Reading/Viewing/Speculating: A Presentation with Alvina Chamberland

Within the framework of the research project, Reading/Viewing/Speculating, Alvina Chamberland will take part in capstone public presentation at Index on Saturday, May 23, from 16:00–18:00. Taking place within Agnė Jokšė’s exhibition REALITY CRACKS, the presentation will include live-readings and reflective discussions on the project and her novel, Love the World or Get Killed Trying’s themes, in relation to the exhibition.

Reading/Viewing/Speculating is a curatorial research project organised by Michaela Yarmol-Matusiak, focused on developing and testing a new method for co-reading-visiting contemporary novels and contemporary art exhibitions.

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Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels, residing in Athens. She has an MA in Gender Studies from Södertörn University, with a thesis on trans feminine sisterhood and intersectionality in New York City. In 2015, she published her co-authored book Allt som ar Mitt: Våldtäkt, Stigmatisering och Upprättelse (All that is mine: Rape, Stigmatization and Reparation). In September 2018, her novel Utelåst – Uppvaxt- nostalgi for freaks (Locked Out – A nostalgic account of growing up for freaks), a parody of the coming-of-age genre, was released. Her latest novel and English language debut Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024) presents an autofictional journey through the wilderness of Iceland and city boulevards of Berlin and Paris probing questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you’re a ceaseless target of straight men’s secret lust and open disgust. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction and listed by the bookstore Shakespeare and Co., Paris, as one of the 121 best books of the 21st Century.

Reading/Viewing/Speculating is a degree project within the Curating Art, International Master’s Programme at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.