Hello, On the 9th of September All all all opened with our first residency-based exhibition project Time Losers. The project is essentially a bar installation operated by the artistic partnership between Freja Gøtke (DK) and Hilma Bäckström (SE) - a silver-coloured box on wheels that the artists moved around in the space, with people inside it and without. Drinks were served and conversations had. The bar was a set piece for inviting the public to take part in the artists practice as a process and hopefully, to return. This project that re-opens today as Time Losers, Group Show, has been a way for All all all to try to set an intention for our space and for the year program we are doing while we are in Kunstforeningen Gl. Strands rooms in Læderstræde 15, until the summer 2023. All all all in context: transparency and process When Gl. Strand published an open call for a yearlong exhibition space in Læderstræde and we applied, we felt we needed to justify our existence as a new space on an already filled art scene and did so in five points of action: 1. The collaboration between curators, resident artists, visiting artists and designers had to be anti-hierarchical, for artists/ curators providing equal access to offices and working spaces. 2. The exhibitions should challenge the idea of the finished art product by showing the processual nature of its production openly, allowing for the artists to decide when to open the doors to the space and when to stop working on the project, while inviting audiences in. 3. Thereby changing the possibilities of the artists’ work process and slowing down its pace to fit the artists’ life conditions, mental, emotional and physical health. 4. Giving the space to projects, voices, artists and work centring thematically around different forms of care and that are translations of care as artistic action. This means prioritizing both minoritized artistic voices and projects that have a hard time fitting into the framework of a fast-paced art business with its precarious, triggering and harsh working conditions that a lot of especially young and up and coming artists work under. And, 5. Transparency: processually, economically and collaboratively. All all all’s intentions and care as a strategy
All all all is an experimental exhibition project, then, that wants to contest the concept of the ‘overworked happy artworker’ - an expectation of a successful art professional as defined by tirelessness and an ability to manage multiple projects while being grateful in the face of the life forms that these expectations demand. We want to challenge a series of conditions from which these expectations arise for art practitioners in early stages of their career. Rather than highlighting the gratitude young artists are expected to show, we wish to look critically at the structures that force artists and curators to work precariously. It means challenging the measurement of the artworker’s ability to smoothly deliver finished products (preferably to many venues at the same time) as a matter of fact. In a world where quantity is in itself a way to impress and make one’s way onto the scene, we would like to change the over-used and tired phrase that many artworkers hear a lot: “But you know, this is such a great opportunity for you”. We would like to use this year program to listen to the artists in-residence and with their help replace this sentence with a more sustainable one, centred on values of care production within artistic collaborative work as an end in itself for both artists and public. Concrete measures
How do we create an environment in which labor, time and money are aligned when we do not have the economic foundation that is really needed? Even with housing expenses taken care of by Gl. Strand, which is a fundamental relief in these times, it still is a puzzle. We can start by prioritizing that the workers we bring in are the first to get paid and are paid as fairly as possible. Here we consult the collective agreement of the organization of art practitioners, UKK. We make sure to talk to each artist and align expectations with possibility of their life situations before forming collaboration. We try to create a workday where hours of work align with pay, and a home for the work on the conditions of the artworker themselves. This also means creating a space providing practical and emotional care for the people we invite in. One way we choose to do this is by, in a sense, overlapping the timeline that usually dictates the process of an art show. Instead of the artist working in their home, school or studio, towards delivering a set of finished works to a specific deadline and thereafter leaving them in the space, we put the studio into the exhibition space and open the door to the public while the project is still growing. This gives the artist the opportunity to work with the response, but it also gives the audience an opportunity to come closer to artistic work as a process and less a product. We hope it encourages both artist and audience to engage with art in a non time-pressured way, to return and reflect with work, to stay, to come back and repeat. For our first residents Freja Gøtke and Hilma Bäckström, this has meant that their project has taken two very different forms during their exhibition period, split in the middle, and they have already welcomed back regulars both in the changing installations and to the different open social events that will (as far as we know for now) count a total of four. Newest in All all all: re-opening of Time Losers, Group Show
When we started installations the goal was for two set pieces to be up before opening; this changed and changed again as the process developed, slowed down and took new forms as Gøtke and Bäckström took over the space, during the day and in the night. They were time losers, by nature and intention. The gentle atmosphere they have made both when the doors are closed and when the exhibition is open, has become fundamental to the future of All all all, as a carrier of our original intentions. Their common practice which formed as bar installations at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien and is informed by their yearlong gardening work in a convent in Vienna and from working with restoration of palazzos there, dwells on a central thing: maintenance, of the self and the social, through slow and continuous engagement. By placing this practice inside the exhibition space and taking on the roles of everyday caretakers that provide company and sustains us through food and drinks, their project has created a foundation of care. Today, the time losers open a continuation of their project called Group Show, in which they re-appropriate the bar installation as a backdrop that gives them the opportunity to show individual work. This idea arose half way through their residency period as something they wanted to try out after conversations with guests as host in the bar, talking with them about what their project could mean and do. So, we invite you into Time Losers, Group Show - we hope you will want to stop by for the first time or once again, and experience this version of Gøtke and Bäckströms work. Wednesday 28th Sep - 17:00-20:00
All all all, Læderstræde 15
All the best,
On behalf of All all all, Klara Li