2016. Her work has been the post-revolutionary leadership. The exhibited widely, including festivals Soviets discard for the vision to build a and exhibitions at institutions such new culture based on comradely love as 56th Venice Biennale; Showroom, meant a retreat to patriarchal power London; Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven; relations centred on the idealisation Tensta konsthall, Stockholm; Bard of the male worker. In Kollontai’s College Annandale-on-Hudson, New writing, we instead find an analysis of York; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; the inherently political and collective Frankfurter Kunstverein; CAC Vilnius; dimension of the organisation of love, Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Stadtgalerie; Kiel, sex and social relations. A winged Eros Casino Luxemburg and Tallinn Art Hall. that would transgress gender and sexual boundaries and form the basis for a new Rebecka Thor is a writer and art critic society. A form of love that has to be based in Stockholm. She is a PhD defined by multiplicity, a love of many, candidate in Aesthetics at Södertörn in many ways, and as such a powerful University. Her research is centred on organising principle and model for the agency and testimonial function collective action in the formation of the of images through three films that commons. reinstate archival material in new contexts. She received her MA at the Kollontai’s comradely love was New School for Social Research, New discussed together with texts that bring York, and has been a researcher at the up different conceptions of love and Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht

Konica Minolta 19 their political and social implications. In Enemies, Chapter 5 in Strength To Practicing Love: Black Feminism, Love- Love, Fortress press Gift Edition, 2010 Politics, and Post-Intersectionality by Jennifer C. Nash, the idea of love as a Hardt Michael, Davis Heather, Sarlin tool of political organisation is discussed Paige. No One is Sovereign in Love: A through the black feminist politics Conversation Between Lauren Berlant during second wave feminism and their and Michael Hardt — Heather Davis & consolidation of love as a practice of Paige Sarlin, Nomorepotlucks.org, Issue the self and a non-identitarian strategy 18:amour, 2011 for constructing political communities. The idea of a generous and more Session 5: Monday 14.5 2018 unrestrained conception of love can Oxana Timofeeva – A Polyandry be contrasted with other political Manifesto: Love and Comradeship in understandings of love, such as the Kollontai and Lacan love of the family or the love of your Tensta konsthall own kind, love as a principle of division, critically examined by Sarah Ahmed in For Kollontai, as for some other true her text In the Name of Love from 2003. communists after the October Revolu- What love is, how it is used and misused tion, the question of love and sexuality appears as a fundamental question of in the context of social organisation was our times. one of the most important. What has to be done with sexual relations if we Michael Hardt is a widely read scholar, are to build a new, communist society literary theorist and political philosopher. without exploitation, under the rule of He is Professor of Literature and gender equality? How to make people Director of the Marxism & Society happy not only on the public but also, Certificate Program at Duke University, so to say, on the private level? What Durham USA, where he is teaching would be a genuine feminist politics that classes on history of critical theory, concerns not only political and economic and political theory such as Marx, rights and possibilities of women but Jefferson, Gramsci, Foucault, Deleuze also their sensual lives and personal and Guattari, and modern Italian developments? These were the literature and culture. Michael Hardt has questions raised by Kollontai, but they together with Antonio Negri investigated are still without an answer. the political, legal, economic and social aspects of globalisation in the In Russia, where we are now witnessing tetralogy Empire (2000), Multitude a great historical regress, from (2004), Commonwealth (2009) and Kollontai’s years marked by an attempt, the latest book Assembly (2017) being albeit quite difficult and dangerous, translated into Swedish by Tankekraft done in harsh post-revolutionary social förlag. Michael Hardt’s writings and economic conditions, to liberate engage with new forms of domination sexuality, — to today’s neo-reactionary, in the contemporary world and the traditionalist attacks on women’s rights, social movements and other forces of such questions are extremely relevant, liberation that resist them. and it is not too early, but also not too late to raise them again and to explore Texts to read for the seminar: some new radical lines of such Sarah Ahmed, In the Name of Love, interrogations. Borderlands e journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003 This contribution aims to follow this path and to discuss questions on, on the Jennifer C. Nash, Practicing Love: Black one hand, the link between communism Feminism, Love-Politics, and Post-In- and matriarchy (that is, non-existent, tersectionality, Indiana University Press, utopian things), and the other, love and Meridians, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2011), pp. 1–24 comradeship (actually existing forms of Martin Luther King Jr, Loving Your relationships).

20 Addressing the theory of love not only in Kollontai but also in Jacques Lacan, it can be argued that structural gender equality does not mean symmetry and similarity, there is something deeply feminine in the very concept of comradeship.

Literature: - Kollontai, Alexandra. The Autobiography of Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman http://www.defenddemocracy.press/ alexandra-kollontai-the-autobiography- of-a-sexually-emancipated-communist- woman/

- Kollontai, Alexandra. The New Woman https://www.marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1918/new-morality.htm

- Kollontai, Alexandra. Make Way for Winged Eros http://www.4edu.info/images/b/b6/ Kollontai_Winged_Eros.pdf

- Lacan, Jacques, Seminar 20, Ch. VI (God and Women’s Enjoyment)

Oxana Timofeeva is an Associate Professor at the European University in St. Petersburg, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), a member of the artistic collective Chto Delat? (What is to be done?), a deputy editor of the journal Stasis, and author of the books History of Animals (Jan van Eyck, 2012; Moscow, 2017; Bloomsbury, 2018), and Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of Georges Bataille (Moscow, 2009).

The reading group is organised by CuratorLab Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in collaboration with Tensta konsthall. For the academic year, 2017/2018 CuratorLab has engaged in collaborative research on the life and work of Russian revolutionary feminist and diplomat Alexandra Kollontai together with Tensta konsthall, the artist Dora García and invited guests.

Konica Minolta 21 Dates Tensta konsthall Staff Tuesday 15.5, 17:00–20:00 Asha Mohamed Opening: Dora García: Red Love assistant Didem Yildirim Thursdays and Saturdays, 14:00: Public production assistant introductions to the current exhibitions Fahyma Alnablsi by the Tensta konsthall team reception and Language Café Hanna Nordell Thursday 16.5, 14.00: Public producer introduction to Red Love by Dora Isabella Tjäder García communicatons and press Makda Embaie Tuesday 19.6, 18:00: Conversation on assistant love and individualism, initiated by the Maria Lind Tensta profile Tomas Amanuel and Dora director García Muna Al Yaqoobi assistant Womens’ Café Tuesday 4.9, 14:00: Public introduction Nina Svensson to Red Love by Dora García mediatior

Tuesday 4.9, 18:30: Public reading of Hosts Agneta Pleijel’s play Kollontaj from Ailin Moaf Mirlashari 1977 Fredda Berg Makda Embaie Wednesday 5.9, 18:00: Release of a Rasmus Sjöbeck publication with projects by CuratorLab and texts on Kollontai and García Installation Eva Rocco Kenell Fredrik Fermelin Hannes Eson Johan Wahlgren Ulrika Gomm

Interns Felicia Edström Jasmina Saric Karolin Grahn

Thanks to Lundaverkstaden

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