Opacity (for Édouard Glissant)

The pattern of Södertälje konsthall’s floor has taken inspiration from the millennial tradition of basket weaving among indigenous peoples on the American continents. Braiding baskets has historically replaced writing and reinforced the spoken word in many of these cultures. In addition to the decorative function, the braid has met ceremonial and practical needs. The patterns have also carried knowledge, myths, and visions from one generation to the next.

Over millennia, these works of art have conveyed the importance of integration between art and life. Inspiration for the floor also comes from the Caribbean philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant, who in his text Poetics of relation contrasts opacity – the opaque – with the Western desire to communicate transparently and completely with focus on the rational.

The only way that differences can coexist, says Édouard Glissant, is in negotiation, in that both sides make an effort to listen and translate. In connection with the new floor being shown at Södertälje konsthall, the artist duo Lipinski and Redondo have chosen to invite dancer and choreographer Michaela Meschke and Compagnie Moveo. With the floor as a frame, a film is projected with the rehearsals from the dance and theater performance Feather Land – displacements without wings. It reflects the Western world’s consumption and abundance society and its historical relationship to oppression and lack of freedom and how this creates repercussions in our everyday lives. The artist duo says: “We wanted to show Feather Land – displacements without wings together with the floor, as it also asks for new possible ways out.  With the floor, we wanted to create a surface that invites visitors to move themselves across this place for gatherings, depicted as a union of different intertwined structures.”

Book release The Phantom Collection

The book The Phantom Collection documents the process around two major artistic immersion projects by Laercio Redondo and Birger Lipinski for Södertälje konsthall: Opacity (for Édouard Glissant) and the exhibition The Phantom Collection. Additionally, the book investigates the artist duo’s practice and Laercio Redondo’s artistic work with a critical approach to modernism and its historical narrative.

The book also presents Laercio Redondo’s exhibition The simplest thing is the hardest to do (Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona 2020) in a text by art historian Cecilia Fajardo-Hill. In this text, Fajardo-Hill highlights the artist’s intervention in relation to the modernist pavilion’s overlooked past.  In another text, Daniel Jablonski – researcher and artist – summarizes Redondo and Lipinski’s long-standing collaboration and artistic practice in the overlap between art and architecture and finally delves into the exhibition The Phantom Collection, which also gave the book its name.

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Open: Wednesday 31 August 12-18, Thursday 1 September 12-18, Friday 2 September 12-18, Saturday 3 September 11-15.