Runaway Train

14 apr20 jun 2010

This exhibition raises questions about where Swedish artists choose to study and work. Is artistic expression influenced by the local context? Is geographic dislocation significant, or has the boundary between the Swedish and international art scenes been dissolved once and for all?

In the exhibition Runaway Train, curator Camilla Larsson continues to explore current trends in contemporary art. This time she has enlisted the assistance of Tone Hansen, Josefine Wikström, Ana-Maria Hadji-Culea and Krist Gruijthuijsen, all young curators working in Europe. Eleven young artists based in different countries participate in Runaway Train, the common link between them being their belief in the mutability of identity. In their works they conjure up unexpected notions and longings for other ways of being.

Malin Lennström-Örtwall, Maybe I’ll Never See You Again (Produced in Palestine and shipped to Norway. Part 2.), 2009|Bonniers Konsthall

Wednesday Evenings: Runaway Train

Artists and curators take the exhibition Runaway Train as their springboard to elaborate on different themes over three evenings. The themes discussed include trend scouting, performance and iPod-culture.

14 April, 6pm

Satellite curators Tone Hansen, Josefine Wikström, Ana-Maria Hadji Culea and Krist Gruijthuijsen scout out trends and dissect structures in our multi-faceted art world.

26 May, 8pm: Grand Openings

Artist Emily Sundblad, along with Grand Openings plus special guests, offer us music, video and performance relating to the old High Line railroad in New York City. Grand Openings’ performance for Bonniers Konsthall takes its inspiration from the High Line in New York City, a new park project built over an old railroad located on Manhattan’s West Side, running from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues. Grand Openings comprises five members: Ei Arakawa, performance artist and choreographer; Jutta Koether, artist and writer; Jay Sanders, curator, writer and head of the Greene Naftali Gallery in New York; Emily Sundblad, artist and singer; Stefan Tcherpenin, composer and performance artist.

16 June, 6pm: Discussion on the politics of sound

Curator Josefine Wikström and artist Niklas Tafra dive deep into iPod-culture and the politics of sound. Muzak in a shopping centre, voices over the underground’s loudspeaker, the hum of the motorway – we are flooded with sounds on a daily basis out in the public space. For the last evening of this season’s exhibition, Bonniers Konsthall offers a conversation on art’s relationship to the daily soundscape and just what impact that has on the public space. Does art have the ability to reallocate the politics of sound, thereby creating the possibility for a more democratic public space?

Top image: Charlotta Wandt, Lonely planet Holland 3, 2010. Photo: Mattias Givell