Finissage of LOOPHOLE, with a talk by Sonja Lau, Sunday 27 August, 14:00
On the final day of Jordan Strafer’s exhibition, curator and writer Sonja Lau gives a talk at Index, taking LOOPHOLE as the starting point for a reading of the courtroom, its power structures and gender asymmetries.

In her talk, Sonja Lau revisits a number of historical and recent court cases, in which “criminal” women played a crucial role. Lau defines a trial as a spatial and rhetorical setting of two accounts in collision: a place where two antagonistic “stories” fight for their respective survival. In this context, female delinquency and female criminality add another level of conflict – as the subject in question “already left” her traditional role within the narrative (of gender), e.g. by not performing the role of victim, but the role of perpetrator, and thus has no narrative within the court room that can be defended or won over the other.

Sonja Lau is a curator and writer based in Berlin and Istanbul whose work focuses on the relationship between art, history, and power; on gender, and on the legal system.
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Upcoming exhibition: Catti Brandelius, MISS UNIVERSUM 1997–2005 (2023), Thursday 21 September, 18:00–21:00
From 1997 to 2005, Catti Brandelius – performing as her alter ego Miss Universum – produced films, pamphlets, poems, fanzines, events and songs with specific feminist content. Index presents an exhibition attending to the multiplicity of Brandelius’ character from perspectives in 2023, inviting in a spectrum of voices and opinions from Katarina Bonnevier, Maryam Fanni, Anna Kinbom, Johan Lundin and Andria Nyberg Forshage. The exhibition presents an exhaustive approach to what Miss Universum meant during the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s, creating a documentary setting and a platform to observe the work from contemporary perspectives.

During the opening, Catti Brandelius will give a concert at Index, which launches the first edition of September Sessions.


Upcoming: September Sessions – A Contemporary Art Festival in Stockholm, 21–24 September 2023
Launching its first edition this autumn, September Sessions – A Contemporary Art Festival in Stockholm is an initiative by Mint and Index. The festival has a full program spread across various art organizations in the city including Accelerator, coyote, Filmform, IASPIS, Index, Konsthall C, Liljevalchs, MDT, Mint and Tensta konsthall. The program hosts exhibitions, performances, concerts, film screenings, IASPIS Open Studios, readings and parties.

In resonance to this edition, Cathrin Mayer is curating Echoes, an ephemeral performance and music program spread across semi-public and public spaces of Stockholm. A church, a boat and a listening room among others will become vessels to celebrate the fleeting and fragile nature of time-based media.

Save the date, for more information visit September Sessions’ website



 
 In June 2023, curators Maria Lind, Jan-Erik Lundström and Erik Sandberg met at Index to talk about curatorial practice in the Nordic countries, with special focus on the work done by Jan-Erik Lundström at Moderna Museet and its photographic department, at Bild Museet in Umeå and the Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Karasjok.

Periphery and center, curatorial ethics, cartography and how to observe artistic practice were key elements of this talk – now transformed into a podcast to become archival material for future history writing. The context for this conversation was the release of the book “Curating Beyond the Mainstream: The Practice of Carlos Capelán, Elisabet Haglund, Gunilla Lundahl, and Jan-Erik Lundström” – a book published by Konstfack and Sternberg Press as a result of the research done at Curatorlab.
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 Index is pleased to share that Johanna Billing is the new chairperson of Index’ board! The position of the chair of the board is always held by an artist, and Johanna Billing has been a key figure in Index’ history.

Reflecting on the new appointment, Marti Manen: “Index has had many great artists as chairpersons, I’m very happy that Johanna is now part of this tradition. To have an artist as chairperson shows our commitment to artists and the artistic practice. I would also like to thank Henrik Andersson and Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, the two previous chairpersons, for their immense and continuous dedication to Index.”
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