forms of the surrounding futures

Professionals and press preview of exhibitions: September 15, 10:30–5pm   
Press preview of exhibitions: September 16, 10–3pm  
Opening: September 16, 11am–September 17, 1am
Opening performance program: September 16, 3pm–September 17, 1am

Artists 
Sophia Al-Maria, Adam Christensen, Joana da Conceição, Niko Hallikainen, Rodrigo Hernández, Sky Hopinka, Maria Jerez, Agnė Jokšė, Kem, Tarik Kiswanson, Yong Xiang Li, Yarema Malashchuk & Roman Khimei, Guadalupe Maravilla, Esse McChesney, Sandra Mujinga, Rasmus Myrup, Ania Nowak, Outi Pieski, Luiz Roque, Prem Sahib, P. Staff, Iris Touliatou, Ana Vaz, Osías Yanov  

Venues 
Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg City Library, Hammarkullen Konsthall  

Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA)
The twelfth edition embraces artistic practices that embody critical approaches and operate beyond normativity to celebrate plural narratives for tomorrow.   

forms of the surrounding futures  
We are inhabiting a period of abrupt change recently defined as permacrisis. In western thought, such moments have regularly correlated with a failure to imagine multiple configurations for tomorrow. However, this is not the only prospect available.   

forms of the surrounding futures adopt queerness as an expanded perspective to challenge dominant narratives, replacing them with a broad rethinking and remaking of bodies, spaces and times. By embracing different agencies in a nonconforming affinity, they question the constructed features of the present and promote the emergence of various futures.   

forms of the surrounding futures propose cognitive, emotional and sensual forms of engagement, materialising communal moments of othering and estrangement. Projecting a polyphonic and multi-sensorial set of positions, they celebrate and empower our collective ability to imagine and rehearse worlds to come. 

Opening performance program   

a calling  
Ania Nowak—To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto)  
Adam Christensen—Soft boiled eggs and dried fish 

a celebration 
Rasmus Myrup—Je te vous présente 
Agnė Jokšė—Lezbynai   
Niko Hallikainen—Mystery Machine   
Joana da Conceição—Electric Dream  
Kem—Dragana Bar  

The performance program expands the exhibition displays, queering the stability of the biennial format by playing with ephemeral and durational rhythms of presentation. Because of its bodily, celebratory and intensified features, the performance programs design places of communal experimentation; instances of possibility where social formations can emerge and be rehearsed in shared manners. The opening performance program is organised in two successive moments: day-time and night-time. The day program, a calling, serves as a welcome device, introducing key narratives of the biennial and concentrating attention towards a ceremonial and liminal moment of the opening-as-event. The nocturnal program a celebration is a social gathering. It echoes the night as a haven of various others and manifests the biennial’s celebratory embrace towards the unknown.  

“I’m a strong believer that either your politics is liberating and that gives you joy, or there’s something wrong with them.” —Silvia Federici 

O—Overgaden x GIBCA 2023—a prelude 
Please join us Saturday August 26 for an afternoon at O—Overgaden that highlights the exhibition Precoming by Rasmus Myrup, queer sculptor and renegade-naturalist mythmaker. The show is created as part of a collaboration between O—Overgaden (Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen) and GIBCA, functioning as a prelude to his new grand-scale commission Outside Salon des Refusés for the biennial. 

3.30pm: GIBCA program launch at O—Overgaden: João Laia, curator of GIBCA’s 2023 edition, presents on the upcoming biennial forms of the surrounding futures.  

4pm: Exhibition talk with artist Rasmus Myrup among the faux rune stones, pine chandelier, thirst trap paintings, and other paraphernalia of his prelude show Precoming at O—Overgaden.  
 

Public program highlights
Status Queer (Kolbrún Inga Söring and Sam Message) uses spatial and relational interventions to explore queer and trans experiences and weave new connections between people. As part of GIBCAs public program, Status Queer will conduct a gender-bending, rule-breaking and boundary-crossing performative tour, as well as a workshop through which utopias and queer and trans memory is explored by collaborative making.   

Saturday September 30, 1–3pm (workshop), Wednesday October 11, 6–7pm (performative tour), Röda Sten Konsthall 

Southnord is a newly established platform that makes space for black and afro-nordic artists. For GIBCA 2023, Southnord is presenting “MixRace MixTape”, a performance lecture by John-Paul Zaccarini. In addition, the extensive program for this autumn’s inaugural artfest at Kulturhuset in Stockholm will be launched. 

Saturday October 7, 2–8.30pm, Röda Sten Konsthall   

For GIBCAs public program, Solange Farkas, Director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, will curate a screening program presenting the practice of Raphael França. França began his experimentation with audiovisual storytelling after moving to the United States in 1982. His works are grounded in intense personal experiences, revolving around themes such as social and romantic relationships, desire, and the inevitability of death.   

Friday October 27, 5.30–6.30pm, Röda Sten Konsthall 

Dates and times are subject to change.  
Please visit gibca.se to stay updated on the public program. 

GIBCA—forms of the surrounding futures in 2024 
1646—Experimental Art Space (The Hague) & La Criée (Rennes): solo presentations by Rasmus Myrup 
Kunsthalle Münster—closing exhibition of forms of the surrounding futures 

About GIBCA 
Organizer: Röda Sten Konsthall 
Director Röda Sten Konsthall: Mia Christersdotter Norman 
Artistic Director GIBCA: Sarah Hansson 
Curator GIBCA 2023: João Laia 

The Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) was founded in 2001. As a platform for the presentation of international contemporary art, GIBCA aims to be an important junction between local, national, and international discourses on issues of urgent collective interest. Each biennial consists of several exhibitions and programs hosted by established art institutions in Gothenburg, by independent initiatives, and in the physical and digital public realm.   

Main funders: City of Gothenburg, Region of West Sweden, Swedish Arts Council.   

João Laia is the Chief Curator for exhibitions at Kiasma—Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. He has a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. Past projects were developed in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Galeria Municipal do Porto; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; MAAT—Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Moscow Young Art Biennial, MMOMA; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Videobrasil / SESC Pompeia, São Paulo. He edited Living Encounters (Kiasma/Mousse, 2022) and A Multiple Community (SESC, 2018) and has been published in magazines such as Art Monthly, Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Spike and Terremoto. Together with Valentinas Klimašauskas, Laia curated the fourteenth Baltic Triennial (2021) titled The Endless Frontier at the CAC—Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. In 2024 Klimašauskas and Laia will curate the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale showcasing the artist duo Pakui Hardware. 

Accreditation 
Registration for the press preview is open here.
Registration for the professional preview of exhibitions is open here. 

Further information
Press contact: Maria Lundberg, press [​at​] gibca.se