Goldin+Senneby: Standard Length of a Miracle

Secret societies, financial magic tricks, and a new conceptual clothing brand: Goldin+Senneby’s retrospective Standard Length of a Miracle offers unexpected cross-fertilizations between art and finance.

For the past ten years, Stockholm-based artist duo Goldin+Senneby has insistently presented offshore strategies and shady businesses as a public concern. Instead of rejecting the financial sector, the artist duo borrows market-inspired methods in order to infiltrate and illuminate the consequences of our late capitalist system.

Jonas Hassen Khemiri, one of the most influential writers of his generation in Sweden, has been commissioned to write a short story in response to Goldin+Senneby’s practice. At Tensta konsthall, Khemiri’s story expands in three dimensions. Works with narratives that mirror the site where they are on display will also be presented at the Stockholm School of Economics, the art museum Price Eugen’s Waldemarsudde, and the Financial Supervisory Authority, among other places.

An oak installation at Tensta konsthall refers to an oak tree mentioned in the short story and also to the surrealist George Bataille’s secret society Acépahle, which is said to have gathered around an oak tree in the late 1930s. Acéphale—Greek for headless—is of longstanding interest to the artist duo and figures in their project Headless, a nine-year performance on state sovereignty, surveillance, and strategies for withdrawal. The project culminated in the highly acclaimed finance thriller Headless, published by Triple Canopy, Sternberg Press, and Tensta konsthall. The oak will function as a meeting place for discussions and seminars during the exhibition period, and, as the carpenter Moa Ott takes on the tree, new furniture will be produced around it.

Also on view at Tensta konsthall is the clothing collection Anders Reuterswärd, made in collaboration with costume designer Behnaz Aram. The clothes are produced entirely from forgotten garments gathered at dry cleaners around Stockholm. Aram has designed a new conceptual uniform for the staff at Tensta konsthall by deconstructing and re-making the clothes. The collection will be accompanied by a new soundtrack composed by the artist Zhala.

During spring, there will be a series of lectures and seminars related to the exhibition, with Clare Birchall, Council and Nina Möntmann, and Donald MacKenzie, among others.

The Standard Length of a Miracle is a mutating retrospective, which will appear in different forms in different cities. The first, in Stockholm, activates Goldin+Senneby’s history through connections between their works and various institutions and activities in the city. Additional mutations are planned for Brisbane, Paris, and New York.

At other venues:

Third Swedish National Pension Fund
January 28–May 13
Money Will Be Like Dross (2012)

Stockholm School of Economics
January 28–May 13
Zero Magic (2016), Banca Rotta (I Dispense Divide Assign Keep Hold) (2012)

The Financial Supervisory Authority
January 29.1–29.4
The Decapitation of Money (2010)

A Day’s March
January 29–May 15
Anders Reuterswärd (2016)

Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde
January 30–May 15
A3 The Plot (2015), Not Approved (2011), After Microsoft (2007)

Magic show at Cirkus Cirkör
May 12 and 13
On a Long Enough Timeline the Survival Rate for Everyone Drops to Zero (2015)
On a Long Enough Timeline the Survival Rate for Everyone Drops to Zero (2015)

The Royal Institute of Art
May 12
PhD Defense

New Visions, a group show of wall-based works, is shown collaterally at Tensta konsthall. It features the artists Rana Begum, Nadia Belerique, Monir Farmanfarmaian, David Maljkovic, Philippe Parreno, Adam Pendleton, and Yelena Popova.