Performing the artist’s book
Saturday 25.5 6–7:30 pm
Galleri Ping-Pong, Stora Nygatan 4, Malmö
Guy Bigland (UK): All the Paintings in the Museum
All the Paintings in the Museum presents the titles of all 1620 paintings in the collection of the Fitzwilliam museum (Cambridge, UK) in alphabetical order.
The words have been detached from the images they support and from their data-sets of artists names, dates and materials. They are corralled into a regimented list made of language informed by art historical conventions, clichés and the idiosyncrasies of individual archivists. The majority of the paintings in the collection would not have been titled by the artists as the practice of giving artworks ‘official’ fixed titles was established by dealers, collectors and archivists as recently as the 1800s
The full text can also be read as a catalogue poem and is now performed as one for the first time.
Guy Bigland is an artist working with language and systems. He is interested in the dual presence of potential and limitation within the structures through which we see the world. His work emerges from time spent over-simplifying, putting things in order, and tidying up.
In 2015 he won the Sheffield International Artists’ Book Prize for Things You Have Done. His book, All the Paintings in the Museum was named in a-n’s (The Artists Information Company) top ten artists’ books of 2015. In 2017 Bigland delivered two versions of his text work About is Like About as public commissions and, in 2018, produced work for a collaborative performance Dancing About Architecture, with the MIT Department of Architecture, Massachusetts, USA.
The work will be performed by actor Tuva Jagell (SE).
Sharon Paz (DE): The Secretary Story
The Secretary Story is based on both historical research on propaganda and contemporary visual use of commercial advertising. The protagonist is based on several secretaries of historical figures, including Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The short story has twenty chapters that combine text and drawings, in between real and fiction, accompanied by footnotes linking to historical information. The Secretory Story was developed both for online space and as a physical version of performance and printed postcards.
The idea of the performative action and the postcard stand is that the readers can choose the chapter order, exploring flexible narratives, questioning linear thinking and absolute truths.
Sharon Paz, Berlin based visual artist, uses layering to create non-linear narratives, experiment with interactive digital media and make connections between the past and the present.
Paz received an MFA from Hunter College, NYC. She has exhibited extensively, including in the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst in Bremen, Germany, Smack Mellon in NYC, as well as the Herzlyia Museum of Art and Petach-Tikva Museum of Art in Israel. In the past, her work was supported by the Senate of Cultural Affairs and Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin, and also the Goethe Institute. Her video works are part of the collection of the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Video-Forum Collection, Berlin, and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
The work will be performed by actor Tuva Jagell (SE).
Karenjit Sandhu (UK): Poetic Fragments from the Irritating Archive
A performance lecture on the history of the Irritating Archive. Organised into five fragments: Rules and Regulations; History; Collection; Visitors’ Book; Archivist’s Notes. Founded in 2016, the Irritating Archive houses a series of irritating artefacts and documents dating back to 2006.
Karenjit Sandhu is a poet and artist. Her publications include Poetic Fragments from the Irritating Archive (Guillemot Press), young girls! (the87Press) and Baby 19 (intergraphia books). Her work is featured in Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry and The Blue Notebook: Journal for Artist’s Books. Her own artists’ books have been collected by the Tate Archive (London) and exhibited at The Showroom (London) and Galerie éof (Paris). She is a member of the British Art Network and has written for exhibition catalogues on contemporary British, European and South Asian art. She is a Lecturer in Art at the Reading School of Art, University of Reading.
Marja-Leena Sillanpää (SE): old books become new books
To make books in front of an audience during a specific time; I receive purged/discarded books from a Malmö based library or a flea market. These books will be processed quickly and efficiently. A microphone is placed near the activity to amplify the sound. After 20 minutes the new books are done.
Marja-Leena Sillanpää is an interdisciplinary and process oriented Swedish artist, born in Finland and based in Stockholm.
Her installation-, performance-, sound- and text-based practices, parallel to artist’s books, explore time and environment, both physically and mentally. By using different methods and techniques to collect, organize and present different possibilities, she transforms everyday objects and phenomena into art that offers various perspectives.
