Summer 2015
Here We LTTR: 2002–2008
LTTR walkthrough with..
Tensta Museum continues with
Filipa Cesar, Mats Adelman,
Nina Svensson & Bernt Krauss,
Adam Tensta: SR Urbania, and Rehearsals
by Petra Bauer and Sofia Wiberg and their collaborators
Tensta konsthall
Taxingegränd 10
Box 4001
163 04 Spånga
Sweden
T +46 8 36 07 63
F +46 8 36 25 60
info [at] tenstakonsthall.se
Here We LTTR: 2002–2008
LTTR is a feminist, genderqueer artist collective originally based in New York. During its heyday from 2002 to 2008, the group engaged in ambitious editorial work and knowledge gathering that resulted in an annual journal, performance events, and video programs, among other things. LTTR constantly created new dialogues and challenged given forms, including their own. Crucial to LTTR are the hundreds of people who contributed to the journal, live events and programs. The journal took on a new guise for each issue, from spiral notebooks with golden inscriptions to manila envelopes to LP covers, and included artist multiples, like a specially designed glove, a tampon with the slogan “Dress to Kill—your safety depends on concealment,” and soundtracks like “Who let the Dykes out?”
The acronym LTTR was in constant motion and was to be read in a multitude of ways, including Lesbians To The Rescue, Listen Translate Translate Record, Lesbians Tend To Read, and Lacan Teaches To Repeat. The groundbreaking and playfully rigorous work of LTTR will now be presented and activated at Tensta konsthall.
In the preface for issue No. 4, the editors pose a question: what are the political demands of our queer community? The question of translation is central to activating the journal and politics of LTTR at Tensta konsthall. How are the unique activities of this NYC-based project relevant in Stockholm now? What are the shared concerns?
The exhibition Here We LTTR: 2002–2008 includes five issues of the journal as well as photographs and other documentation of LTTR’s social energy. Local and international guests connected to LTTR and to queer art, activism, and research will make a series of walk-throughs of the exhibition. Artists Allison Smith and Matts Leiderstam, writer and asylum rights activist Trifa Shakely, researcher Ulla Manns, and theorist and author Julia Bryan Wilson are some of the invited presenters.
The four editors of LTTR’s fifth issue, Emily Roysdon, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, K8 Hardy, and Ulrike Müller have organized this archival exhibition. In collaboration with Stockholm-based architect Sarah Brolund de Carvalho, LTTR designed an installation that also features two curated video programs, as well as documentation of performance evenings and other events. Coinciding with the exhibition, the LTTR website has been redesigned in collaboration with Stockholm-based graphic designer Sara Kaaman. Visit lttr.org to view the journal online or download a bootleg.
Tensta Museum continues with five new projects this summer. In drawings, paintings, and sculpture, the artist Mats Adelman constructs an installation called What the Trees See?, featuring the constructed environment and the wild nature seen from his studio on the Järva field next to Tensta. In the film Porto 1975, Filipa Cesar wanders through Bouça in a single take. This story about a social housing project was initiated by architect Álvaro Siza in 1973 but only completed 2006. The online platform Space presents SR Urbania, a radio program on the future of Tensta by rapper Adam Tensta. Tensta Cabinet is the presentation of the publication Bildungsresa SE/Bildungsreise SWE (Grand Tour SWE) that looks back at the works of the collaboration between Nina Svensson and Bernd Krauss from 2005 until 2014.
Rehearsals is a short film based on a project about the politics of listening that was conducted at Tensta konsthall 2013–14 by artist Petra Bauer, researcher Sofia Wiberg, the Women’s Center in Tensta-Hjulsta, and filmmaker Marius Dybwad Brandruds, among others.
