Luleå Biennial 2020:
Time on Earth
21.11.2020~14.2.2020
Last chance The Luleå Biennial 2020: Time on Earth
Wednesday February 10, 16~20 and Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14, 12~16
Galleri Syster is open. Group show with Augusta Strömberg, Susanna Jablonski and Ana Vaz.
Thursday February 11–Sunday February 14, 12~16
Havremagasinet länskonsthall in Bodenis open. Group show with Beatrice Gibson, Susanna Jablonski, Birgitta Linhart, Fathia Mohidin, Charlotte Posenenske, Tommy Tommie and Danae Valenza.
Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14, 14~18
The former prison Vita Duvan is open with an electro acoustic installation by Maria W Horn.
Saturday February 13, 15~19
The artist Markus Öhrn and the poet David Väyrynens sound installation "Bikt" is exhibited on the ice by Residensgatan in Luleå. Listen to older generations of Tornedal women and their testimonies.
Book your visit via Billetto. Drop in is possible as far as space allows.
For those of you who do not have the opportunity to physically visit the Luleå Biennale on site, a radio show including artist talks, sound works and specially written essays will be on stream on Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14. Visit our radio page here.
The exhibitions at Norrbotten's Museum, Luleå konsthall, Välkommaskolan in Malmberget and the Silver Museum are unfortunatly closed.
In a diary entry dedicated to thoughts on the intestine, Ingela Ihrman writes about the flora of the sea and that of the stomach, and about how, for her, gutweed (Ulva intestinalis) makes the link between the two – a slimy return to the sea and to the algae that have managed to retain the sun’s power so that other forms of life may benefit from it. It is about being a landscape, and being in landscape; about belly fat and crude oil – deposits of energy stored in the earth and in the body form the the basis of an extensive artistic exploration that begins in the bowel – a sore spot, and with Wind Within (2018) the Luleå Biennial stages its second outcome. In line with Ihrman’s previous works, the barely fathomable aspects of nature are channeled through our own bodies.
Can you tell us about your work Wind Within shown at Gallery Syster, what preceded the project and how does it continue?
The work Inner wind directs the light to a green algae called gutweed (Ulva intestinalis). I need it to establish a link between the flora of the gut and the flora of the sea. Right now I work with focus on my stomach - a sore point where energy flows and emotions converge. For me, the stomach is a central but unexplored landscape that I want to let grow and take shape.
In August 2018, I worked as a volunteer at Koster’s Gardens - a home, a restaurant, a bakery and a garden located on an island in Bohuslän. Koster's Gardens use permaculture, a concept that was coined in the 70s, as a response to growing ecological problems in the world, and which, in short, aims to create ecologically, socially and economically sustainable (permanent) cultures.
What does it mean to give the intestine or seaweed the position that you do when you lift them into the art space?
I think that all art spaces work as entry points into the world that I create through my art. These spaces are necessary to allow other people than me to enter. It would be lonely and meaningless without them. At Galleri Syster, my gutweed is partly a part of the Luleå Biennal's story about sea, light and sight, and partly an excerpt from my work on the stomach, which I am in the middle of right now.
How does Inner Wind relate to the idea of a landscape, would you say?
I have previously been invested in thinking about what it is like to have inner sea inside your body. From the narrative voice in a an episode of the World of Science from the 90s, I learned that the liquid in the egg blisters enclosing mature egg cells in all terrestrial mammals has the same salinity as the water in the ocean where life once arose, several billion years ago. So even today all of us carry this water of life in our bodies. If gutweed is an intestine, the body's inner wind is the bubbles of gas formed by photosynthesis, which causes the algae to rise up to the surface of the water. The fact that certain seaweeds in English are known as the mermaid’s necklace makes the row of air bubbles into a bead chain of farts.
In addition to Inner Wind in Luleå, you also participated in the biennial's guest feature at the Night Festival in Korpilombolo, where you performed the work Queen of the Night. What was it like doing the performance there?
The Queen of the Night is a performance that dramatises the nocturnal flowering of a special cactus. In old books on house plants, you can read that, until the 1950s, it was normal practice for a proud owner of a Queen of the Night about to bloom to invite their friends and neighbours over for nighttime coffee to experience the flowering together.
It was special for me to perform Queen of the Night at the Night Festival in Korpilombolo. Previously, when I’ve shown the work in different art spaces, there has been a clash between the surroundings and my giant cactus costume made out of tarpaulin rolled into sausages, toothpicks and floor covering paper. In Korpilombolo’s community centre, we fit in almost too well. The Nylund sisters offered coffee and held a small speech that built up some excitement for what was about to happen. It had been dark out since 14:00. At 10:30 pm, I shimmied into the flower bud, still wrapped in cling film to keep the leaves closed, raised the bud over my head, and knocked out the bone-white petals with the aid of a construction built on an inverted umbrella. The people of Korpilombolo gave out a sound of rapture and delight. I sprayed a cloud of vanilla perfume in the air. Then I withered and crawled out.
Radio 65.22 is an auditory cross section of the biennial’s theme and contents, which amplifies and makes accessible written texts, framed situations and artistic voices. Radio 65.22 also enables an encounter with chosen parts of the Luleå Biennial’s activities for those who cannot experience the biennial in situ.
With Radio 65.22, we want to inscribe ourselves into an experimental and exploratory radio tradition, where the media itself becomes a platform for our ideas on radio and its capacity to depict and mirror the world around us. The task of Radio 65.22 is to tell of reality, in further ways that may not be possible through the image or the text.
Under Fragments: Time on Earth you will find radio programmes and sound pieces in different genres and forms that reflect this year’s biennial in various ways. Spirit of Place is a touring series of literary conversations on language and place. The culture journalist Kerstin Wixe takes us along to places that have played a significant part in an author’s stories, or carries the story’s history. Woven Songs is a deepening series of radio programmes that accentuate singing, the voice and the role of storytelling in the creation of new world views and orders, produced in collaboration with Public Art Agency Sweden.
Listen, reflect, enjoy!