an online-participatory performance by Hanna Wildow, Alva Willemark and Tony Karlsson Savci

date: May 30th, 2021, Rah Residency, Tehran / world wide web
time: 4 pm, CEST (Swedish time)
75 minutes, zoom
a public rehearsal / glimpse into a process

You are invited into a breathing, humming pine forest called Gränseskogen.
A reservoir of unspoilt trees in the deepness of a rural Swedish mountain chain.
Voices offer you proposals for how to orient your lungs.
An ambient landscape lulling you through eight acts of bodyings, feelings, breathings, languagings, voicings, borderings, rootings and deathinings.
and–akter imagines other ways of being together; a sphere for moving air between one body and another, for making sounds, and listening.
For everyone with a breathing body.

"and–akter. rehearsals of escape" is a shared work by Hanna Wildow, Alva Willemark and Tony Karlsson Savci, made together with Johan Wahlberg (sounds), Adam Nilsson (DOP), and Litia Perta (wording council). Live technical assistance by Dick Hedlund and Erik Malmsten, graphic guidance by Moa Edlund, breath and movement counseling by Sara Haylett-Utberg.

"and–akter. rehearsals of escape" is presented as a series of iterations and propagations. The first iteration was shown at Galleri BOX (Gothenburg) in August 2020, the second at The Virtual Canvas Project (Krupa Gallery, Poland) in March 2021, and Rah Residency presents the third one. In September 2021, and–akter will premier as an IRL-performance at Weld (Stockholm), and in October 2021 the sculptural elongation 'det är ett rop på hjälp' (it is a cry for help) opens at Eldhunden (Stockholm), followed by another performance iteration at Galleri Verkligheten (Umeå) in November 2021.
​
With support by The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé, Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation and in cooperation with KULTURENS. Special thanks to Yoga Shakti, Hackås Maskin och Kultur, Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Mats Erlandsson, Daniel Araya, Eric Danger Österlin, Ashik Zaman, Alida Ivanov, Anna Koch, Megan Black, Anna Stec, Mahmoud Maktabi, Gustav Lejelind, Ellen Skafvenstedt, Daniel Josefsson, Sebastian Adolfsson, Rolf Anderzon and Simon Mogren.

​an online-participatory performance by Hanna Wildow, Alva Willemark and Tony Karlsson Savci
date: March 13th, 2021, The Virtual Canvas Project (Krupa Gallery) / world wide web
time: 5.30 pm, GMT+2 (Sweden)
60 minutes, zoom
a public rehearsal / glimpse into a process

You are invited into a breathing, humming pine forest called Gränseskogen.
A reservoir of unspoilt trees in the deepness of a rural Swedish mountain chain.
Voices offer you proposals for how to orient your lungs.
An ambient landscape lulling you through eight acts of bodyings, feelings, breathings, languagings, voicings, borderings, rootings and deathinings.
and–akter imagines other ways of being together; a sphere for moving air between one body and another, for making sounds, and listening.
For everyone with a breathing body.

and–akter. rehearsals of escape is a shared work by Hanna Wildow, Alva Willemark and Tony Karlsson Savci, made together with Johan Wahlberg (sounds), Adam Nilsson (DOP), and Litia Perta (wording council). Live technical assistance by Dick Hedlund and Erik Malmsten, graphic guidance by Moa Edlund, breath and movement counseling by Sara Haylett-Utberg.
and–akter. rehearsals of escape is presented as a series of iterations and propagations. The first iteration was shown at Galleri BOX (Gothenburg) in August 2020, The Virtual Canvas Project (Krupa Gallery, Poland) presents the second iteration in March 2021, and in May 2021 the third will be presented by Rah Residency (Tehran). In September 2021, and–akter will premier as an IRL-performance at Weld (Stockholm), and in October 2021 the sculptural elongation det är ett rop på hjälp (it is a cry for help) opens at Eldhunden (Stockholm), followed by another performance iteration at Galleri Verkligheten (Umeå) in November 2021.
With support by The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé, Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation and KULTURENS. Special thanks to Hackås Maskin och Kultur, Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Mats Erlandsson, Eric Danger Österlin, Ashik Zaman, Alida Ivanov, Anna Koch, Megan Black, Anna Stec, Mahmoud Maktabi, Gustav Lejelind, Ellen Skafvenstedt, Daniel Josefsson, Sebastian Adolfsson and Rolf Anderzon.

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More information about The Virtual Canvas project: https://thevirtualcanvas.site/
The project is implemented with members of the Bosch Alumni Network and in cooperation with Krupa Gallery Foundation.

Hanna Wildow's show tag mitt andetag iväg (take my breath away), an exhibition made in collaboration with students from the rural community Storå, beyond the blue mountains of Bergslagen, opens with a two-day program on May 17th - 18th at Stripa Gallerirum, in Guldsmedshyttan. On the 17th, a the performance titled skogen lunga will be performed at the gallery. On the 18th a performance titled den blå tråden (the blue thread) takes place in the actual Border Forest, the site that Wildow and her collaborators have investigated for the past nine months, followed by an opening in the gallery and a dinner party in the beautiful former mine where a brewery house a beautiful restaurant. 

The show is presented by Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen, and made possible by the support of Konstfrämjandet, Lindesbergs kommun, Region Örebro Län, Kulturrådet, Storå skola, Stripa Grufpensionat, and Stripabryggeriet. It has been exhibited at Stripa Gallerirum in Guldsmedshyttan, Sweden. 

The show is up until January 11th, and the gallery is open every day of the week 12-4pm. 

warped vowels (förvrängda vokaler, 2018) and tala med mig (talk to me, 2018) are part of a series of experimental translations. In a poetic play with a language she doesn't master, Hanna Wildow has generated logical as well as irrational connections, hence creating linguistic patterns. In warped vowels, Wildow has attempted to translate Nadah El Shazly’s song “Barzakh” into five dislocated poems, montaged together and screen printed as a pattern that unfolds on a paper handmade of recycled rice straws. In tala med mig, one of the reoccurring phrases has been isolated, and together with the artist Sami Badawi a ceramic tile painting has been created with inspiration from Nubian, Islamic and folklore arts, where a special color paste gives the text a tactile texture. Attempting to open up language to the point where it becomes available to touch, the legible is weaved together with the illegible; sensuously performing gestural and crafting aspects of writing from the chaos of scribble.

warped vowels and tala med mig is part of Hanna Wildow's artistic research project gränsen / el houdoud, organized with the support by Konstnärsnämnden during 2017 - 2018. The works have previously been shown at Cimatheque in Cairo, but the exhibition at Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen will be the first time they are exhibited outside of the context of the project. The exhibition at Konstfrämjandet also shows works by Cecilia Jansson, Karin Johansson, Ulrika Linder, Kristina Lindberg, Brittmari Sjöberg, and Karin Ward.

Special thanks to Nadah El Shazly, Moa Edlund, Sam Carlshamre, El Nafeza paper making workshop, Dr. Mostafa Abdel Salam screen print shop, and Sami Badawi Art and Traditional Pottery Studio.    

Translating the story of a mountain embedded in Nordic mythology, narrated by a 92 years old woman, and subtitling a montaged dense dialogue in four voices, was challenging. On November 23rd, for The Grandmother Film Festival, a beautiful program organized by artist and curator Sophia Tabatadze at Tante Nino in Rotterdam, the work was screened and performed in English for the very first time. The event was one of those very special settings, were it felt like one stepped out of reality and into a fairy tale, of some kind. 

As the festival screens the same program next fall, at The Jugend Museum in Berlin, there will be additional opportunities to see the work. Because of the translation and subtitling, it is now also available to book for international screenings and/or performances. 

For the occasion of the festival, Hana Wildow also printed stills from the video, available for sale for a symbolic cost of 10 euro. 

Photos by Moa Edlund. 

On October 31st the new feminist platform and zine for mad/sick/crip art - Nothing Special Zine - organized by Finish artist Jemina Inkeri Lindholm, releases its very first edition. A small excerpt from Hanna Wildow's ongoing exploration of intersections within art and poetry, the work titled "Unaccompanied Minor Is A Term With Too Many Letters To Pronounce (Ensamkommande är ett ord med för många bokstäver för att uttala), is published. This is the first time the work is shared in a non-Swedish context, and complex challenge since the work investigates linguistic and structural violence performed by the linguistics of Swedish authorities. The text is a starting point from which a number of text-based works in neon, textile, sound and spatial installations unfold. 

The zine is availble in print and online here. 

As the collaborators of the project "Beyond the Blue Mountain" gathered again, Hanna Wildow organised two workshop days attempting to archive The Border Forest with the historical photographic method known as cyanotypes. With two chemicals and sunlight, objects are placed on natural materials and hence creating a kind of shadow-based prints. Cyanotypes were the first kind of blueprint, and with the intense blue that unravels through the process, it became the foundation from which we discussed the meaning of forests, borders, and the colour of blue.

​Besides the cyanotypes, the participants also engaged in free writing exercises, a method intends to halt the conception that thinking precedes writing, and instead activate thinkings that emerge through the act of writing. The quote above is one of the many beautiful lines that came to life through this method. 

During the workshops, the project's cinematographer Adam Nilsson also participated, documenting the process and filming material for the video work that will become part of the exhibition that opens on May 17th, 2019, in Gallerirum, Stripa. 

Beyond the Blue Mountains is a project initiated by Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen, in collaboration with Region Örebro, and Lindesberg Municipality. The project is process-oriented and participatory based.

The quote above are words from one of the forty 13 years old collaborators within the project "Beyond the Blue Mountains". On October 12th, the participants encountered the nature reservoir 'The Border Forest" for the first time . The day was dedicated to greeting the forest, marking the border, hugging the forest, touching the border, breathing in the forest, crossing the border, and collecting fragments of the forest for further documentation. 
​
Beyond the Blue Mountains is a project initiated by Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen, in collaboration with Region Örebro, and Lindesberg Municipality. The project is process-oriented and participatory based, and the works generated will be presented as an exhibition at Gallerirum in Stripa, Lindesberg, opening on May 17th. 

Om October 11th, Hanna Wildow met with her assigned collaborators within the project "Beyond the Blue Mountains" for the first time, forty 13 years old students in the school Storåskolan, in a small village on the Swedish country side. In smaller groups, attempts were made to decode positions such as pupils or teachers, teenagers or grown-ups, and instead shift into an artistic collective. Bouncing of words for "forest" (skogen), and "border" (gränsen), participants searched through the many languages that exist amongst their tongues, and layered them in sketches for further explorations. 

Beyond the Blue Mountains is a project initiated by Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen, in collaboration with Region Örebro, and Lindesberg Municipality. The project is process-oriented and participatory based, and the works generated will be presented as an exhibition at Gallerirum in Stripa, Lindesberg, opening on May 17th. 

Hanna Wildow has been chosen to artistically lead Konstfrämjandet Bergslagens project Bortom de blå bergen (Beyond The Blue Mountains). From September 2018 – June 2019, she will work together with a group of youths in the remote nature reserve Gränseskogen (The Periphery Forest). The youths come from the village Storå in Lindesbergs county, which serves as arrival point for many newly arrived refuges in Sweden. The social environment of the school in Storå is consequently tinged with disruptions and renewals, and Bortom de blå Bergen is a project aiming to establish a temporary safe space in the unique and remote primeval forest. Through participatory and pedagogically influenced artistic processes, Hanna Wildow and the group will near the forest as a place, a material and a context for relationships, to collaboratively generate artworks. Hanna Wildow will lead the process based on four orientations; a walking choreography, a straying language, dying materials, and the natural blueprint process of cyanotypes. From the proposal:
 
"There is an interesting tension in Konstfrämjandet’s project description, concerning place and subject, which I would like to embrace. The Periphery Forest is described as an environment where trees are allowed to live freely – growing, dying, falling, providing life to other species; generating diversity. A poetic reading of the forest’s name also reveals the magical shield that the forest can provide; a demarcation from the world outside; or a borderland within which other realities become possible. Maybe, the contrast between the forest and the constrained existence on the outside, is the most palpable for newly arrived youths, whose lives are carved with flight, disarrays and recommences. And maybe, that’s why the temporary haven that the forest can provide; a place to breath and for a moment live freely, is uttermost important for this group."

De starka, stolta kvinnornas berg (Mountain of the Strong, Proud Women)  ​will be screened and performed as part of artist and curator Sophia Tabatadze's Grandmother Film Festival, scheduled to take place at Tante Nino in Rotterdam and at the Jugend Museum in Berlin, in November. De starka, stolta kvinnornas berg is a performative history lecture presented in video, text, sound and live performance, first performed in 2014. This will be the first time the work is translated and performed in English. 

As the name suggest, the Grandmother Film Festival screens personal films and animations about grandmothers. ​The first Grandmother Film Festival took place in Rotterdam in 2016 and the same program was shown in Berlin in 2017. 22 films were shown by international makers including Tom Fassaert (the Netherlands), Sabine Jainski (Germany), Ayala Sharot (Israel) and Yulene Olaizola (Mexico).

On November 1st, Darb1718 for Arts and Culture in Cairo, Egypt, opens its biennal Off Biennal Cairo - Something else, which will runs for two months in various spaces. This years theme is "What if it did not happen!", focusing on rewriting history, and is led by head curator Simon Njami. Hanna Wildow's The Family Dinner has been selected to be exhibited as an analogue installation of its digital archive, together with the installation and the performance both titled What is this thing called an archive, really?. The performance will be performed together with artist Alva Willemark, who is also exhibited as part of the biennal.   

On March 3rd, Wildow's research project gränsen, in collaboration with Nadah El Shazly, Mohammed A. Gawad, Adham Hafez, Alva Willemark, Erik Malmsten, and produced by Sarah El Miniawy, will have its final presentations at Cimatheque, Cairo. The project was initiated by Wildow in early 2017, as one concerned with the act of translation. When not speaking each other's mother tongues, when language it self performs the very border of comprehension, what kind of disparate translations of each other's work can we generate? Can we allow for our works to go errant, get lost, die, and be reborn in another's mouth? Can something utterly other be set in motion in a gap of hybridised languages? These were some of the questions post by Wildow as she invited two Swedish speaking and four Arabic speaking artists to a one year long relation. 

The project has generated a cluster of interweaved works, to be presented at Cimatheque in Cairo on March 3rd, 2018. Displayed above is a sketch for Wildow's piece warped vowels, to be screen printed on handmade paper made from rice straws at Al Nafeza in Cairo. Al Nafeza is a small paper-making and screen printing workshop with a re-made falafel machine, which they use to make papers and at the same time to prevent pollution from extensive burning of rice straws in the city. warped vowels is one of Wildow's two pieces attempting to translate the song “Barzakh” by Nadah El Shazly. The translating process have generated five dislocated poems, moving through different known and unknown languages, here layered into a pattern.

warped vowels have been made in collaboration with Moa Edlund and Sam Carlshamre, with great support from Sarah El Miniawy. gränsen is made possible with support of The Swedish Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden).

On November 29th, Hanna Wildow will read from her text ensamkommande är ett ord med för många bokstäver för att uttala (translates alonecoming is a word with to many letters to pronounce) at Turteatern i Kärrtorp, Stockholm, as part of the examination event of 2017's class of Skrivandets förhandlingar (Negotiations in Writing) at Konstfack University of Arts and Crafts. The text springs out of Wildow's work in Botkyrka as a teacher to newly arrived refugee teenagers, fleeing their home countries as unattained minors. It is a poem-essay about language and power, about creating meaning and meaninglessness, about relations, life and death. Doors open at 5.30pm, the program starts at 6pm and Wildow reads at 7.45pm. 

​Full program at other participants can be found here: ​https://www.facebook.com/events/143774962912297/

On Saturday, November 4th, about 35 people gathered at EMS in Stockholm to take part of Wildow's research project gränsen (in progress), in collaboration with Nadah El Shazly, Mohammed A. Gawad, Adham Hafez, Alva Willemark, Erik Malmsten, and produced by Sarah El Miniawy. The group met for the very first time six days earlier and visitors were invited to step into the midst of an ongoing process. Video works, sound poems, silent poems, performances, singing, and language without meaning was unfolded, presented and discussed.

gränsen is made possible with support of The Swedish Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden).

You tell me a tale, and I will listen. The story is yours to voice, but it dies the moment it slips your lips. I will adore it, and I will betray it. Your language, my language, and between the two a path of ravishment. Always in-between is the boundary, always the demarcation between your body and mine; your language and me; your mouth and my ear; your hello and my good bye.

On Monday, October 30th, Wildow's research project on translation and language as artistic material starts with a collective residency at EMS (Elektronmusikstudion). Recently Wildow invited a group of Egyptian and Swedish multilingual practitioners, all working to some degree within and with their own mother tongues; to enter a relation of some kind with her. Being drawn to interspaces within language, where words reach their own limitations, Wildow’s invitation was one concerned with the act of translation. When not speaking each other's mother tongues, when language itself performs the very border of comprehension, what kind of disparate translations of each other’s work can we generate? Can we allow for our works to go errant, get lost, die, and be reborn in an one another’s mouths? Can something utterly other be set in motion in a gap of hybridized languages?

The six artists - Nadah El Shazly, Mohammed A. Gawad, Adham Hafez, Alva Willemark, Erik Malmsten and Hanna Wildow - are gathering to collectively construct a realm of trans-boundary practices; geographical movements as well as genre-crossing art works. Together, in a week-long residency in Stockholm next week followed by a second residency in Cairo in February 2018, they inquire about borders and boundaries, what these mean across languages, practises, artforms and geographies. As unknown outcomes, interdisciplinary presentations will take place in Stockholm and in Cairo.

gränsen is co-produced by Sarah El Miniawy, a Stockholm based music manager from Cairo, and made possible through the support of The Swedish Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden) for Hanna Wildow. With special thanks to EMS for their generous week-long hosting of the group.

Wildow's essay And you are the Wound has been selected for public in the California based magazine HAUNT Journal of Art. The publication can be found and downloaded at the website: ​http://hauntjournal.org/volume3/