ANDREHN-SCHIPTJENKO PARIS, SANTIAGO-MOSTYN | Photographed by: Alexandra de Cossette

Southnord Artfest: Digging Weekend

The theme of the weekend revolves around archives – the personal and the public, historiography and rewrites, knowledge gaps and various attempts to fill in and recreate deleted histories. This weekend we offer film screenings with subsequent talks, a deep listening session, collaboration with archive projects from around the Nordic region where the whole family can contribute to talks and lectures.

Date: 23-25 November 2023
Opening hours: See details below

Venue:
Kulturhuset Stadsteatern,
Sergelstorg Norrmalm
111 57 Stockholm, Sweden

Thursday 23 November

  • Margarida Waco’s cinematic contribution to the Venice Architectural Biennial 2023 and Marie-Louise Richards’ film “Banana Split”. Artist talk afterwards. Happening at Klarabiografen.

    Margarida Waco is an architect whose practice mobilises architecture, ecology and politics through design, research, exhibitions, pedagogy, and writing. She holds an MA in Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy with a background in Sustainable Development from Sciences Po Paris and Journalism from Roskilde University. She is currently an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London where she directs the Architectural Design Studio 8: Afterlives. Among other things, she is an advisor to The Funambulist, a bimestrial publication dedicated to the politics of space and bodies, where she previously served as Head of Strategic Outreach and Contributing Editor.

    Marie-Louise Richards is an architect, lecturer, researcher and the founder the course and platform Reconstructions in Department for Research and Further Education in Architecture and Fine Art at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Her work explores invisibility as embodiment, critical strategy and spatial category through methods of architectural and artistic practice, curatorial practice and writing. Current work seeks to imagine the discipline, practice and history of architecture “otherwise”, through citational practices, queer, Black feminist and decolonial methodologies, theories and approaches

Friday 24 November

  • Sonic Insurrections is a platform that presents sound and listening as sites of affect, memory, solidarity, pulse, rhythm and spirituality. We delve into sound for its history, situatedness and processes to map out an ‘otherwise’. Sonic Insurrections is curated and organised by Tawanda Appiah and Mmabatho Thobejane.

    For Southnord, Sonic Insurrections premieres Interstitial Radio, an experimental live in-person broadcast. We acknowledge radio as a medium for gathering, informing, connecting and creating moments of conviviality. We present the interstitial as a transitional space brimming with potential, flow, and vibes. It is a place slow enough for us to listen and jive together.

    Programme

    18:00 – 18:15 Arrivals

    18:15 – 19:00 Transmission 1: Ear To The Ground: Listening to Insurgence by Mmabatho Thobejane

    19:00 – 20:00 Transmission 2: Delving deep into the groove by André Taylor

Saturday 25 November

  • Community Gathering in Stockholm is a 2-day-event centered around the Family Archive. Since 2021 Black Archives Sweden has collected materials from Afro-Swedes personal photo albums and archives to contribute to a broader representation of Black people and families in Sweden.

    The weekend will be filled with: children's storytelling session, readings, workshops, panel discussions and a listening session in Foajé 3.

    11:00–16:00 Archival station

    13:00–13:30 Children’s storytelling time

    13:00–15:00 Workshop with focus on your family archive

    14:00–15:00 Portrait photography station with Felicia Masalla

    16:00 – 16:45 Presentation of Radical Love:care as resistance

    17:00 - 19:00 Talk and listening session with Naima Karlsson

    Black Archives Sweden is a contemporary archive where archives meet contemporary art. Black Archives Sweden is centered on the experiences, narratives and productions of Afro-Swedes and Black people in Sweden. Employing a queer feminist diasporic perspective, Black Archives Sweden works with collecting photographs, videos, sound collections, letters, texts, oral histories and ephemeral material, which are then (re)activated through artistic medium

  • Public library engagement with Piniel Demisse, Assata (NO).

    Piniel Demisse lives in Oslo and is a co-founder of the activist library, ASSATA. She is a pan-Africanist, community builder, and organizer who, through ASSATA, works on political consciousness and knowledge dissemination. Her work is Afro-centric and aims to promote critical thinking for our collective liberation. In this pop-up library, she has brought essential reads that we need for a more truthful analysis of the world and the structures we live under. The collection also includes literature that allows us to envision a new world beyond the current societal order.

    ASSATA is an independent, curated library and collective based in Oslo, actively participating in the global movement for social change and aiming to address our need for greater solidarity in the struggle for social justice. ASSATA's overarching focus is decolonization and critical examination of the societal structures we live under through the use of revolutionary knowledge. Through studies, community building, and dialogue, we center voices that have historically been excluded. Together with our community, we create an inspiring sanctuary that invites in learning, relearning, organizing, and action. ASSTA is today located at Kunsthall Oslo.

  • Zine workshop for young and old with Abdul Dube (DK). No ticket needed, drop in at LAVA, Gallery 4.

    Dadaist poetry meets locals, in a hands-on meme and zine workshop. Using randomly generated text and Google images with good old-fashioned scissors and glue, participants will cut out words and paste them onto photos to make their very own meme—In Real Life. After a short demonstration of making simple folding one-shot zines. Participants will curate and compile the IRL Memes created earlier into zine form. Copies of the zines will be xeroxed (photocopied) and each participant will fold and cut their own copy of their limited-edition collaborative zine. To share with the public or their communities. A side station will be the option to make a poster, with old-school cut, stick and paste tools. The posters be incorporated with the zine workshop copied and shared.

    Abdul Dube is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, curator and workshop facilitator based in Aarhus, Denmark. His work concerns questions of multicultural belonging, racism and resistance, intersectional solidarity, heritage, sustainability, Black imagination and activism. Abdul’s heritage-related work includes facilitating Antiblack racism in our public archives workshop with Black Archives Sweden; teaching, writing, and creating Zines for the Horizon-2020 funded project European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities; and Creative Liaison to the Aros Museum Education Department.

Sunday 26 November

  • The day will be filled with: children's storytelling session, reading time and workshops in Foajé 3

    11:00-16:00 Archival Station

    13:00-15:00 Workshop with focus on your family archive. This is a free workshop, however sign-up is required.

    13:15- 13:45 pm Reading time with the activist library ASSATA

    14:00-15:00 Portrait photography station with Felicia Masalia

    14:.30- 15:00 Reading time with the activist library ASSATA

    Black Archives Sweden is a contemporary archive where archives meet contemporary art. Black Archives Sweden is centered on the experiences, narratives and productions of Afro-Swedes and Black people in Sweden. Employing a queer feminist diasporic perspective, Black Archives Sweden works with collecting photographs, videos, sound collections, letters, texts, oral histories and ephemeral material, which are then (re)activated through artistic medium

  • Public library engagement with Piniel Demisse, Assata (NO).

    Piniel Demisse lives in Oslo and is a co-founder of the activist library, ASSATA. She is a pan-Africanist, community builder, and organizer who, through ASSATA, works on political consciousness and knowledge dissemination. Her work is Afro-centric and aims to promote critical thinking for our collective liberation. In this pop-up library, she has brought essential reads that we need for a more truthful analysis of the world and the structures we live under. The collection also includes literature that allows us to envision a new world beyond the current societal order.

    ASSATA is an independent, curated library and collective based in Oslo, actively participating in the global movement for social change and aiming to address our need for greater solidarity in the struggle for social justice. ASSATA's overarching focus is decolonization and critical examination of the societal structures we live under through the use of revolutionary knowledge. Through studies, community building, and dialogue, we center voices that have historically been excluded. Together with our community, we create an inspiring sanctuary that invites in learning, relearning, organizing, and action. ASSATA is today located at Kunsthall Oslo.

  • Zine workshop for young and old with Abdul Dube (DK). No ticket needed, drop in at LAVA, Gallery 4.

    Dadaist poetry meets locals, in a hands-on meme and zine workshop. Using randomly generated text and Google images with good old-fashioned scissors and glue, participants will cut out words and paste them onto photos to make their very own meme—In Real Life. After a short demonstration of making simple folding one-shot zines. Participants will curate and compile the IRL Memes created earlier into zine form. Copies of the zines will be xeroxed (photocopied) and each participant will fold and cut their own copy of their limited-edition collaborative zine. To share with the public or their communities. A side station will be the option to make a poster, with old-school cut, stick and paste tools. The posters be incorporated with the zine workshop copied and shared.

    Abdul Dube is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, curator and workshop facilitator based in Aarhus, Denmark. His work concerns questions of multicultural belonging, racism and resistance, intersectional solidarity, heritage, sustainability, Black imagination and activism. Abdul’s heritage related work includes facilitating an Antiblack racism in our public archives workshop with Black Archives Sweden; teaching, writing and creating Zines for the Horizon-2020 funded project European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities; and Creative Liaison to the Aros Museum Education Department.

  • Conversation about initiating and building archives with Jonelle Twum from Black Archives Sweden (SE), Piniel Demisse (NO) from Assata, Wisam Elfadl from Black Archives Helsinki (FI), moderator Marcia Harvey Isaksson (SE)

    The conversation will be held in English. Image: Assata Aktivistisk Bibliotek

  • Santiago Mostyn lives and works in Stockholm but has strong ties to Zimbabwe and Trinidad & Tobago where he grew up. His practice foregrounds narrative entanglements in pursuit of new understandings of place, both in a cultural and psychic sense. Mostyn has long been interested in the interplay of music, narrative and the embodied self, with works manifesting as films, exhibitions and curatorial projects. His work explores the dissonance of lives lived between different political spheres. Mostyn builds intuitive stories through layering and collage, mixing new and archival material. Mostyn has exhibited at, among others, Södertälje Art Gallery, Kalmar Art Museum, Hasselblads Center and is represented in the collections of the Moderna Museet, the Statens Konstråd and the Albright-Knox Museum.

    Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole works with lens and non-lens based photography presented as installations, performance and prints. At the core of her practice is an investigation of material processes that explore new forms within the framework of established techniques. Agunbiade-Kolawole has exhibited widely in Sweden and internationally. Her work is represented in the the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Göteborg konstmusset, Stockholm Läns Landsting, Uppsala Läns Landsting, & Brucebo Foundation in Sweden; National Health Services, Barking & Dagenham Council, Kingston.

    Anna Tellgren is the curator of photography at Moderna Museet. Among her most recent exhibitions is Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff. Alternative Secrecy (2021) and the same year In lady Barclay's salon – art and photography around 1900 with works from the Moderna Museet and Nationalmuseum collections. The exhibition Francesca Woodman. On Being an Angel (2015) has toured internationally. She is also in charge of research at the museum and has contributed to a wide range of publications, including as editor of the book Pontus Hultén and Moderna Museet. From Stockholm to Paris (2023).

  • In collaboration with Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm, Southnord is organising a mini-seminar where we dig into the history of black people in the Nordics through various presentations.

    • Short lecture (20 mins) Michael McEachrane (SE) - "Black Consciousness in the Nordics"

    • Johanna Berg (SE) +Maria Fröhlich (SE) *Afrosvenskar - 51 berättelser ur historien" (20 mins)

    Break (15 mins)

    • Short lecture (20 mins) Yacouba Cisse (NO) “Archives, Memory and History”

    • Nina Cramer (DK) + Temi Odumosu (USA) - "Call of the Cold” (20 mins)

    Break (15 mins)

    • Panel discussion and audience engagement (40 mins) lead by Michael Barret (SE) from Etnografiska Museet