Standard Length of a Miracle By Goldin+Senneby 27.1—15.5 2016 sverigesradio.se translate Sharp 1 Standard Length of a Miracle Jonas Hassen Khemiri responding to is a mutating retrospective by Goldin+Senneby’s artistic practice Goldin+Senneby. Over the past ten and through connecting their works to years, the Stockholm-based artist duo various institutions and activities in the has explored virtual worlds, offshore city. Additional mutations are scheduled companies, withdrawal strategies, for Brisbane, Paris, and New York. and subversive speculation. In a unique and subtle way, they combine Part of the exhibition is Goldin+ artistic practice, financial theory, Senneby’s research project at the Royal and performative methods, which Institute of Art in Stockholm, which is are sometimes borrowed from the presented through the magic show On world of magic. The retrospective a Long Enough Time Line The Survival will be presented as installations and Rate for Everyone Drops to Zero (2015) performances at Tensta konsthall as and the magic box Zero Magic (2016). well as at other places not primarily associated with contemporary art. Stockholm School of Economics, the Third Swedish National Pension Fund, the Financial Supervisory Authority, the clothing store A Day’s March, Cirkus Cirkör, and the historical art museum Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde all serve as stages for reactivations of Goldin+Senneby’s oeuvre from the past ten years. Introducing the artistic field to public institutions and commercial centers enables a shift of perspective about where art takes place and who the audience is. Economic and financial structures govern our lives increasingly. But, for most people, terms such as repo rates, tax havens, and derivatives are abstract and difficult to grasp. The artistic practice of Goldin+Senneby masters economic strategies and thus punctures the idea that this kind of knowledge is too complex to acquire. Instead of rejecting the financial sector, the artist duo borrows market-inspired methods in order to infiltrate and illuminate the consequences of our late capitalist system and its neoliberal approach. The retrospective highlights the precarious labor market of our time, the increased commercialization of the art world, and the new all-time highs and stock market crashes within the financial economy. Standard Length of a Miracle is a mutating retrospective, meaning it will appear in different forms in different cities. The first, in Stockholm, activates Goldin+Senneby’s history through a newly commissioned short story by 2 Tensta konsthall worn by the konsthall’s staff during the 27.1–15.5 exhibition as a new conceptual uniform. Taxingegränd 10 It will also be available for sale in the Opening hours: Wed, 12:00–20:00 clothing store A Day’s March, located at Thur–Fri, 12:00–18:00 Kungsgatan 3 in Stockholm. The clothes Sat–Sun, 12:00–17:00 are inspired by Reuterswärd’s quest to leave his job at the dry cleaner in order Standard Length of a Miracle (2016) to focus on an artistic career. Aram With Jonas Hassen Khemiri (author), designed a new conceptual uniform Behnaz Aram (costume designer), by deconstructing and re-sewing the LiLaRo (tailors), Mehrdad Arta clothes. The artists have registered (designer), Zhala (musician), Anna Anders Reuterswärd as a trademark at Heymowska (set designer), Moa the Swedish Patent and Registration Ott (carpenter), Samir Al-Nehlaoui Office. The clothes will be accompanied (arborist). by a new soundtrack composed by the musician Zhala, using sound recordings On view at Tensta konsthall is a new from dry cleaners. production developed in collaboration with the writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri. The artistic practice of Goldin+Senneby Khemiri’s meta-fictional response has long been of interest to Tensta to Goldin+Senneby’s practice will konsthall. During the group exhibition be read out loud at the konsthall Abstract Possible: The Stockholm every day at 14.12. In the short story Synergies (2012), the duo contributed Standard Length of a Miracle, the with the work Abstract Possible: An narrator changes his name to Anders Investment Portrait, which consists of Reuterswärd, hoping to increase his a detailed assessment of the collector chances of getting hired at a konsthall. value of each work included in the At a brisk pace without any full stops or exhibition. The content of this strictly breathing space, the reader gets thrown confidential report was auctioned into a stream of consciousness where all off at Bukowskis. This kind of playful associations are equally important. The yet critical exploration is of utmost short story’s monologue is connected to importance in our time which often the installation of an oak in the gallery calls for simple answers to com-plex space. The tree refers to the oak that questions. Tensta konsthall takes a occurs in Khemiri’s text and also to firm grip on Goldin+Senneby’s ten-year the surrealist Georges Bataille’s secret practice with the retrospective Standard society Acéphale, which is said to have Length of a Miracle and thus opens up gathered around an oak tree in the late for new cross-fertilizations between art 1930s. Acéphale—Greek for headless— and finance. has long been of interest to the artist duo and figures in their multi-year project Headless. Khemiri’s short story was published 10.1 in Dagens Nyheter. The oak will function as a meeting place for discussions and seminars during the exhibition period, and, as the carpenter Moa Ott takes on the tree, new furniture will be produced around it. The clothing line Anders Reuterswärd, developed in collaboration with Behnaz Aram, fashion and costume designer, will be on view in the entrance. The materials for the clothes originally come from garments left behind at dry cleaners around Stockholm. The clothing line will be Sharp 3 The Third Swedish National Money Will Be Like Dross (2012), Pension Fund, 9th floor Manual 28.1–13.5 With Kunstgiesserei (material research), Vasagatan 7 Daniel McClean (legal adviser), Johan Opening hours: Mon–Fri, 9:00–17:00 Hjerpe (designer). Money Will Be Like Dross (2012) is This manual provides the owner with exhibited in the offices of the Third a license to reproduce an unlimited Swedish National Pension Fund. number of alchemical furnaces similar The work consists of two parts: the to the one that belonged to August 18th century mineralogist August Nordenskiöld. The manual is available Nordenskiöld’s alchemical furnace and in a numbered but unlimited edition. a manual on how to produce a copy For each edition sold, the price of of the furnace today. Nordenskiöld the manual increases, and hence it was temporarily hired by the Swedish becomes significantly more expensive to court to create gold for King Gustav III. contribute to decreasing the uniqueness However, Nordenskiöld’s hidden agenda of the work. It is precisely the notion of was to make the secret of gold-making the value of the unique art object that publicly available and, in doing so, to is the gold mine of today’s increasingly undermine the entire monetary system. commercialized art world. Money Will Is it possible to understand the pension Be Like Dross plays with the mechanics fund’s active asset management of all that govern how value is created and our pensions as a contemporary attempt changes over time. to “modernize” alchemy? The Third Swedish National Pension Money Will Be Like Dross (2012) Fund (AP3) is one of five so-called An alchemical furnace from the Nordic buffer funds within the Swedish national Museum’s collections is one of few pension system. AP3 has twin roles remaining artifacts from the alchemist in the pension system: serving as a and mineralogist August Nordenskiöld’s buffer when inflows and outflows cause secret laboratory at Drottningholm imbalance and promoting the overall Palace from the 1780s. King Gustav financial stability of the system. The AP III established the laboratory in the funds are state-owned pension funds greatest secrecy and hired Nordenskiöld with a government-appointed board of to produce gold in order to finance directors. AP3 manages a diversified Sweden’s expanded military and war global portfolio of listed equities, against Russia. But Nordenskiöld was fixed income assets, and alternative driven by a different, utopian agenda. investments. He wanted to produce enough gold for it to completely lose its fictitious value. This would abolish the “tyranny of money” and thus make mankind more receptive to the spiritual world. As devotee supporter of the scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, Nordenskiöld believed that the true jewels of life were God’s message of love and a society shouldering its social responsibilities. 4 Stockholm School of Economics value and to profit from this. The magic Library, 5th floor box contains the props and equipment 28.1–13.5 needed to perform these financial Sveavägen 65 (Entrance from the back: manipulations and also historical Bertil Ohlins Gata 4) references to other controversial magic Opening hours: Mon–Fri, 9:00–17:00 tricks performed offstage, in real life. The library of the Stockholm School Banca Rotta (I Dispense, Divide, Assign, of Economics features two works Keep, Hold) (2012) by Goldin+Senneby that, not unlike With Anna Heymowska (set designer). the curriculum of the school, explore methods and mechanisms in the world Banca Rotta is a money changer’s table of finance. from the 1600s that the artists have had sawn in half. The word bank derives Just as contemporary art sometimes from the Old Italian word for these appears both abstract and difficult for tables, “banca” (comparable to bench those without experience in the field, the in English). When a money changer in world of economics can be perceived Florence went bankrupt, his trading by some as a secret terrain.