Isolation / Communication
Färgfabriken 2020
The Curator Group Muskot: Clara Diesen, author and artist, Jonas Ellerström, author, translator and publisher, Torbjörn Johansson, artist and runs Kummelholmen, Martin Ålund, artist and musician.
Isolation | Communication is an exhibition initiated by the curator group Muskot in collaboration with Färgfabriken, born out of the prevailing covid-19 epidemic. The exhibitions gathered art through an Open Call. The work submited for assessment represent the participat's artistic / literary practice at this very moment, under the current extreme circumstances. Over 500 entries were submitted for evaluation, 110 of which are shown at Färgfabriken. In this manner isolation can be broken and communication be established.
ISOLATION | COMMUNICATION Concept text by Jonas Ellerström
In a densely populated world, the concept of isolation has suddenly become central. In Sweden we are encouraged to keep social distance, in other countries it is not allowed to gather in groups larger than two people. Without any habit of living in isolation, we must change our mind to keep ourselves within our own walls as much as possible and try to make life work anyway. But a professional group has experience of working in self-selected isolation. These are the free artists, often accused of living in an air bubble or an ivory tower, but precisely by acting artistically more focused on communicating with the outside world than most. How will artistic practices change in pandemic existence? What past experiences and strategies do the artists have to convey? Can the knowledge of how a situation is interpreted artistically and how that interpretation is conveyed to an audience prove socially significant in a way that has not been previously noticed? These can be practical things like how to work from home most effectively, about complicated psychological problems like how to motivate one's activities or avoid the frustration of loneliness. It is about new experiences and centuries of stored experience. Not least, it is about communication through art, about art as both aesthetically, socially and politically relevant tool to explore and interpret the world today. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz imagined human beings as monads: beings completely closed in themselves, unable to convey their experience of reality; a globe floating in an empty space. But he modified this night-black stated view of existence and came to think of monads with windows, openings to the outside world and other beings: monads with the possibility of communication. We can handle isolation. But a state without communication is devastating.