Difference between revisions of "Project 5 * Boxing and Unboxing"

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Starting point and context: Marabouparken Guestroom Programme

The Marabouparken Konsthall's Guestroom program "Acts of Self Ruin," curated by Jenny Richards, has been informed by Leela Ghandi's book "The Common Cause" and set out to explore the struggle for collectivity and equality in an age of individualism. The program aimed to support artist groups or collectives to develop new lines of inquiry and share these with diverse publics through workshops and events.

Marabouparken’s Research Theme (2017-2019) was described on its website as:

Through a range of activities including exhibitions, residencies, and a public program, we will explore acts in which communities and individuals have put themselves at risk or ruin in the pursuit of other ways of living, or in pursuit of equality and solidarity. Acts that might produce shame or embarrassment in their deviation from existing hierarchies; acts of communal inefficiency of professional disloyalty; of solidarity with a persecuted colleague, or the rejection of national identity. The research investigates not only overtly public political acts but also personal acts of self ruin. In what ways do we unlearn the encouraged subconscious individualistic ideology and its inherent classist, racist, and sexist perpetuations? Acts of Self Ruin is a concept explored by Leela Gandhi in her book The Common Cause (2014) and informs this inquiry. The book proposes different forms of solidarity and community developed through acts of self-ruination. Acts aimed at making common the cause between individuals across cultural, political and class divides.

Major concerns dawned on us while thinking this through. How can collectivity be made thriving by inviting for temporary residencies? By definition, residencies dislocate a contextual and locally embedded practice to take residence in a new community. As artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, who developed several long-term and large-scale community-embedded projects, such as 'Philadelphia Assembled,' pointed out in a public talk at Valand Academy in 2017: Projects aiming at meaningfully community building need at least a three-year commitment. [1]

So how could we potentially approach a residency, develop new strands of practice and work meaningfully with the local community – which was after all the desire clearly expressed by the Konsthall's curators? We started with (i) a set of questions, (ii) a draft document developing the terms and conditions of the collaboration with the institution and (iii) the idea to organize boxing classes for self-defining women as part of this residency.

AND Questions Poster

AND2 Marabouparken questions poster for exhibition 2018.png

The set of questions assembled our doubts, questions, and interests on one page. It reflects our individual voices as well as our concerns with our collaborative practice within AND. "What does it mean to understand our work not as a noun but as a verb?" "Why do we NOT want a unified face?" "How can we subvert the social pressure to produce faces?" and "Who gives in? Who compromises? Who accommodates? Who cares? Who edits? Who organizes? Who translates? Do we need a new, less tired and exclusive language to talk about all of this? And how do you document laughter?" It was published on the website and exhibited as A0 poster in the exhibition space

AND terms and conditions of working with institution

"Terms and Conditions"

The text specifying the terms and conditions was an evolving document, informed by a dialogue between curator Jenny Richards and AND. This document had been revised several times throughout the residency. It laid the basis for this collaboration, articulating the expectations of the institution as well as those of the invited artists. It stated, for example that the artists will be visible on their own terms. This stipulation requests the institution to consult the artists as to how this project is to be made public through social media and press releases. These agreements paid attention to the fact that institutions at times tend to co-opt and frame artistic work according to their habits and templates. The document discusses how to make the budget transparent and refers to the potentials and limitations of short-term public engagements. The terms and conditions document provided freedom and some kind of protection against enforced compromise potentially driven by institutional requirements for publicness and publicity and served as the basis for the contract between the artists and the institution.[2] One of the main conversations was how the "development of a new strand of practice" should or can be articulated before the actual practice unfolds. The problem addressed here is that often the framing articulated before the doing shapes what is conceivable or not. We were keen to leave this as open as possible.


AND set of poster announcement

A set of four posters were printed and circulated. Translated into Swedish, English, Arabic and Tigrinya they announced two weeks of boxing training for women, girls, trans and non-binary people in order to learn more about non-verbal negotiation, care, anger, dialogue, transgressions and defence. The posters stated that the boxing classes were free and open for all abilities, ages (16+), shapes and religions and were an experiment to learn to relate to each other and to negotiate the many conflicts and contradictions which shape our living and working together and were distributed in community centres, libraries, art centres and schools in the imminent neighbourhood Sundbyberg, in Hallonbergen and across Stockholm.

AND Boxing and Unboxing poster lowres02.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster english.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster lowres03.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster swedish.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster lowres04.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster arabic.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster lowres01.jpg
AND Boxing and Unboxing poster tigrynia.jpg


























AND Unboxing Room

AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018

AND shipped a pile of boxes to Marabouparken Konsthall to unbox them during their residency. The boxes contain publications they have worked on, documents, which they want to investigate, and miscellaneous items related to their projects and inquiries. The initial plan to set up the AND Unboxing room in the main gallery space of Marabouparken Konsthall did not work out. (i) It was hard to escape the stiff framing of an exhibition. (ii) In the gallery space was a video installation by Anna Adahl with a transgressive soundscape. (iii) There was no daylight in the room. These were limitations. We could not set up a welcoming and informal space in the main galleries that invites us and the public to spend time. Therefore we moved out of the gallery and into the archive space in the administration wing of Marabouparken Konsthall. Visitors found information where to find the Unboxing Room at the entrance of the museum and were guided by Konsthall staff through the offices to the AND Unboxing Room: Speechbubble.png

"You are welcome to explore AND’s projects and publications* in this Unboxing Room, to unbox yourself, or come to one of the public unboxing afternoons at the Konsthall. AND wants you to unbox the many boxes surrounding us, including the boxes they have shipped to Marabouparken from London. These boxes contain many publications, documents, and miscellaneous items they have collected, made and worked with: The Piracy Project, Teaching for people who prefer not to teach, The Library of Omissions and Inclusions, Let’s Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?, A selection of good and bad sports bras (D cup and upwards), Keep It Complex, as well as our terms and conditions, emails and other miscellaneous items."


  • AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018
  • AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018
  • AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018
  • AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018
  • AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018
  • AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018


AND Boxing Gear

AND Unboxing Room, Marabouparken Konsthall, April–August 2018

We produced merch, T-shirts and hoodies, for the boxers attending the training sessions. They were printed with collages from the posters combined with the slogan "Box me in - no thank you," borrowed from Rhani Lee Remedes' SCUB Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Boxes), published in LTTR in 2002.

Host: Project Playground

Project Playground, after school club, Hallonbergen, Stockholm, June 2018

The choice where to hold the boxing classes seemed crucial. Locating the training sessions within Marabouparken Konsthall would most likely frame the activity as artwork or performance, or be read as some kind of cool outreach program. To escape from these enclosing mechanisms of the art context and cultural capital, the training was hosted by an after school club for youth refugees in Stockholm's Hallonbergen district. They were keen to instigate more activities for females at their center.

  • Project Playground, after school club, Hallonbergen, Stockholm, June 2018
  • Project Playground, after school club, Hallonbergen, Stockholm, June 2018
  • Project Playground, after school club, Hallonbergen, Stockholm, June 2018
  • Project Playground, after school club, Hallonbergen, Stockholm, June 2018
  • Project Playground, after school club, Hallonbergen, Stockholm, June 2018

  • AND Boxing classes

    For the boxing classes, we invited Stockholm based boxers Sofia Thorne and Airin Fardipour to develop a two-week intensive course for beginners. Sofia and Airin were both active in the Stockholm female boxing scene but had not much previous experience as coaches. Thus, this project was a new adventure for the trainers as well as for the trainees. From the perspective of us learners, it was significant to have two coaches, since the authority of "the instructor" had been split across two instructing minds, bodies, voices, and sets of abilities and expertise. It also solved the problem of language, as Sofia and Airin ran the classes bi-lingually in Swedish and English with Airin translating Sofia´s instructions into English. The training program was scheduled as a two-week intensive with boxing classes every other day. The sessions taught lots of techniques, the basic moves, and punches, as well as extensive sparring and body contact work, and finished with a one-round fight competition on the last day. The number of trainees varied between twenty coming to the first training unit and leveled out over time to a group of 10-12 boxers in the subsequent sessions. The classes started with warm-ups, followed by rehearsing footwork and punches, learning defense moves, sparring with changing partners, and the meetings often concluded with cardio fitness and subsequent fika (Swedish for snacks) in the "girls room." [3]

    Box trainers Airin Fardipour and Sophia Thorne practicing the hook in the "girls room."



    AND Unboxing Talks

    Part of AND's agreement with Marabouparken Konsthall was to hold a series of public talks, conversations, and workshops during the residency. These scheduled talks were moments to connect to a wider community in Stockholm - beyond the immediate participants in the boxing sessions. Curator Jenny Richards was connecting us to local people working on similar topics, such as publishing, feminism, and radical knowledge practices.


    Unboxing Talk#1, Marabouparken Konsthall, 7 May 2018

    Unboxing Talk #1 ––– What does it mean to understand publication not as a noun, but as a verb?From the announcement: "In this talk, Rosalie and Eva are in conversation about their approach to the residency, about the unboxing of their archive, and AND's wider practice." Seeking to answer selected questions on the exhibited poster, we situated the talk in a range of public and non-public spaces inside the Konsthall and its surroundings: the gallery, the staff kitchen, AND's Unboxing Room, the park. This itinerant format was an attempt to move from the formal roles and settings of an "artist talk" to a more informal and socially productive format.


    • AND Unboxing Talk#1, Marabouparken Konsthall, 7 May 2018
    • AND Unboxing Talk#1, Marabouparken Konsthall, 7 May 2018
    • Unboxing Talk#1, Marabouparken Konsthall, 7 May 2018

    • Unboxing#2 Talk, Marabouparken Konsthall, 16 June 2018

      Unboxing Talk #2 ––– Authoring, Not-authoring, De-authoring
      From the announcement: "Rosalie and Eva will surprise each other with two short presentations on ownership and authorship – they don't know what each other will be presenting – followed by a discussion trying to unpick the experiences and tensions between the individual and the collective when it comes to working collectively – followed by ice-cream in the park."

      AND "Unboxing#3 Workshop, Marabouparken Konsthall, 26 August 2018
      Unboxing Talk #3 ––– Collage Workshop

      From the announcement: "The last UNBOXING event with AND publishing is an active workshop: We will produce a ‘how to box and unbox’ guide. For this UNBOXING event, we are inviting back all the participants of the boxing classes in June, but it is also open to the curious who have never boxed before."

      This workshop provided an opportunity for the boxers to reflect on the experiences during the boxing sessions as a relational, nonverbal, and bodily dialogue transgressing the boundaries that we usually seek to protect. In the same spirit as the non-verbal dialogue during the boxing session, this reflection happened through images, drawings, slogans, using pens, scissors, and glue rather than words.

    • AND "Unboxing#3 Workshop, Marabouparken Konsthall, 26 August 2018
    • AND "Unboxing#3 Workshop, Marabouparken Konsthall, 26 August 2018
    • AND "Unboxing#3 Workshop, Marabouparken Konsthall, 26 August 2018
    • AND "Unboxing#3 Workshop, Marabouparken Konsthall, 26 August 2018
    • AND "Unboxing#3 Workshop, Marabouparken Konsthall, 26 August 2018


    Pages from AND Boxing and Unboxing Calendar, AND Publishing London/MarabouParken Konsthall, Stockholm, 2018

    'Boxing and Unboxing Calendar' AND Publishing, London, Marabouparken Konsthall, Stockholm, 2018 www.andpublishing.org

    This calendar has been published by AND with the collages produced by the participants of the boxing classes. The visuals revisit the spirit, the experiences, and conflicts during the boxing classes. It includes a step by step guide of warming up exercises and an introduction to basic boxing techniques. The visuals in the calendar are contextualized by a text written by Ar Parmacek, an intern at MarabouParken Konsthall at the time. Ar reflects concerns and observations in her role as a co-organizer and observant. In contrast to a book on the shelf, a calendar is a publication genre that accompanies the reader day by day and therefore embeds its topics and visuals into the everyday life of the reader: a year of daily boxing and unboxing.


    AND-Unboxing Calendar-00.jpg AND-Unboxing Calendar-03.jpg AND box weeks Page 01.jpg AND box weeks Page 02.jpg AND box weeks Page 03.jpg AND box weeks Page 04.jpg AND box weeks Page 07.jpg AND box weeks Page 08.jpg AND box weeks Page 09.jpg AND box weeks Page 13.jpg AND box weeks Page 15.jpg AND box weeks Page 17.jpg AND box weeks Page 18.jpg AND box weeks Page 19.jpg AND box weeks Page 20.jpg AND box weeks Page 25.jpg AND box weeks Page 29.jpg AND box weeks Page 45.jpg AND box weeks Page 53.jpg AND box weeks Page 35.jpg AND box weeks Page 48.jpg AND box weeks Page 55.jpg AND-Unboxing Calendar-66.jpg AND-Unboxing Calendar-77.jpg AND box weeks Page 57.jpg

    Notes

    1. Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces to “radicalize the local.” Her long-scale and community-embedded projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and pedagogy to enable communities to take control of their own futures.[2]
    2. For example, we had a say in Facebook posts, email invitations, website announcements, and which images to use.
    3. See Ar Parmacek's reflection on the gendered interior design of the youth club, in "Boxing and Unboxing Calendar", London: AND Publishing, Stockholm Marabouparken Konsthall, 2018