Norra Sidan Norra

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 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.

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