Oct 12. Open Talk: What is radical?
We would like to update ourselves on the subject of radicalism and hereby invite you to an open discussion under the title “What is radical?” Invited guests are director and artist Nasim Aghili, artist and semiotician Thierry Mortier, choreographer Paloma Madrid, artist Ulrika Gomm and choreographer Frédéric Gies.
Radicalism has followed societal changes in which various movements, both political and artistic, have been associated with the concept.
Although the term often brings to mind polarisation and provocation, we also hear a lot today about ‘radical empathy’, which is based on actively trying to understand and take part in the feelings of others, to accept rather than to judge.
Different generations create their own aesthetics, in which the radical is communicated in widely differing ways. What unites the radical in art is that it can create change, aesthetically or politically, open up for new possibilities and contribute to a fundamental shift, even if this is sometimes beyond the artist’s intention.
What makes an artistic expression radical? How does radicalism and activism connect? When does the radical cross the line into something that is unacceptable? Is the spectacular the enemy of the radical? What different expressions and approaches can be seen as radical today?
During the evening, there will also be two short presentations:
Nasim Aghili, Ellen Nyman and Timimie Märak will read an excerpt from the art collective Ful’s “Speech to the Nation”.
Read more here
During the evening, parts of Weld’s manifesto project will also be shown. Read more here
Come and discuss radicalism with us!
NASIM AGHILI
is a director, playwrighter and artist, active in the art group Ful and the art duo aghili/karlsson. As an artist she always works with norm-critical expressions and approaches, often based on queer, feminist and decolonizing ideas, theories and experiences. Creating mendability for bodies considered unworthy by the majority society is a recurring theme and method in Nasim Aghili’s work.
PALOMA MADRID
works as a choreographer, dancer, dance educator and doula based in Stockholm and Santiago de Chile. Paloma runs the dance company Rosales. She is constantly exploring the intersection between her own body in action, collaborative art and social choreography. Paloma collaborates with artists with all kinds of physical functional variations and abilities. Her work always seeks opportunities for the mind and body to think, analyze, feel and practice about dance and choreography.
THIERRY MORTIER
is a Belgian artist and semiotician who lives and works in Stockholm. He works with different expressions; paintings, sculptures, video, installations and interventions in public spaces, but characteristic of Mortier’s work is the visualisation of the hidden structures and patterns that surround us and that shape our society. Mortier is the founder of the Kvadrennalen, a platform for contemporary art’s response to political threats, where artists and art professionals work to show society at large that the art world is united in its shared belief in art through the common language: art itself.
ULRIKA GOMM
is a Stockholm-based artist whose sound- and text-based installations demonstrate a subversive approach to language. The sources she uses are often the language of authority: governmental power, and the formulations of national libraries that attempt to define the foundations of society and the rules of life for the individual. Using distortions and devices that invite the viewer to assemble and construct their own meanings, she creates a crack in the language that is intended to minimize the number of possible interpretations.
FRÉDÉRIC GIES
is a dancer and choreographer based in Sweden. After dancing with several major French choreographers in the 1990s, they began creating there own works, which focus on how choreography can discuss politics without being overly explicit. Their work draws on their background in ballet and their involvement in the rave and techno worlds, among other things, and connects dance forms that are seemingly alien to each other so that the hierarchies associated with the different forms collapse. Gies’ work makes visible dance’s ability to speak, without representing or demonstrating, and explores the complexity of our identity-building processes.
Curated by Anna Koch and Nina Øverli