Luleå Biennial 2020:
Time on Earth
21.11.2020~14.2.2020
Last chance The Luleå Biennial 2020: Time on Earth
Wednesday February 10, 16~20 and Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14, 12~16
Galleri Syster is open. Group show with Augusta Strömberg, Susanna Jablonski and Ana Vaz.
Thursday February 11–Sunday February 14, 12~16
Havremagasinet länskonsthall in Bodenis open. Group show with Beatrice Gibson, Susanna Jablonski, Birgitta Linhart, Fathia Mohidin, Charlotte Posenenske, Tommy Tommie and Danae Valenza.
Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14, 14~18
The former prison Vita Duvan is open with an electro acoustic installation by Maria W Horn.
Saturday February 13, 15~19
The artist Markus Öhrn and the poet David Väyrynens sound installation "Bikt" is exhibited on the ice by Residensgatan in Luleå. Listen to older generations of Tornedal women and their testimonies.
Book your visit via Billetto. Drop in is possible as far as space allows.
For those of you who do not have the opportunity to physically visit the Luleå Biennale on site, a radio show including artist talks, sound works and specially written essays will be on stream on Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14. Visit our radio page here.
The exhibitions at Norrbotten's Museum, Luleå konsthall, Välkommaskolan in Malmberget and the Silver Museum are unfortunatly closed.
On the lawn at the outdoor swimming pool in Malmberget stands the public artwork The Talk made by the artist Elsie Dahlberg-Sundberg. The sculpture represents two people sitting opposite one another in conversation. One is passive, with legs crossed, the right elbow resting on the thigh, and the hand supporting the head. The other enthusiastic, leaning forward with legs wide apart and the fists clenched. The Talk sits in a space between Välkommaskolan, Svanparken, the indoor sports arena and the ice skating rink. It was in this sports arena that many of the strike committee meetings were held during the Great Miners’ Strike of 1969-70. Today, Malmberget is in the middle of an extensive evacuation process, and by 2032 most of the town will be gone. Houses are demolished or moved, and people leave their homes. Before long, The Talk will also be lifted and installed someplace else.
People living in Malmberget understand the conditions on which the existence of their community depends. Even if having to move will be painful, it is also, for some, eagerly anticipated. The specific circumstances to living in Malmberget have provoked a desire to leave. How can you feel safe in a house that seems likely to collapse at any moment? To ensure the continued activity and expansion of the mine, people will now move, and for the most part settle in the neighbouring town Gällivare.
It has evidently been easier to construct a media narrative about the evacuation and relocation of Kiruna, a city some 120 kilometers away. Malmberget sits in the shadow of Kiruna as a model city for city planning. In a conversation in this issue of the Lulu Journal, the artists Agneta Andersson, Britta Marakatt-Labba and Lena Ylipää argue that the relocation Malmberget is actually more visible and brutal. Both the built environment and the nature around Malmberget carry physical wounds, making the story of this town harder to spin into one of success and progress. The obstacles to such a narrative might in fact be too many and too glaring.
Slowly we get closer to the darkness.
Passing The Pit that splits Malmberget in two,
to the human grief and the anger around the evacuation,
and by looking back to see the pride of the labourers that spent most of their their lives working in underground mines.
In the essay The Hole Masha Taavoniku describes the places where she grew up, whereof some are represented through a series of photographs. The essay reflects on the mechanisms of memory and the complex feelings surrounding the gradual disappearance of an entire society. It is accompanied by illustrations with the title Boom, conceived by the artist Olivia Plender in response to the text.
Malmberget has a long tradition of powerful labour unions, but the strength and radicalism of the these organisations became especially evident during the miners' strike in the late 1960s, as portrayed by the filmmaker Lena Ewert. From the book Strejkkonsten [The Art of the Strike] by Ingela Johansson is an interview with the miner Ove Haarala, in which he confesses his love for working underground. Researcher Margareta Ståhl has written an introduction, Gruvfanor i norr (Mining Banners of the North), to the various banners that represent the miners’ unions in the region.
Johansson's video My father worked is a montage that relates the physical labour of fathers to the history of Workers’ Educational Association, exemplified by the Ashington Group from Northumberland – an artist group consisting of miners that was widely exhibited between 1934–1984. Archival material from the correspondence between the group and Whitechapel Gallery is intertwined in the narrative. The questions we asked Andersson, Marakatt-Labba and Ylipää are mainly founded in an interest in their working conditions. What is their experience of working as artists in places where the mining industry has been the very condition for the construction of society? Societies, which now are undergoing comprehensive evacuations and infrastructural transformations.
There is not one talk to be had about Malmberget. Rather, a new one starts every day. But there are attempts to portray, disseminate and reproduce stories. This issue of the Lulu Journal is one such attempt.
Ingela Johansson and Masha Taavoniku, editors
Many thanks to all who have contributed to this issue: Agneta Andersson, Lena Ewert, Ove Haarala, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Olivia Plender, Margareta Ståhl and Lena Ylipää.
Thank you for helping with imagery and research: Marie Riskilä, Gellivare Bildarkiv, Anna Storm, Södertörn University and the Swedish Labour Movement’s Archive and Library. Thanks also from Masha to Erik Galli for feedback during the writing process.
*Ingela Johansson is an artist and writer. She recently participated in the Portable Landscapes exhibition at the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga. In 2013 she released the book The Art of the Strike: Voices on political and cultural labour during and after the miners’ strike, 1969~70 (Glänta produktion).
Masha Taavoniku is an art historian and writer. She works for the choreographer Cristina Caprioli, in the non-profit association ccap. She has previously worked for more than 10 years in the Swedish trade union movement.*
Radio 65.22 is an auditory cross section of the biennial’s theme and contents, which amplifies and makes accessible written texts, framed situations and artistic voices. Radio 65.22 also enables an encounter with chosen parts of the Luleå Biennial’s activities for those who cannot experience the biennial in situ.
With Radio 65.22, we want to inscribe ourselves into an experimental and exploratory radio tradition, where the media itself becomes a platform for our ideas on radio and its capacity to depict and mirror the world around us. The task of Radio 65.22 is to tell of reality, in further ways that may not be possible through the image or the text.
Under Fragments: Time on Earth you will find radio programmes and sound pieces in different genres and forms that reflect this year’s biennial in various ways. Spirit of Place is a touring series of literary conversations on language and place. The culture journalist Kerstin Wixe takes us along to places that have played a significant part in an author’s stories, or carries the story’s history. Woven Songs is a deepening series of radio programmes that accentuate singing, the voice and the role of storytelling in the creation of new world views and orders, produced in collaboration with Public Art Agency Sweden.
Listen, reflect, enjoy!