Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art
A story within a story…
12 September – 22 November 2015
Curator: Elvira Dyangani Ose
GIBCA artists 2015
Anna Lundh, Ângela Ferreira, Arvo Leo, benandsebastian, Bouchra Khalili, Carlos Motta, Coco Fusco, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Inmaculada Salinas, Isabel Lewis, Jacob Kirkegaard, Kader Attia, Kerry James Marshall, Leslie Hewitt, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, María Berríos & Jakob Jakobsen, Maryam Jafri, Meleko Mokgosi, Nástio Mosquito, Petra Bauer & Rebecka Katz Thor, Phoebe Boswell, Pia Rönicke, The Propeller Group, Runo Lagomarsino, Sara Jordenö, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Shilpa Gupta, Simon Starling, Theo Eshetu, Tris Vonna Michell, and more to come.
A story within a story… is concerned with the possibility of imagining history as a participatory experience. In order to do so, the project will present works that look at history writing by unveiling the grammar of various sociopolitical junctures, rescuing events and their protagonists from historical oblivion and seeking to open up and expand readings of contemporary history. Taking Umberto Eco’s notion of the open work as a conceptual backdrop and curatorial methodology, A story within a story… will observe how history makes its subjects throughout multiples devices, questioning whether individuals and communities have the possibility to overcome certain historical narratives and presumptions by making relevant personal narratives, inner worlds, stories and protagonists located within the margins of such narratives. Moreover, the project will explore history as a radical act by focusing on a socially engaged project, House of Words (HoW), which interrogates notions of storytelling, collective memories and “publicness” from transnational and trans-historical perspectives.
HoW—House of Words
GIBCA and Public Art Agency Sweden / Statens konstråd present the site-specific project House of Words (HoW): a temporary pavilion designed by architect Santiago Cirugeda – Recetas Urbanas and activated by artist Loulou Cherinet. Within HoW Cherinet will devise a relational community project in which a wide range of cross-cultural and multidisciplinary programs will take place.
Referring to a traditional meeting place common in some African societies, “la Casa de la Palabra,” House of Words will operate as a social platform for participatory experiences and storytelling during the course of the biennial. HoW will be built with recycled materials and physically attached to the Röda Sten Konsthall. Its construction, led by Santiago Cirugeda, will consist of a collective process engaging local communities and individuals from Gothenburg and elsewhere. Cherinet’s project will be complemented by a public program curated in collaboration with Elvira Dyangani Ose addressing ideas on how participatory practices may question and create an activated social space where the notion of “publicness” will ultimately be framed through a powerful sense of “togetherness.” HoW will be one of the most socially engaged features in the 8th edition of GIBCA, inviting artists, thinkers and various cultural producers, alongside members of civil society and public authorities, from Scandinavia and across the globe, to partake in various initiatives enquiring the circumstances of radical contingency—sociopolitical, economic and cultural—that are constitutive of our current experience.