CURATORIAL
In the exhibition "En ask i en ask i en ask" seven suitcases present the multifaceted practice of Staffan Westerberg, spanning almost acentury. Ever since childhood Westerberg has been exploring the tragedy and playfulness of existence, from the early cardboard miniature theatre to puppet theatre, cabaret, television, drawing, painting, and poetry. Everyday life is transformed into stories and drama, with the help of an umbrella or a sock, a bread shovel or a piece of wood washed up on the beach. It is a world that neither shuns the real, nor the terrifying or the fantastic.
"Mint Poetry Festival 2024" sought an ecstatic dramaturgy, in a broad meaning. In the displaced temporality of illness, through revelation, death, and pleasure, language stretches towards an ‘other’ reality. At the center of the event was expressions of human vulnerability and rapture, conveyed through reading, song, and film. The Poetry Festival was curated by the artists Andjeas Ejiksson, Iris Smeds, and Mint's curator Emily Fahlén. It was produces as a part of "The Isolated Bone", a project that touches on a collective concept of truth that is being put out of play.
"TV Trampoline" was a series of exihitions, a collaboration with the Russian cultural magazine Colta.ru, and an issue of the Swedish cultural magazine Ord&bild, that explored the impact of the progressive children’s television of the 1960–80s. This question was addressed to the eleven artists and writers, thinking of them as correspondents who study and process how children’s television relates to broader issues, including those of public education, entertainment, consumption, citizenship, and political movements.
"Weight" was a one-time event that transpired theatre, a spectacle that went on for 48 hours. It took place at Stora Teatern in Gothenburg, in the melancholic history of a building that has been marked by periods of both ambition and lack vision. A tension between significant and insignificant is manifested in the contrast between the glorious main hall and the seemingly omitted back rooms occupied by conference style interior. The event was an attempt to shift the weight of the building. Carolee Schneemann’s work was the main source of inspiration, her exploration of the politics of desire, sexuality, and gender through the body.
Geist was an experimental magazine that sought forms and approaches to writing through art, rather than about art. Born out of a frustration with the cemented roles and positions of the art scene, Geist was published an ever-changing format for developing textual and discursive aspects of artistic practice. The outset was an ambition to propel the making of text on and of art, in and through art practice, rather than looking at art from a distance.