forms of the surrounding futures mark the twelfth edition of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art which will take place between 16 September –19 November 2023
The forthcoming edition of GIBCA, titled forms of the surrounding futures, reacts against the current state of permanent crisis, combining positions which embody and celebrate plural narratives for tomorrow. It circumvents dominant paradigms which sustain the status quo and pre-empt possible futures, to make sense of our current times as moments of transformation filled with potentiality.
Drawing from the imaginative energy of non-normative agencies, forms of the surrounding futures elude speculative attitudes to futurity to look at existing possibilities of being together. It embraces an expanded notion of queer to challenge dominant paradigms, inviting an integrated rethinking and remaking of bodies, spaces, and times.
Thought as a series of communal situations of awe and estrangement, it examines the now, disseminating narratives that celebrate our collective ability to imagine and rehearse worlds to come.
forms of the surrounding futures is curated by João Laia
Artists
Sophia Al-Maria / Adam Christensen / Joana da Conceição / Niko Hallikainen / Rodrigo Hernández / Sky Hopinka / Maria Jerez / Agnė Jokšė / Kem / Tarik Kiswanson / Yong Xiang Li / Yarema Malashchuk & Roman Khimei / Guadalupe Maravilla / Esse McChesney / Sandra Mujinga / Rasmus Myrup / Ania Nowak / Outi Pieski / Luiz Roque / Prem Sahib / P. Staff / Iris Touliatou / Ana Vaz / Osías Yanov /
Venues
Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg City Library, Hammarkullen Konsthall
Press preview
Professionals and press preview of exhibitions: September 15, 10:30–5pm
Press preview of exhibitions: September 16, 10–3pm
Opening: September 16, 11am–September 17, 1am
Opening performance program: September 16, 3pm–September 17, 1am
Registration for the press preview on 15 and 16 September is open here.
Opening performance program
a calling
Ania Nowak—To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto)
Adam Christensen—Soft boiled eggs and dried fish
a celebration
Rasmus Myrup—Je te vous présente
Agnė Jokšė—Lezbynai
Niko Hallikainen—Mystery Machine
Joana da Conceição—Electric Dream
Kem—Dragana Bar
The performance program expands the exhibition displays, queering the stability of the biennial format by playing with ephemeral and durational rhythms of presentation. Because of its bodily, celebratory and intensified features, the performance programs design places of communal experimentation; instances of possibility where social formations can emerge and be rehearsed in shared manners. The opening performance program is organised in two successive moments: day-time and night-time. The day program, a calling, serves as a welcome device, introducing key narratives of the biennial and concentrating attention towards a ceremonial and liminal moment of the opening-as-event. The nocturnal program a celebration is a social gathering. It echoes the night as a haven of various others and manifests the biennial’s celebratory embrace towards the unknown.
“I’m a strong believer that either your politics is liberating and that gives you joy, or there’s something wrong with them.” —Silvia Federici
O—Overgaden x GIBCA 2023—a prelude
Please join us Saturday August 26 for an afternoon at O—Overgaden that highlights the exhibition Precoming by Rasmus Myrup, queer sculptor and renegade-naturalist mythmaker. The show is created as part of a collaboration between O—Overgaden (Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen) and GIBCA, functioning as a prelude to his new grand-scale commission Outside Salon des Refusés for the biennial.
3.30pm: GIBCA program launch at O—Overgaden: João Laia, curator of GIBCA’s 2023 edition, presents on the upcoming biennial forms of the surrounding futures.
4pm: Exhibition talk with artist Rasmus Myrup among the faux rune stones, pine chandelier, thirst trap paintings, and other paraphernalia of his prelude show Precoming at O—Overgaden.
Public program highlights
Status Queer (Kolbrún Inga Söring and Sam Message) uses spatial and relational interventions to explore queer and trans experiences and weave new connections between people. As part of GIBCAs public program, Status Queer will conduct a gender-bending, rule-breaking and boundary-crossing performative tour, as well as a workshop through which utopias and queer and trans memory is explored by collaborative making.
Saturday September 30, 1–3pm (workshop), Wednesday October 11, 6–7pm (performative tour), Röda Sten Konsthall
Southnord is a newly established platform that makes space for black and afro-nordic artists. For GIBCA 2023, Southnord is presenting “MixRace MixTape”, a performance lecture by John-Paul Zaccarini. In addition, the extensive program for this autumn’s inaugural artfest at Kulturhuset in Stockholm will be launched.
Saturday October 7, 2–8.30pm, Röda Sten Konsthall
For GIBCAs public program, Solange Farkas, Director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, will curate a screening program presenting the practice of Raphael França. França began his experimentation with audiovisual storytelling after moving to the United States in 1982. His works are grounded in intense personal experiences, revolving around themes such as social and romantic relationships, desire, and the inevitability of death.
Friday October 27, 5.30–6.30pm, Röda Sten Konsthall
GIBCA—forms of the surrounding futures in 2024
1646—Experimental Art Space (The Hague) & La Criée (Rennes): solo presentations by Rasmus Myrup
Kunsthalle Münster—closing exhibition of forms of the surrounding futures
About GIBCA
Organizer: Röda Sten Konsthall
Director Röda Sten Konsthall: Mia Christersdotter Norman
Artistic Director GIBCA: Sarah Hansson
Curator GIBCA 2023: João Laia
The Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) was founded in 2001. As a platform for the presentation of international contemporary art, GIBCA aims to be an important junction between local, national, and international discourses on issues of urgent collective interest. Each biennial consists of several exhibitions and programs hosted by established art institutions in Gothenburg, by independent initiatives, and in the physical and digital public realm.
Main funders: City of Gothenburg, Region of West Sweden, Swedish Arts Council.
João Laia is the Chief Curator for exhibitions at Kiasma—Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. He has a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. Past projects were developed in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Galeria Municipal do Porto; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; MAAT—Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Moscow Young Art Biennial, MMOMA; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Videobrasil / SESC Pompeia, São Paulo. He edited Living Encounters (Kiasma/Mousse, 2022) and A Multiple Community (SESC, 2018) and has been published in magazines such as Art Monthly, Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike and Terremoto. Together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, Laia curated the fourteenth Baltic Triennial (2021) titled The Endless Frontier at the CAC—Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. In 2024 Klimašauskas and Laia will curate the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale showcasing the artist duo Pakui Hardware.