Workshop series: Going to an exhibition in character

Index and Index Teen Advisory Board welcome you to join them in Going to an exhibition in character. Using speculative and performative methods from LARP (Live Action Role Play) we visit different exhibitions to untangle the invisible codes that structure it as a social space. Join for one day or the whole week, from 13:00-16:00 each day. It’s free and open to all under the age of 30.

A character is a layer of residual particles formed from fantasies of who we are and who we can become. Lingering between a sticky jumper and a profile image with a political message, the culture of the persona takes on a very specific role in the artworld.

During a full week Index, together with Index Teen Advisory Board, organizes a series of workshops looking into the exhibition as a social sphere and uses art spaces all around the city as a stage to observe observers and play dress-up to undress social codes.

Going to an exhibition in character is a format that has developed throughout the years with Index Teen Advisory Board; looking at looking, sketching sketchers and acting sketchy. Using methods from LARP (Live Action Role Play), Invisible Theater and sociology, we ask: How do bodies move when they are in the position of “looking at art”. What words do actually slip our tongues when we wander the echoy halls? Together we spy on art-talk, go undercover to uncover and collect a grammar on which we can build new scenarios, enacting future possibilities for the social fabric of the exhibition space.

Build in three core workshops: Audience Choreography, Language and Narrativity and Structure and Policies, each day we meet up with an artist to collectively unpack these structuring angles of the exhibition space. Welcome to participate throughout the week, in single workshops or during several disperse occasions. Send in your rsvp@indexfoundation.se, stating I’M GOING TO AN EXHIBITION: (the title of the day) and your phone number. You will then get a textmessage with your next instructions.

Mon 26 Okt, 13:00
GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: In the wrong outfit

The first day we meet up in a thriftshop to peel of the layers of clothing that keeps us safe in our character zone. We are not one but plenty, and between the jumpers that keep you socially safe and the “mom jeans” that got back in style, we venture into the shelves to explore the characters we all embody. Bring a fully charged cameraphone and a fully charged courageous mind, and join us in a reading group under a dress-rack, a vougueing marathon and finish the day off with going to an exhibtion in the wrong outfit.

Location: Secret
Email rsvp@indexfoundation.se and write “GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: In the wrong outfit” and your phone number.
You will then receive a text-message with your next clue.

Tues 27 Okt, 13:00
GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: And moving weird

Shifting location, join us for a workshop with Klara Utke Acs centred around audience choreography, performativity and gesture. Observing, investigating, restaging, we ask what the invisible codes of a space do to the gestures that happen within it; recoding the room into the social structure.

Location: Secret
Email rsvp@indexfoundation.se and write “GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: And moving weird” and your phone number.
You will then receive a text-message with your next clue.

Wed 28 Okt, 13:00
GOING TO AN EXHIBITION: And saying the wrong things

With this workshop, the plot thickens. Artist Ina Hagen hosts, activates, leads and intervenes in a dialogue around the language of art and its institutions. Using a closed chatroom to write collectively and anonymously, we construct and unfold a fictional situation, invent our own characters, and together re-write the script and the rules of the game.

Location: Secret
Email rsvp@indexfoundation.se and write “GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: And saying the wrong things” and your phone number.
You will then receive a text-message with your next clue.

Tors 29 Okt, 13:00
GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: And changing the story

Interrogating the policies and hidden structures embedded in historical institutions, we navigate and maneuver with Rudy Loewe: understanding, politically and ideologically, the different roles and realities played out by the figures and institutions of the cultural landscape. Following these conversations, Rudy Loewe leads us in speculative comic-making session.

Location: Secret
Email rsvp@indexfoundation.se and write “GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: And changing the story” and your phone number.
You will then receive a text-message with your next clue.

Fri 30 oktober, 13:00
GOING TO AN EXHIBITION: And double-digest <—- POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19 REGULATIONS

Gathering to tie the loose ends together, we arrange a discursive dinner at Index. A stage for us to decompress, discuss, and digest what has happened during the week, but also to compile the material into a format we wish to share during the next step of Conference In Character in Copenhagen. (Considering the development of the Nordic Covid-19 situation). In a final workshop we play out the yet unwritten scenarios and move into the next phase of introducing our findings to the world.

Location: Index
Email rsvp@indexfoundation.se and write “GOING TO AN EXHIBTION: And double-digest” and your phone number.
You will then receive a text-message with a task on what to bring.

GUEST ARTISTS:

Rudy Loewe (UK) is a black, trans visual storyteller with a practice that focuses on social and political themes and histories. They use drawing, painting and printmaking alongside their experience of involvement in a variety of activist communities. Rudy is interested in how artistic practice can contribute to conversations on collective care and social justice.

Ina Hagen (NO) is an artist and writer based in Oslo who works across performance and communal making practices. Alongside her studio practice, Hagen is a board member of the young artist’s membership organisation, union, and contemporary art institution UKS (Young Artist’s Society) and of Kunstnerboligforeningen (the Artist Housing Association) in Norway.

In constructing performative situations and platforms, Hagen merges situated histories, collaborative and participatory acts in situations of collective, critical reflection. She is co-founder with Daisuke Kosugi of the discursive platform and exhibition venue Louise Dany, that ran in their flat and adjacent store-front in Oslo between 2016 and 2020.

Klara Utke Acs (DK) is an artist working with dance and choreography; they work with poetics and body politics in the borderlands of performance, dramaturgy, curation, sound, film, and language. Their work is occupied with counter-hegemonic strategies from queer queries and crip currencies. Klara is active in the scenes of Copenhagen and Stockholm and holds a BA in Dance Performance from DOCH, Stockholm University of the Arts. They are a part of the studio-cooperative höjden studios in Östberga, queer art-club collective Fake Daughter and activist group Queers Against Fascism.

Going to an exhibtion in character is run by Index Curator of Learning Emmeli Person and Index Teen Advisory Board with generous support from the Nordic Culture Point. The project builds on methodologies developed throughout the years of Index learning program and invites young audiences in Stockholm (Index), Oslo (Praksis), and Copenhagen (SixtyEight Art Insitute) to observe and experiment with the social fabric of their local artscene. Starting in key workshops the project moves on to host a Conference In Character at the end of the year, sharing material, building new scenarios and enacting future possibilities for youth culture to take command of artspaces.