TO BEGIN...Space for Resistance (working title)

I'm starting this blog to document, remember, reflect, compile, update and communicate what I'm working on, thinking about and experiencing within the framework of a current artistic research project I'm developing.

As part of a recent 'research day' Valand Art Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden-where I'm a senior lecturer in the MA Fri Konst (Fine Art) and Photography Units-I had the opportunity to present my current artistic research.  

Here is the project that I presented and have been thinking/working along with for some time now. How I speak about this changes over time and with each new work I make or new way I find to consider and frame what it is that I'm trying to do or am doing.

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Space for Resistance (working title) is a line of research that entangles multiple ongoing artistic projects that most typically use performance and installation to investigate, manifestations of resistance through symbols, actions, language or silence. How can resistance be formulated from a queer or marginalized position? 

 A number of my performance-based works have cited spaces of normativity such as a mainstream LGBT Pride Parade, an Evangelical Lutheran Church or a men’s locker room. I argue for the necessity of the “killjoy” figure (Sarah Ahmed) as a position of resistance within these communities that are each based on a particular set of codes, rules and expectations.  

The killjoy figure or symbol of defiance confronts the power that is executed from within this homogeny and opens a space for resistance. The project calls for a queer insistence on deviance as a deconstruction of the power that the norm performs (Judith Butler). This also refers to Jack Halberstam’s proposal that resisting heteronormative standards of success and deliberately failing is a queer art in itself.

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I'm focusing on 5 current projects where I'm trying to consider the ideas above.

1. Spring Season 2015:  Curation of 3 exhibitions at the Vita Kuben in Umeå, Sweden i      
                           including the work of Jeuno JE Kim & Ewa Einhorn, Sidsel Meineche  
                           Hansen and myself
2. May 8th:  Exhibition Opening at the Vita Kuben in Umeå, Sweden

3. May 9th:  Live work for the MADE Festival at the Norrlands Opera, Sweden

4. June 4th-14th:  Live work for the Rapid Pulse Performance Festival, Chicago, Illinois 

5. Commission by the Danish Statens Kunstfund (state art fund) to produce a live work and
    a series of photographs from that work