Saturday August 27th, 2022
Exhibition is open 12:00-18:00
Literary Undercurrents around Ornö Island
Event in conjunction with the exhibition Their Happiest Days were the Dark and Vast Days of Rain, with Hillside Projects, Marika Kuźmicz, Simon Blanck, Ida Idaida, Leif Elggren and Camilla Larsson.
For detailed programme see below
We celebrate the end of the exhibition by hosting an event with a participatory walk, readings and a lecture. The event is entitled Literary Under currents around Ornö Island to highlight two undercurrents of the exhibition. The first is that all artists either has a writing practice on their own or closely relate to literature in their visual works. Secondly, the exhibition borrows its title from a line from author and film maker Marguerite Duras’ book L'été 80 [Summer -80]. In her book, small things in everyday life are intricately intertwined with larger political events, just as they are connected in life itself. And just as life is, Duras does not give in to what is painful. She rather exposes the pain; stays at the point of pain and affirms feelings as if she were waiting and desiring an approaching apocalypse. In the affirmation of the catastrophe there is a paradoxical ease, a liberation. Because when everything is over, nothing more terrible can happen. The event pays homage to this artistic ethos by the means of literature and poetry.
Part I.
13:00 – 15:00 Participatory walk with Hillside Projects
When Hillside Projects invite spectators to walks, they wander fast and sometimes slow. They talk loudly but are practicing being quieter. They are amateurs in their walks. The artist duo use walking as a tool to listen collectively, think, see, converse, test, and fail. In dialogue with the landscape that surrounds Mörby gård, they have created a walk that proceeds in a criss-cross pattern, up and down, back and forth, inside and outside. Using natural pigments, sun, the sea, and antique photographic processes a collective map of an ephemeral walk is created.
Part II.
15:30 – 16:45
Introduction by Camilla Larsson, curator of the exhibition
Lecture on Barbara Kozłowska and her Borderline project and writing, by Marika Kuźmicz, art historian, curator, researcher, and publicist, founder of Warsaw-based Arton Foundation
Artist Simon Blanck reads poetry by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Blanck’s works in the exhibition involve fragments from poems by Akhmatova. He will read some of the chosen poetry and talk briefly about why the different fragments were chosen for the artworks
Artist Ida Idaida reads from her essay / technical notes from the production of the sculpture Device (fire burns and flames lick my poor remains) (In English and Swedish)
Artist Leif Elggren reads three chapters from his short story Tånageln [The Toe Nail] (In Swedish)
Mingle
Ferry leaves from Ornö 17.30 or 18:30