here i am again! mexico was a very important experience for me, even

if i haven't been there for a long time. i've never before been out of

europe and it turned out to move a lot in my thoughts about how this

world works, how wrong it has started to turn. and it also awoke a need in me to point out things that are not ok, maybe as well with my art, which doesn't have to be as placative as it may sound.

and this leads me to an idea i had for our project.

lily was talking about choosing a theme as a step that can be a big

help and i must say i think it would help us here too, since we need

this blog to get into a certain direction. now we could decide, if

this theme should be a certain topic, a question, an answer or

something associative, maybe it could even be a specific concern we want to talk

about, something of great actuality, or it could be something that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

here just some words that came into my mind when i read all of our

blog entries:

*melancholy
*mutation
*transformation
*landscapes
*physical
*bodies
*gender
*vulnerability
*nature
*sexuality

so if you all like the idea of having a topic, a sentence, words, a
certain concern
to guide our discussion, we could start collecting ideas, form a pool, do some brainstorming together...
what do you think?

what about the gallery - any news?

goodnight from zurich
*m

I am working too...

Thank you Gabriella for presenting yourself! I think your photographs look interesting, when you show them are they in large series or as singles and which sizes do you work in? Just for me to get an idea on how they look. Maybe you could post a documentation form somewhere where you have shown some of your work? (If you can and want to!)

Lily, I don't think your film looks konstig at all. I like it. I also like very much the set up you described for how you should view it. I think that is a good way to work with video and film in a exhibition, otherwise the film/video could end up with no real connection to anything. I like the idea of creating surroundings to the film.

Some of you know that I am currently working on a project that I call "Metamorphosis Syndrome", where I try to prove that young women are transforming into bears in a disease that is simular to melancholy. Right now I am working on a fictional legend about the "Bear Ballet". It is a ballet where the main character is a bear, and the ledgend says that the first one to dance it was a real bear. Here is a photograph that I took. I don't know how to show it in the end, I have contacted a choreographer to help me make the ballet. So may be I will perform it myself or ask som real dancer to do it... I have a lot of ideas but I don't know which one to trust...

And one more thing. I too like the idea of people not knowing which art piece was made by which artist (like Melanie described and Lily also found interesting), could we maybe come up with an idea on how to accomplish that for our show? Any ideas enyone?

Hello to you all!

Sorry, I have so much to do. Now i'm preparing things for three different shows. Thats why I'm presenting me here so late. So sorry about that.

In general I'm doing self-portraits and landscapes. Always a little bit on the melancholic side of life. Sometimes asking myself how love has to be or if gender can really be equally. The study of my physical body as a woman is an important part of my work, as well.

Here some Pictures...

i'm creating some ornaments right now. I'm showing you more as soon as possible.

Hugs from Switzerland,

Gabriella

ops...

I just wanted to say that I changed the colors of the blog, you can do this to if you want to. but you have to log in to my account, but you know which email and password to use! Enjoy!

/jorun

images of Pictura

Here are som pictures of the gallery Pictura! So that you will get an idea of how it looks!
/Jorun

getting blog going!

We need to get this blog going. The 20th of December we will know if we get the exhibition space for this spring. And which dates we will get it. But for now I think we shall asume that we will get it, and if we don't we will find another space to exhibit! So now I think we shall start what Melanie suggested; everyone will have to post what ever they are working on. And I suggest that we should have a deadline! By next weekend we all have to make a post! And Lily, since you already have shown something you may choose to post something else of interest! And since I have given this homework with a deadline and all, everyone else must also do so! So to sum up: by next weekend: post something that you are working on and create a task for everyone else to do! It could be a simple and little task. Is this OK for everyone? I just think that we should get started and be more active on the blog! (Even though we all have a lot to do I asume)...

/jorun

at the very moment

further introductions / sneak peek

here is a tiny idea of what i am working on.
tomorrow morning i will film these paper letters on 16mm BW film, with a slow-motion science camera. the film will be hand colored and then digitized. it will be projected upward onto a sheet suspended over a large mattress or piece of foam that the viewer lays on to watch the film. but for now, here is a cell phone video of me working on the letters in the studio. The text may also be the title of my bachelor show.

Not sure yet, it's kind of ...konstig.




-Lily

THE LATEST FROM THE LATEST II

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for the extra-ordinarily delayed posting.
To introduce myself: I am Lily (Benson). Currently attending The Cooper Union in NYC.
The reasonexcuse for being so late is that I have only 5 weeks left of art school! I have a solo bachelor’s show in February. It will take place in a large gallery that has a round elevator in the middle of it. I’m making many video and film installations, small drawings, and a longer film called Valentine’s Day. I will post a text-film in progress today or tomorrow.

I wrote a letter to Jorun that is posted below.
The main point of what I wrote is that I prefer group shows that blur the lines between artists and are coherent and possibly even themed. A theme has the potential to be quite corny, as in the case of most themed parties for children, but if chosen carefully and left ambiguous enough; they can be an excellent guide or way of stitching disparate things together. With the show I am working on right now, I made a list of all of the projects I was planning and attempted to draw a theme or connection between them to direct them toward a shared goal. The theme ended up being INVISIBILITY…which is extremely vague, but has helped me sync the overall ideas of each piece.

Melanie: hello! You have an exciting website!
I like what you observed about the group show in Berlin, “it was hard to find out what belonged together and what didn't.” It would be nice to have a similar effect with what include.

Jorun: Can you post pictures of the space?

Susanne: I really like the Vulnerable Positions piece on your site.

Is there anyone else blogging too that I missed?

MUCH MORE SOON!!!!!
Happy Thanksgiving.

The Latest from THE LATEST

excerpts from a letter responding to jorun's first mail.

-Lily

mexico is calling...

...i'll be back in the beginning of december with new thoughts and ideas! 


*m

Nice to see you here Susanne! Now we are just waiting for Lily to post something. To answer your question Melanie; you are absolutely free to involve more people to this project. The important thing is that we all are free to form this project, but we all have to agree as a group. But if you want to bring someone please invite that person to the blog and then that person could decide if the project sounds interesting.

I also think that it sounds interesting to make the pieces in the show work like the dots in that kind of picture you are describing. But I am concerned that maybe the "form" of the show overshines the pieces in the show and I don't think that should be the case... I mean if the form of the show is too important for it to work, it tends to put the pieces "in a dirty dancing corner", and no show should put the pieces in a corner! Do you understand what I am trying to say? What are everyone's opinion about this?

/Jorun

Hi!

This is Susanne here for the first time and I'm sorry for showing myself this late! I've just had so many things to do but now I can finaly see the light, yes.
So I'm in Joruns class at Malmö Art Academy and most of the time I do stuff that includes photography but right I'm into drawing.

I'm looking forward to discussions and Melanie, I found it interesting what you wrote about the exhibition, I'll give it some thought and then get back

Also, showing just something that we are working on is probably a good idea but for now you can see previous works of mine here:

www.susannesvantesson.com

Bye for now!

/Sus

dots and numbers

you're right, there would have to be some kind of common denominator,

or on the other side a certain courage and trust in the people we work

and discuss with to let things happen(again there's my thought of

sharing here what we're working on, so we would, from the beginning

on, see tendencies, paths).

what i forgot to tell: most of the artists had several pieces in the

show, spread over the room.

i liked it a lot, to walk around and - suddenly see something that

seemed familiar, like this you went back in your memory to the things

you saw before and connected them. like those pictures where you

connect numbered dots and you wait till in the end you see the whole

picture, before they were just dots and numbers.

maybe an exhibition could work like those drawings?

another way to still have the possibility to give things an order,

that every artist could still have his very own space, would be to

have a publication for the show.

some kind of map, texts, drawings, i can imagine lots of different

possibilities.

so, to have on one side artistic "chaos" and on the other side (could

also be something in the show itself, on a wall, on the floor,

whatever) a system where you can find order, clear structures, names,

titels, ...

should i invite some people as well? at the moment it seems a bit 

difficult to me, cause i don't know who are all the people involved so 

far, so please, show yourself! :)

greetings from the big city

*m

about what Melanie wrote...

Thank you Melanie for writing about that show. I really think it sounds interesting to blur out the borders between the different pieces in the show and make all viewers make their own story by combining the works according to their own agenda. But one problem with that is maybe that you, as an artist in the show, become very dependent of the other artists and their point of view. I don't mean that that would be wrong, but what if you simply can't stand for the other artists work in that sense that you would like your own work to be involved that closely to it?

What I am trying to say is simply: I myself really like that idea of taking away the direct link between the artist and the piece in a group show, but... What does that lead to in the end? Should we consider the outcome of this or is it just something we should try and work with for our show? What does everyone think of; for example not having titles and the artist's name directly placed by the piece made for this show? How can we instead give that information to the viewers?

here we go:

sorry, i was busy building big piles of leaves and burying fake people underneath them lately... so that's why i haven't written anything so far :) here you can see what came out (it is called "winter is arriving"

(which is actually true in berlin, today i saw the first snowflakes in front of my window - yippiiieee!)

but now to my thoughts concerning our project. 

i've been to many openings and shows in berlin and the concepts and settings are most of the time the same old ones. but i've been to one show at "temporäre kunsthalle" which really impressed me. it was called "scorpio's garden" and was a group show where all pieces were shown in one big room, a lot of installational pieces but also video, paintings and photographs, in a way that it was hard to find out what belonged togehter and what didn't, and who the authors are. at the entrance you were given an abstract map with all details of the pieces but it was quite cryptic and hard to read. so mainly the viewer himself started to find his own way in that garden and making his own story out of the offered pieces,like  picking flowers strolling through a garden and in the end each one has got his own different bouquet in his hands. 

i like it a lot, when art doesn't take itself too serious. and i'm very interested in authorship that looses its shape. boarders without clear lines.letting things happen without trying to control them.

an idea for this blog: i'd really like all of us to show what they're working on, even if it's just small things i think it can be inspiring and maybe give us pictures to visualize our thoughts .those could be random pictures found in the internet, as well as own stuff. so we would have a visual level to accompany our discussion.what do you think?

i'm looking forward to discuss!

*m

to melanie

Great to see you here on the blog. Would you please write what you wrote to me in the email about that show that you saw in the temporäre kusthalle in Berlin, I think it could be interesting for everyone to read!

/Jorun

hello from the south!

my name is melanie, i'm from zurich, switzerland. i finished my studies in photography last year and at the moment i'm living in berlin, till the end of the year, as an artist in residence. me and jorun were neighbours! you can have a look at my projects here:

http://www.fraeulein-m.ch

and here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/meluzifer

see you soon!

*m

link to Pictura

This is the last post from me today! I promise.
But I wanted to give you the link to the gallery Pictura. I think I got it in English. There you can find information about the place and some pictures of the space. If you still have questions about the gallery maybe Susanne or I could help you with further information.

http://www.galleripictura.se/index_eng.html

/Jorun

About me...

...And also, I wanted to write something about myself and my work and I hope that we all can do this so that we get to know something about each other. My name is Jorun Jonasson and I am from Stockholm but go to the Art Academy in Malmö, so I work and live here. But sometimes I wish I didn't, so I try to go other places as much as I can. I mainly work with photography, text and installations. My work is often narrative and I like to blend facts with fiction so that you don't know what is what...

I don't have a homepage but if you do, please post a link to it so that we can see it!
/Jorun

This is sort of what I wrote to Lily and Melanie...

Hello everyone of the Blog.
To start things of I thought I would post what I wrote in the emails to Lily and Melanie so that we all are on the same page (I hope).

Me (Jorun Jonasson) and Susanne Svantesson were thinking that we should apply for a show at Pictura, a gallery in Lund. We started to think about what kind of show that would be and we both got interested in doing some kind of group show, but also something that sort of reacted on the "common" way on how to curate it (no theme and no non-theme). I talked about how rap artists make contributions on each others records and adjust to the artist's song in a way that they can guest rap on it without losing their own identity. So we thought "How can we make a group show where we work together as a group without loosing our own identity as an artist?". And "How do we not fall in to the roles as curators when we are the ones who started the project"? We haven't really came up with any answers yet, but we realized that we couldn't have any answers before we started talking with the others that we wanted to work with. We don't want any hierarchy, so everyone's opinion is equally important. We were also interested what would happen to the "quality" of the pieces put together when the frames for the project are this free. In Sweden there has been a discussion about that you can't have women in a show just because they're women because that would effect the "quality" of that show... But who are the ones who decides what quality is? (Me and Susanne have read about this in the Swedish book "Konsten så funkar det (inte)" by Vanja Hermele.) Therefore it is important for us that the people that take part of this collaboration is very open for the other one's ideas, but of course we want a discussion so if you have an opinion please speak it. And as I tried to write, this idea is not fully developed and me and Susanne really want us all to work together. Therefore we started this blog, so that several persons can discuss this together when they have the time. If you have any ideas on how to further develop this idea for the group show, please write it on the blog.

Welcome to On The Blog!