DIALOGUES by University of Gothenburg

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DIALOGUES Valand Academy Yearbook 2015

Johan Andrén...................................................... 2-3 Editorial introduction............................................ 4-7 Mick Wilson........................................................8-11 Alexander Skats................................................12-13 Balsam Karam...................................................14-19 Kim Janson...................................................... 20-27 Börje Almqvist.................................................28-29 Frida Sandström............................................... 30-31 Maria Buyondo & Katxerê Medina..................... 32-37 Patrik Johansson & Sara Jordenö......................38-45 Laura Hatfield................................................... 46-47 Lotta Antonsson & Annika von Hausswolff........48-49 Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin................................ 50-59 Education 2015................................................61-64 Johan Andrén............................................. 61, 65-67 Colophon..............................................................68

2 Johan Andrén Dialogues with/within the archive

That gold chain against that bright, pinkish skin; instructions for readers

4â&#x20AC;&#x192; Editorial introduction

Every waking hour at Valand Academy, people are engaged in conversations about creative processes. This intense activity, the method in the madness so to speak, is typically invisible when it is time for the exhibition, symposium, screening, reading or any other type of the extensive public programming the Academy offers; final selections of images are made, words are chosen or erased, the sequence in the editing suite locks in cut. In our proposal for the theme and concept for the 2015 Valand Yearbook, we longed to capture those conversations and dialogues leading up to the final creative work. We wanted to press pause and focus on that moment, that tension, before the final execution and presentation. Further, we hoped that the publication itself would intice and generate some cross-disciplinary dialogues. We formed an editorial group with representatives from all four subject areas at Valand Academy: Film, Literary Composition, Fine Art and Photography. We announced an academy-wide open call for contributing to the yearbook, with one simple precondition: each contribution should be in the form of a dialogue. This dialogue could be with someone inside or outside of the academy, with a historic or imaginary person, with an animal or thing. Enthusiastically we wrote: Âťthe yearbook will be set up as a polyphony of voices from within and outside of the academy, that agree, disagree, challenge, encourage, laugh with, mourn, discuss and contest. It is a space where we can pause in our interactions and differences, where the stereotypical image of the academy student/employee as white, heterosexual middle class is problematized and questioned.ÂŤ As we begun working with the contributions, breaking them apart and stitching them together into the sequence

of pages that became the publication you now hold in your hands, we quickly ran into questions about our editorial privilege. What was the limit of our agency in relationship to these selections? Had we reached consensus? Would the readers get our intended message? The issue came to a boiling point when we discussed the cover of the publication, which at that point contained a set of anagrams for the word »dialogues« with two photographs taken from Johan Andrén’s series Dialogues with/within the archive. In our hands, the image on the front cover, depicting the neck and shoulder of an individual with a thin gold chain hanging on the bright skin, was juxtaposed with two-word anagrams such as »Idol usage« and »Laos guide«. For the back cover, we let three-word anagrams such as »Go idle USA« and »Go el Saudi« float over an image depicting a muddy road and puddle. While we did ask for approval from the artist, one might ask if this move on our part to (mis)appropriate an image, to create new meaning through juxtaposition of word and image, is entirely ethical? Does this image of the gold chain against bright pinkish skin, which for us provoked questions around violently normative perceptions of the author, artist and filmmaker as white and privileged, serve to reinforce rather than criticize such ideas? How do we cultivate such a discussion in the publication, and the academy? The words and images together seemed to move out of our reach as we worried about their perception. Mara Lee reminds us: How we enter a language, where we end up, and how meaning is embodied with and through us, is not a matter of choice. However, we can choose to listen or not to listen. We can choose to act on the fact that words and bodies are always situated in relation to other words and bodies,

6 Editorial introduction

in various relations of power. We can choose to close our eyes or nod before that fact that the production of meaning is a process, never stable, always on the move—a word that seems innocent in my eyes constitutes a deadly weapon for another.1 This publication is a polyphony of voices, misappropriations and unstable messages. So we ask you to listen. Listen for the other texts beating within this one. Listen for the contributions someone chose not to submit after all, or the ones we chose not to include. Pause, stop reading, and listen to the person next to you reacting to an image, a statement, or a message. Ask that person: what do you see? And then, may we suggest you leave your copies of the book on the table, go out for coffee and begin a new text. Sincerely, The editorial group Sara Jordenö Kjell Caminha Balsam Karam Andreas Engman Maximiliam Von Aertryck Niklas Persson

1 Lee, Mara. »Home Truths, or Swedish for Beginners.« Media Diversified. May 29, 2015. Accessed July 20, 2015. http://mediadiversified.org/2015/05/29/ home-truths-or-swedish-for-beginners/. A version of this text was also published in the 2014 yearbook and serves as a bridge between the two years, publications and editorial groups, but also to returning issues at Valand Academy. A version was also included in the PhD dissertation The Writing of Others: Writing conceived as resistance, responsibility and time (University of Gothenburg. Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, 2014)

Bodies floating in the water of their own speaking 1. Our brothers and sisters are drowning, having crowded the boats that shuttle across Mare Nostrum—our sea. Boats in repeating waves, in daily errands of desperation. Now drowned, some of our brothers and sisters are granted European citizenship posthumously. They become our dead fellow citizens. So they may be buried on this side of our sea, without the costs of ferrying the sea-wet corpses back to an African or a Levantine shore. In the news they speak of the »search and rescue« mission of our border police. It is of course only in such a monologue that our immigration policy »fortress Europe« and its exclusion-unto-death, can masquerade as a humanitarian bid to save lives. Our mass media may appear many-voiced. But it is all the more a monologue when many hands and many voices repeat the same, the same, the same. Often dialogue appears to offer a way beyond this interminable repetition of the same old story. This is not dialogue as a transaction between territories and identities. This is dialogue as a difficult state of emergence wherein identities are suspended, as we temporarily belong together, pulsing or tossed about in the ebb and flow of coversational encounter, as we become bodies floating unfixed in the water of their own speaking. But between which speakers can such dialogue emerge? Who will listen and who will talk in turn? Will it be our brothers and sisters, who were not asked whether we may

8 Mick Wilson Bodies floating in the water of their own speaking

call them such? Will it be ‘you’ and ‘I’, who were not asked if we may be called ‘we’? Who will we become within these yet-to-happen dialogues of the far-sea-crossing? Who can speak over this traffic between places three hours away by budget jet and package tour? 2. There are no guarantees, and dialogue may also doublespeak. It is notable that it is primarily through a series of dialogues that the Platonic preference for the ‘one’ over the multiplicitous (and therefore presumably duplicitous) ‘many’ has been transmitted across millennia. These Platonic dialogues have made their own journeys back and forth across this same—»our«—sea, travelling East-West, and South-North. They are carried through the centuries by murmuring huddles in Syrian and Alexandrine scribal halls, in Byzantine libraries, in Andalusian universities, and in Ficino’s Florentine workshop. They are shared with wider worlds, as they transcribe and re-code themselves from Greek to Arabic and Latin. These dialogues echo in transcultural conversations repeating things said by saying another thing, migrant voices re-speaking the Platonic ‘one’ good notion. 3. But there is more than one ocean, more than one ocean crossing, and there is more than one way to repeat a thing said by saying another thing. Odomankoma ‘Kyerema says Odomankoma ‘Kyerema says The Great Drummer of Odomankoma says The Great Drummer of Odomankoma says That he has come from sleep That he has come from sleep And is arising And is arising

Like akoko the cock Like akoko the cock Who clucks who crows in the morning Who crows in the morning We are addressing you Ye re kyere wo We are addressing you Ye re kyere wo Listen Let us succeed Listen May we succeed… The poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite speaks, repeating as he ventriloquises for the creator-being Odomankoma, the first artist-maker. This is the Akan creator-being Odomankoma who has made Kyerema the drummer and who also ventriloquises through Kyerema. This is an image of words circulating not in dialogue but in rapture, in drumming, in singing, and in speaking-through-Gods-speaking-through-us. Brathwaite-Odomankoma-Kyerema announce the crowing of a cock in the morning, a calling out that says, »Listen. You are being called to.« The poet declares the divine ventriloquism of Odomankoma as a summons: »Listen. You are being called to.« But who is this Odomankoma that pretends to call out and address us? Some say that Odomankoma is the first being, the first being to become corpse: »Odomankoma is many and is everywhere visible… She first created water, the primordial ocean. She then created heaven and earth by lifting up the one and setting down the other. Then other creatures followed, mankind and beasts, the thousands of powers,

10 Mick Wilson Bodies floating in the water of their own speaking

those things that are seen and those that are not, the numerous things in this world … Odomankoma created Death and Death killed her.« This is why Odomankoma repeats »for the year has come round again«. Here, in this ocean-crossing imaginary, from Ghana and La Côte d’Ivoire to Barbados and Jamaica, there is a working through of the intricacies of the one, of the two, and of the many, of life and of death, but not in the way of the Platonic ‘one’ good notion. 4. In the small place that is an academy we gather to speak together in many different kinds of dialogue and imaginaries. We allow ourselves to speak and to sing in strange and familiar voices. And so throughout these dialogues there are contradictions. There are insights. There are lacunae. There are obscurities and difficulties. There are loud and there are quieter voices. There are lulls and swells. There are occasional storms and calming breezes. And there are serene inevitable tidal reversals. When we call out for your attention in these dialogues of the academy, we are also calling attention to the communities of practice that make art possible. Doing this, we necessarily question the tired romance of the solitary monologue of genius and those repetitions of the same, the same, the same masquerading as the always-new-again. But even as we call attention to our dialogues and our communities of practice, we wish to keep faith with other conversations elsewhere that call out for us to attend upon them also. Perhaps the dead, talking under water, also call out addressing us: »Listen / May we succeed…« Mick Wilson Head of Valand Academy

12â&#x20AC;&#x192; Alexander Skats

14 Balsam Karam Och efteråt med mig själv

16 Balsam Karam Och efteråt med mig själv

18 Balsam Karam Och efteråt med mig själv

Excerpt from a conversation that took place during the 2014 Spring Exhibition (Vårutställningen). As part of the work entitled Kontor Valand, Kim Janson invited politicians working with cultural and educational policy to spend three hours each at Valand Academy. Seven politicians accepted the invitation. During these three-hour periods, Kim had coffee with the politician and then took a walk around the campus and through the Spring Exhibition. Finally, the politician was given the opportunity to use Kim’s studio as an office and to open the office to visitors who wanted to come in and have a discussion. The resulting discussions were recorded.

AB Andreas Braun, student of the Bachelor of Fine Arts programme KT Kristina Tharing (New Moderates party, local municipal commissioner and member of Gothenburg Municipality’s Cultural Board) EL Erik Lagerwall, student of the Bachelor of Fine Arts programme

20 Kim Janson The Conversation

AB Well, I don’t really know what I want to ask, actually. I just thought it was interesting that a politician was here and was speaking about culture in general. KT Yes. (Laughs) AB But, like, what’s your attitude towards, well, you are involved in forming in cultural policy, aren’t you—? KT Yes, I’m a member of Cultural Board— AB Right. KT —in Gothenburg, so I’m not involved in the university in that sense— AB Mm. KT —but in issues that concern Gothenburg Municipality— AB Mm. KT —that concern culture. AB Right. KT And then primarily—Or should I tell you a little bit about what I do? (Laughs) AB Yes, (laughs) go ahead! KT Gothenburg’s Cultural Board is responsible for the municipal museums— AB Right. KT —which are the Museum of Gothenburg, the Röhsska Museum and the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Then we have the Gothenburg City Library and we’re also involved in the Maritime Museum, which is also a foundation. AB Mm. EL How great an influence do you have on that organization, then? KT We have a a lot of influence there. Or, actually, the

City Council has, you could say, because it is the City Council—I’m not sure if you know how it works? AB No, not really! (Laughs) KT Because I sit—I’m a full-time politician now and have been since 2007— AB Mm. KT —I’m a municipal commissioner, representing the New Moderates, and am responsible within the party for issues related to education; from preschool to uppersecondary school and also culture— AB Mm. KT —and I was assigned responsibility for culture during this period because I wanted to get a seat on the Cultural Board, so I was given it. AB Mm. KT So, the City Executive Board has overall responsibility, but the body that actually makes the decisions within Gothenburg Municipality, that’s the City Council; it’s kind of like the National Parliament— AB Mm. KT —in Stockholm where all the parties have representatives, while the City Executive Board does not since the Sweden Democrats don’t have seats there and the Vägvalet party doesn’t have any seats on the City Executive Board because they don’t have— AB I see. KT —enough mandates. AB But I wonder, then, if you have worked with education and such, what kind of insight do you have into art

22 Kim Janson The Conversation

schools, specifically? What are you familiar with— KT In reality, not much at all, no. AB No. KT No, and education-related issues in Gothenburg are very much focused on preschools, primary schools— AB Right. KT It’s like— AB Right. KT —because— AB I see it this way: culture is so very, very broad. Even so— KT Mm. AB —the art schools are in fact—how should I describe it— the future— KT Right. AB —culture, so to speak. So to what degree is there interest in them, or do you ever talk about what the art schools are doing, or something similar—? KT As for Gothenburg Municipality, in politics you don’t do that so much, because we’re not responsible for that— AB Mm. KT —the state is— AB Right. KT We have different roles. At the municipality our primary role is schools. If we’re going to relate it to culture, because schools and culture are very closely connected when it comes to children— AB Mm.

KT —because if you’re going to reach all children— AB Mm. KT —regardless of their background, socially and all the rest of it— AB Mm. KT —then schools are— AB Mm. KT —where you reach every child, on equal terms. We provide tax money to and run the Kulturskolan programme, plus the national government has started the Skapande Skola programme, which is for Kulturskolan. Here, it’s mostly about individual practice; either playing music or throwing pottery, or whatever it might be, right? Skapande Skola is a project that the Minister for Culture set up, five years ago or so, it supports culture and in it children are supposed to meet an artist— AB Mhm. KT —and then, that artist is given funding and the opportunity to practise his or her craft or to meet the children, and that is both pedagogical and— AB Mm. KT —art-related, right. So what we can do as adults and what one sees is that we are responsible for tax money in Gothenburg and it’s worth spending money on schools, healthcare, that sort of thing. AB Yes, for sure. Absolutely. KT That is our basic task. If you exclude artists from the equation and think of the city’s residents in general, you

24 Kim Janson The Conversation

can see that there are those who can’t afford to pay for their culture themselves or to get to cultural events— primarily children, young people and the elderly. So we have a lot of cultural events at nursing homes, we call them ‘summer entertainment’, although it’s not only during the summer. AB Mm. KT And the Cultural Board pays independent groups to perform. EL Theatre and music—? KT Yes, they perform a lot. In this case, it’s adapted to suit the elderly. They really enjoy music and— EL Mm, mm. KT —it’s also for—for those with dementia— EL Mm. KT —so there is a lot there, and they are paid by the municipality. So we help out and do so perhaps not first and foremost for the artists themselves, but more for— AB For the elderly. Exactly. KT —the elderly. And it’s the same for, for children and young people. EL Mm. KT So, that’s where the municipality’s responsibility lies, and we offer the Kulturskolan programme all the way up through lower secondary school, and then later primarily at our institutions. The museums have educational lessons. The Gothenburg Museum of Art receives a lot of children and young people as visitors. Different countries have slightly different views on this, I don’t

know anything about France in this respect, but culture is as natural as the Swedish language for us— AB Mm. KT —so, that’s what characterises it— AB Mm. KT —like music, literature and culture. We know that reading comprehension levels are falling— AB Mm. KT —children and young people don’t read. Young boys, in particular, don’t read— AB Mm. KT —and reading a book, that is also culture, because you come into contact with a text, you must read it, you must understand it. You see there is— AB Mm. KT —culture is so many things. AB Yes, exactly; it’s extremely broad. So, there’s a lot included. KT But because, as a politician in Gothenburg, you are responsible for the residents of Gothenburg’s money— AB Mm. KT —it’s not our money— AB No. KT —it is the residents of Gothenburg’s money and so it’s important to think about what we spend it on. And then there is Västra Götaland County, there are folk high schools, there is surely a whole lot of culture-related things that I don’t know about,—Nordiska folkhögskolan,

26 Kim Janson The Conversation

for example, isn’t it, in Kungälv—? AB I don’t know, actually. KT It doesn’t matter. But then the state— AB Mm. KT —with its responsibility for ensuring there is education. And that is something that we in the political world and the community have to make sure is available; that there are opportunities for education regardless of background and regardless of economic background. I heard someone—a girl here—say that in some countries you have to pay for it— AB Right. KT —here it’s free. And then prep school, I understand, costs SEK 10,000 per term. AB Yes, it depends on which school you go to, I guess it’s— KT The hairdressing schools, they charge SEK 100,000 there. I can’t understand why anyone would choose to study that programme. There are no jobs for hairdresser either! (Laughs)

28 Börje Almqvist There is a bird on my shoulder

In the short, nightly questions, I practice in becoming Not spoken, neither will they be I clear the ground, by filling it I don’t say I give it up, but what is need to, is yours I am all, Are you? Let’s do it without To hand over, would you ever For what is need to be Is that ethical? I can take that Here, in front of It is not about not striking A taking part, without using Is it first when we make place without taking it, that the it becomes collective?

And then, for what use? For the sake of the surrounding Two-sided Building a wall to continue failing, to live inside it to survive I can tell you, it is a numb memory The wall The interview, two-sided A directed void of old interactions In-between question and answer, could you please come back when you have left the room? In there

30 Frida Sandström Dialogue with whale

A wall to be written on, in Never loud Waiting without asking for Swallowing Att svälja det stumma Jag lovar A promise a gift a threat a singing monologue En gåva Shooting opinions, it’s smashing Don’t make your life so hard Take another turn Have a look Att se är inte att tala Låt det snurra ett varv till Med dig själv i mitten Undo the autonomous Sjung till varandra Atonal Passing through what architecture constitutes Härinne Floating is not for everybody to take part of and if whales had guns, or an aesthetical object they would take over Are you a whale? You have such a special way of singing You must be a whale A stuffed animal Yes, you are a whale Open for public only on the Election Day If you’re Swedish that is a joke If not it is an entering of a mouth, of the whale’s mouth A sort of unconscious, political chewing Did you know that this is why we have the chewing gum? To never choose is a constant losing, a spitting of a substance Intended for chewing but not swallowing 3000 years in the belly of the whale Chicle (a natural latex) Synthetic rubber (cheaper to manufacture) A passive confirmation being constituted in there You are Polymers Aren’t you? Composed of many repeated subunits In the belly of the whale you cannot spit Make it elsewhere Se dig om efter närmsta nödhammare I am rethinking the community You cannot spit in here You cannot speak in here Come in Common We are transforming it to the one who will enter I will attend if you do

32 Maria Buyondo & Katxerê Medina Territorialized Sameness or Map of Difference

34 Maria Buyondo & Katxerê Medina Someone I Just Met

Seq. 01—Bar—ext/night. A woman standing outside a bar smoking. A guy comes with a cigarette in his mouth and asks her for a light. The woman looks at the man and picks it up out of her pocket and lights his cigarette. MAN Where are you from? WOMAN Brazil MAN Oh! You don’t look like a Brazilian WOMAN Why not? MAN Hmm, you look like a Russian WOMAN Why? MAN I don’t know

36 Maria Buyondo & Katxerê Medina Someone I Just Met

SEQ. 02—Bar—ext/night. A woman standing outside a bar smoking. A guy comes with a cigarette in his mouth and asks her for a light. The woman looks at the man and picks it up out of her pocket and lights his cigarette. MAN Where are you from? WOMAN Russia MAN Oh! You don’t look like a Russian WOMAN Why not? MAN Hmm, you look like a Brazilian WOMAN Why? MAN I don’t know

Conversation between Sara Jordenö, lecturer in the MFA Fine Art Programme at Valand Academy, and Patrik Johansson, student at the MFA Programme in Film with specialization in Curatorial Studies for Film and Video at Valand Academy.

38 Patrik Johansson & Sara Jordenö

Sara Jordenö You are attending the Curator for Film and Video programme. Were you interested in video art and archives before you began your studies? Patrik Johansson I applied to the programme using a project that I really began thinking about a long time ago. I had just begun to explore video as a medium and was frustrated that it was so difficult to gain access to previous works since I wanted to explore the field. I didn’t know where to start. At the time, I worked as an assistant to an artist named Katarina Nitsch, who had attended Valand, and she told me that the Academy had a video archive. I contacted the Academy but wasn’t given access the archive since I was not a student. The same held true for other archives I contacted. I thought it was strange that the archives were so locked up and hidden away. Later I started working with film and was increasingly active in the film world. After a few years I began returning to the art world and worked with art video as a producer. At that point, I realized that I was still really interested in it. So I applied with a project where I wanted to explore video art by examining the archive to see how it looked and understand why it was so hidden away. So now I’m finally digging into what Valand has to offer. SJ Did you ever meet Mats (Olsson)? PJ No, I never did, unfortunately. SJ Mats was my teacher when I attended a summer course at Valand Academy in 1999. He was a bit famous among those of us who were working with video art. You knew about the archive he had developed and you could also feel how he really supported the production side. I have strong memories of Mats, even though it was only a

summer course. When I met him, he was white haired, a little older fellow, you know, and I was wondering what we would see. Then he showed us Bill Viola and I thought »oh, well...« But then he showed us Annie Sprinkle. Aha. He had this tremendous breadth. The different films we saw blew my mind. I only remember piles of tapes of different formats.... But Mats also sat in the editing room and showed us how to organize our material. This is how it is done. He was a curator in the editing room. I know that he was involved in creating the programme you are attending now. People like Mats have been crucial for the presence of experimental film in the art world. PJ I feel that I see many artists, not just in a Swedish context, looking to the film world, applying for film grants and showing films in cinemas. I think it’s very exciting. SJ Swedish Television is a co-producer on my current project. At first I was worried about it, but now I’m really interested in using it as a showcase. Greg Bordowitz was an artist who, early on, understood the potential of TV as a medium for starting a discussion about something. You don’t always have to follow all the rules. Spoken like a true visual artist, ha, ha. PJ How do you feel about the concept of video art and the whole history of films in art, is it something you relate to? SJ When I entered the film world in earnest five or six years ago, I was influenced by documentary filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles. When I look at my nearly completed film, Kiki, a collaboration with Twiggy Pucci Garcon, now I see that it is not at all Wiseman. Wiseman would never break or comment on the observation flow. But I become very frustrated when

42 Patrik Johansson & Sara Jordenö

what is referred to as video art is marginalised in the film world. I do not see myself as a video artist. PJ What do you think about your works when they have left you? If, for example, you sell a video to a museum, what do you consider is important that they need to be aware of? And if someone put up one of your videos on

Still from Jim Thorell’s We Shall Overcome featured in the archive.

YouTube, how would that affect you? SJ That’s a difficult question. It’s flattering if someone wants to share my film, but it is important that our work is valued in the same way as the work of other professionals. I am interested in community screenings, which can be done as part of the film’s marketing and a form of audience engagement. These can and should be free to individuals who are unemployed and homeless.

I also feel that a piece should not leave me, ever. I quote Göran Hugo Olsson, who quoted Stefan Jarl: »What defines you as a filmmaker is your relationship with your subjects before, during and after the film is produced.« The same goes for an artist working with different groups.

Still from film by Oskar Korsar, featured in the archive.

PJ There’s an image of what it is to be an artist, that you work alone. Even though this is largely a myth, I have noticed that many people working with video haven’t even considered that it might be possible to enlist the help of others in the production. SJ If you work with films or participation-based projects, then you have to be able to take the producer’s role and be able to cooperate. As artists, I think we are less

44 Patrik Johansson & Sara Jordenö

trained to do that. The film world has much more clearlydefined roles. At the same time, it is a strength that artists are able to work so independently. They have pushed the medium forward. PJ When I’ve had the role of the producer, I have sometimes thought that the structure of a film team doesn’t need to be so set in stone. Perhaps we could discover new voices by restructuring the roles of the team? SJ Definitely. The curator’s role in relation to the producer’s role is interesting. How do you see your role once you’ve completed your degree? PJ Now my focus is very much on films in the art world. I have envisioned working as a producer for people who make films in an artistic context. There is another concept, creative producer, which I think describes well what I want to do. I’m interested in shaping films.

King Barney Parsons at Bar Publik, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2 May 2015.

46 Laura Hatfield Le Monocle

Barnett Newman’s dandy attire of a gentleman’s suit and monocle was considered to be camp by friends and colleagues in the mid twentieth century.1 Before Newman, this style was claimed by fashionable women in the 1920s and the monocle was sometimes seen as an indicator of one’s sexual preference.2 The artist Romaine Brookes painted her friend Una, Lady Troubridge poised in a suit and monocle with two dachshunds in 1924.3 Women are seen sporting this anachronistic style in photographs from a queer bar called »Le Monocle« in Paris at the time.4 It was in the same city, decades later, that Barnett Newman was hassled by a security guard at the Louvre, who told him to put his monocle away for fear that he would set fire to the museum using his lens and the sun’s rays.5 At the time of writing, a message in my inbox arrives from Struts Fancy Dress and Party Superstore with regard to a mail order moustache.6

1 Ann Gibson refers to comments made by artist Theodoros Stamos on Newman’s camp attire in: »Lesbian Identity and the Politics of Representation in the Betty Parsons’s Gallery« in Gay and Lesbian Studies in Art History, Whitney David, et al, eds. London: Routledge, 2013. 2 See Adam Geczy & Vicki Karaminas, »Mannish Lesbians and Salon Dandies« in Queer Style, (London: A&C Black, 2013) P. 29. 3 View an image of this work in the Smithsonian American Art Museum online Collection: http://www.americanart.si.edu/collections/search/ artwork/?id=2926 (accessed 8 May 2015) 4 To see photos from Le Monocle visit Lost Womyn’s Space: http://lostwomynsspace.blogspot.se/2011/07/le-monocle.html (accessed 8 May 2015) 5 This story is told in Pierre Schneider’s »Through the Louvre with Barnett Newman« in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews. John Philip O’Neill, ed. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1992), p. 301. 6 Email to author states: »Our courier has advised us that the delivery of your order has been attempted 3 times and they have been unable to deliver.«

48â&#x20AC;&#x192; Lotta Antonsson & Annika von Hausswolff

Oh, Jeanette! or What we talk about when we talk about text discourse

50 Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin Oh, Jeanette! or What we talk about when we talk about text discourse

An autumn evening 1992, I’m lying on a rose-flowered couch in Laneside House outside of Oxford, watching TV without paying attention. A writer and her latest novel Written on the Body are being presented on the cultural programme. The author is Jeanette Winterson. In the black and white photo, she is leaning forward running her hand through her short hair, one eye hidden behind her pale arm, the second immortalized on the viewer with a provocative gaze. She reads and her words take hold of me. Why is the measure of love loss? I am thinking of a certain September: Wood pigeon red Admiral Yellow Harvest Orange Night. You said, ‘I love you.’ Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? The novel is about the body and text. The I of the novel without a name and Louise’s love of an unclear gender. Louise is married to a man, a doctor. Louise is struck by cancer; the doctor can save her life. The lovers are separated. Writing as a cure for loss. The text as a surrogate for the lover’s body. I am pierced by the love arrow of writing. Oh, Jeanette! Surely it is your fault that I now find myself on Valand’s Literary Composition Masters programme. »Can you learn to write?« is a common question for those of us taking writing courses. It’s a bit strange, you might think. You do not ask the same question to students attending other artistic programmes, such as visual art, film, dance or music. In those cases, knowledge and training are considered obvious elements in the shaping of the artist and the artist’s artistry. Even you, my Jeanette, said at the writer’s interview at Kulturhuset City Theatre in Stockholm in 2009 that one cannot learn to become a writer or a poet,

»either you can write or you cannot,« was your answer to the question of your opinion about writers’ schools. I did not let it upset me. I assumed you probably were not aware of any writing programmes and this meant you did not know what you were talking about. What do I mean when I say that I love text discourse, the thing we primarily work with at Literary Composition and other writing programmes? I am talking about that which I did not know that I did not know. That at every text discourse I do not have a clue what I am going to learn; instead, at every opportunity new rooms open up for the unexpected. Just like when I lay there not paying attention to the TV and was introduced to a new author. The difference being that at Valand I put myself very consciously into a learning situation; it does not happen accidentally. The poet Fredrik Nyberg, who is an instructor at Literary Composition, takes inspiration from the poet and former professor at Literary Composition, Marie Silkeberg, to describe text discourse as a »performative method« which always emanates from a literary text. An »event« that cannot be planned in advance. Despite or perhaps because of the text discourse’s rigid and repetitive structure, each discourse has its own unpredictable content, which is controlled partly by the nature of the text, and partly by the different readings that confront each other. The author Khashayar Naderehvandi, also an instructor at Literary Composition, talks about text discourses in the plural. He believes that a single text discourse does not necessarily change much, but that during the accumulating discourses that run throughout the course, a longer conversation occurs about literature and writing. He argues that the overall lesson can have a major impact on »the individual writer’s view on

52 Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin Oh, Jeanette! or What we talk about when we talk about text discourse

the world« and the ability to unwrap texts and the conditions of the writer’s own writing. Naderehvandi also takes up the awe I often feel in the text discourse. He describes it as a surprise at language’s potential to articulate experiences that you previously did not know you had or have had the opportunity to formulate. Experience through the capacity of language »becomes premier in writing«. In rainy Scotland I purchased Written on the Body in a bookshop in Edinburgh. As soon as I got on the train home, I began reading the novel. Soon I was sitting in Louise’s kitchen and tasting her soup, searching for hints of her skin in every drop of broth. Oh, Jeanette! Why is the measure of love loss? Concretely, text discourses take place in this way: Usually the text discourse group consists of six students, including the author of the text and the instructor. Everyone has already read the relevant text and each person presents his or her own reading: thoughts, comments and observations. The author listens and does not interfere in the discourse until everyone has had their say and an open discussion begins. But even then, the author’s primary role is to bring in the other readings. I ask the author Erik Grundström, writing instructor at Folkuniversitetet, about the purpose of the text discourse and he responds: »The point is to get more readers and learn about different ways of reading, and then benefit from the points that are relevant for yourself as a writer. The different readings compel the author to make choices.« It has been fourteen years since the author Maj-Britt Wiggh introduced me as a prospective Edith Södergren to Erik. I have not yet managed to live up to that expectation but Erik was my

teacher at the Writing Academy and witnessed my début novel come into being. That’s why the meeting with him is a bit like meeting the midwife who assisted in a literary birth. Erik and I happen to be neighbours. I asked him to meet me at a coffee shop near where we live to discuss text discourse as a method. At one point at the beginning of my writing career Erik made me aware of a sloppy section in one of my texts. He said: »Here you have the same sentence structure several times in a row. You’re usually good about varying your grammar.« In all honesty, I do not think that I was particularly adept at varying the sentence structure in my prose, but after Erik’s comment, I became better because he had shown me this linguistic possibility. Like in the film The Matrix where the Oracle says to Neo not what is true about him, but what he needs to hear to carry out his mission. I asked Erik if it was an educational strategy to praise me instead of criticise me. »No,« he responds, »but you develop your writing on what you are good at, not what they are bad at. That is why it is important to highlight and make the author aware of what works.« That time Jeanette Winterson spoke at the Kulturhuset City Theatre in 2009, I went up to her afterwards with my tattered copy of Written on the Body to have her sign the book. »I have read the novel a hundred times«, I said. »Read it again!« she said. And that is what everything is about, even text discourses, to read and to re-read. Now I am back at Kulturhuset City Theatre, six years later, this time with the author Ida Linde, who is an instructor at the writer’s programme at Biskop Arnos. »Text discourse is about learning to read,« she says. »This is mainly done in other people’s text discourses, not your own. It takes time to learn to see the potentials and opportunities of the text,

54 Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin Oh, Jeanette! or What we talk about when we talk about text discourse

but the big difference becomes evident in the students’ readings during the second year, in comparison with the first. And over time, you learn to read even your own texts with more knowledgeable eyes. In text discourses you want to have as many perspectives as possible, which requires both accuracy and sincerity of the readers. Getting critical comments can naturally be difficult, but in the end it is always the author who must decide. You have to write their own books. No one will solve the problems for you or tell you how to write. And the answers do not come in the text discourses. Instead, that is where careful readers present possible readings and ask relevant questions of the text.« I am no longer lazily laying on floral couches. Here in this text I am having two discourses simultaneously with two different people, at different times. But Ida’s and Erik’s comments about the discourses complement each other and I am interweaving them. For example, both address the danger of consensus and entering into polemics in text discourses. Erik »It is important to counteract the desire for consensus thinking by interpreting, highlighting and clarifying the different perspectives. As an instructor, I encourage different views and avoid polemics. The idea is for each person to make their own reading and not base it on arguing against anyone else’s. If this occurs, I tell the group to move on. Then I tell the author: Here there are several possible readings; consider them. Consider what you want to learn from them.« Ida »It does the author a disservice if you start to defend the text because you have a different opinion and think they have understood it. The text is not under attack. The author has voluntarily submitted his or her text. Conversely, it is

important to express why you have read it in this way and to explain how and what works in the text. The supervisor’s role is sometimes to adopt different positions to expand the text discourse. If everyone says that a text is fantastic, this does not help the author if the author does not find out how and why.« This makes me think of a difference between text discourse at Literary Composition and in Erik’s course. In Literary Composition, the teacher always concludes the round, while Erik usually begins the text discourse. »Why is that?«, I ask him. »I’ve experienced cases where the first contribution is so problematic that the whole discussion is pulled off course. That’s why I begin by laying a foundation for possible readings. I demonstrate: This is one way to read the text.« »But,« I wonder »isn’t there a risk that the students will interpret the teacher’s reading as ‘the correct reading’?« »Of course, there are those students who are focused on authority and who are only interested in what the teacher says, but, in their case, it doesn’t matter if the teacher begins or ends the round.« Both Jeanette Winterson and I attended Oxford, where we, undoubtedly, though for different reasons, both found ourselves as fish out of water. She comes from the north, from a working-class background and is a lesbian. She hasn’t made a name for herself as a humble, subtle person. Personally, I was a bit beyond the pale in most respects. But, naturally, it’s about which rooms we have access to and on what conditions we may access them. We bring these differences with us into the text discourse room, and Ida says: »Lots of other things go on there; privileges and experiences are played out. When I attended Literary Composition, it was critical for me to be in a room where

56 Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin Oh, Jeanette! or What we talk about when we talk about text discourse

others took my text seriously. It was my first experience of a literary environment where my intellectual thinking was understood. And, naturally, the way one handles being in a room with people who’ve read far more than you have, for example, differs from person to person. Some people experience it as something like being in a cornucopia, while others develop an inferiority complex. If you’ve taken a field trip, you can carry around a feeling of alienation and experience sorrow over being being part of a room that you view with contempt.« In 2012, Jeanette Winterson returned to Kulturhuset City Theatre in Stockholm to speak about her novel Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? It came to light that she had recently been appointed a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing. It can happen. She has changed her mind and now believes that writing can be taught and that it is possible to learn to write. Oh, Jeanette! I knew that even you would come to this realization. The following is some sage advice from Ida and Erik, who have worked in the field a long time, as noted by yours truly: As a newly fledged writing teacher, it can only be of benefit to become acquainted with their collective experience of text discourse. Are you ready? Erik: Things to consider when holding a text discourse. »Always focus on the text. Focus on that which is concrete. Don’t get bogged down in the ‘correct readings’. Ask yourself what you take with you when you read this text. What do you feel? Don’t draw up a laundry list of criticisms. Often, there is one overarching problem. Identify this problem instead. If the text seems incomprehensible, ask yourself in what way it is incomprehensible. Which reading does it require of you?

Always justify your opinions and evaluations.« Ida How to tackle an unfinished text. »The paradox of text discourses is that, on the one hand, we are required to read the text as complete so as not to speculate about text not yet written. On the other hand, we must be conscious of the fact that it is an unfinished text, that it is under construction. See its potential. The text discourse must therefore be a place where people can submit unfinished texts that look awful, without fear of rejection. Students sometimes forget that. The risk with readings that are too sympathetic is that they entice the author into fantasizing about all that the text could be, instead of focusing on what is actually on the page. Unfortunately, a text’s propensity to generate discussion is not necessarily a mark of good quality writing. Paradoxically, muteness can arise in the face of a really good text.« Erik On the instructor’s responsibility. »Set the level of the discussion. Create a good and open climate for discussion; a positive energy. Be vigilant. Always require justification. Be alert to signals. Establish rules. Make sure that the students respect one another’s texts. Some conflicts can be useful, but the instructor also needs to set limits.« Jeanushka, you said something else at the writer’s interview 2012, too. You said that the sentence: Why is the measure of love loss?? does not need to be true. You understand, of course, that when I met the love of my life, I immediately gave him a copy of Written on the Body. He read it with great interest. Within a year, like Louise in the book, he too had contracted cancer.

58 Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin Oh, Jeanette! or What we talk about when we talk about text discourse

Writing as a remedy for loss. The text as a surrogate for the lover’s body. I am pierced through by writing’s mournful arrow and ask myself: Why is the measure of love loss?? You say it took you 50 years to realize that there exists a love that is as reliable as the sun’s rise every morning. Oh, Jeanette! I hope you are right. For the time being, I find comfort in writing and in language. Try to find the narrator’s position or »the point where it shines and hurts«, as author Sara Stridsberg says. And contemplate, in Erik’s words, how you get the reader to accept it. Find the way there? To feel that it is worth it? All amateurs write the same way, says Erik. Learning to write is about using your originality. Be wilful. Because, as Ida points out, there is no use in writing texts that have already been written. And, as Fredrik puts it, the text discourse can be a process in which you discover your own poetics and have the opportunity to develop it. Our undistinguishable biographies expand neither literature nor the world, claims Khashayar, but, in writing, the distinctive emerges. The lengthy, accumulated text discourse, with its starting point in literature, also incorporates the surrounding world. Thus, writing becomes part of the conversation about life and the nature of the world. I look forward to the next text discourse.

Valand Academy Education 2015 Overview of programmes and courses at Valand Academy: Artistic Practice in Film, Photography, Fine Art and Literature at the University of Gothenburg.

Image from Dialogues with/within the archive by Johan AndrĂŠn

Application dates and more information For information about our programmes, elective courses and 2016 admissions, please visit akademinvaland.gu.se/utbildning

Bachelor’s Programmes BFA Programme in Fine Art

180 hec

BFA Programme in Photography

180 hec

BFA Programme in Film Composition

180 hec

Master’s Programmes MFA Programme in Fine Art

120 hec

MFA Programme in Photography

120 hec

MFA Programme in Literary Composition, Poetry and Prose

120 hec

MFA Programme in Film with specialization in Curatorial Studies for Film and Video

60 hec

MFA Programme in Film with specialization in Processes of Filmmaking

60 hec

MFA Programme in Film with specialization in Publicity and Entrepreneurship

60 hec

MFA Programme in Literary Translation

60 hec

62 Education

Elective Courses Spring term After Biopolitics: Desire, Power and The Non-anthropocentric Turn in Contemporary Art

15 hec

Censorship and Controversy: The Arts, the Media, and the Public Sphere

15 hec

Examination Project

30 hec

Independent Project

30 hec

Introduction to Art and Philosophy

15 hec

Literary Translation of English Literature

30 hec

Literary Translation of German Literature with Focus on Poetry

30 hec

Newly Written—Discourse on One’s own Text and Others

15 hec

Photography, Representation and the Creative Process

15 hec

Photography, Representation and the Creative Process II

15 hec

Printmaking 2

15 hec

The Novel in the World

15 hec

To Teach Children Filmmaking

15 hec

Summer term Art and Food—Material and Process

15 hec

Art and Game Culture

15 hec

Artistic Inquiries

15 hec

Individual Project Work 2—what is hidden in history

15 hec

Photography, Representation and the Creative Process

15 hec

Fall term Art, Play and Games

15 hec

Artistic Writing

60 hec

Critical Pedagogy and Project Leading in the Academy 1

15 hec

Film Directing

7,5 hec

Independent Filmmaking III—Directing and Producing

30 hec

Independent Project

30 hec

Introduction to Art and Philosophy

15 hec

Others Creations—Reading Contemporary Literature Together

15 hec

Photographic Gumbichromate Printing

15 hec

Photography, Representation and the Creative Process

15 hec

Photography, Representation and the Creative Process II

15 hec

Practical Film Production I—Pre-production

7,5 hec

Practical Film Production II—Production

7,5 hec

Practical Film Production III—Post-production

3 hec

Printmaking 2

15 hec

Time is the Fire in Which We Burn

7,5 hec

To Teach Children Filmmaking

15 hec

64 Education

Image from Dialogues with/within the archive by Johan AndrĂŠn

66 Johan Andrén Dialogues with/within the archive

Dialogues Valand Academy, 2015 Editors Maximilien Van Aertryck, Kjell Caminha, Andreas Engman, Sara Jordenö, Balsam Karam and Niklas Persson. Design Niklas Persson Cover Based on photographs by Johan Andrén and anagram cipher by Niklas Persson. Print Elanders Publisher University of Gothenburg Valand Academy Vasagatan 50 SE-40530 Gothenburg Legally responsible publisher Mick Wilson ISBN 978-91-982564-2-0 Acknowledgements The editorial staff would like to thank everyone at Valand Academy who submitted contributions to the yearbook, that gave feedback on its concept and in a myriad of ways supported its completion. Copyright No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in an edition of 1500. For more information and Swedish version visit www.akademinvaland.gu.se/publikationer © 2015 Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg. All material courtesy of the artists and writers.

DO US AGILE 1

AGE IS LOUD 3

GO EL SAUDI 6

I OGLED USA 2

USA GO IDLE 7

I DUG ALOES 2

IS EGO DUAL 2