And Tomorrow And

About

The exhibition And Tomorrow And opens at Index on 24 August 2018 with works by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, Trieke Haapoja and Laura Gustafson, Institute for New Feeling, Jenna Sutela, Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, Kati Roover, Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, Soda_Jerk, Alexandra Pirici and Raluca Voinea, The Otolith Group, and Fabrizio Terranova with Donna Haraway.

The exhibition And Tomorrow And presents a demanding cacophony of voices questioning our collective futures. Ecological disaster, inter-species collaboration, cyborgian manifestations, from these new and altered states artists consider differing formulations of futures.

This exhibition evolved out of conversations and activities with young people around the concept of futures. In the minds of many young people in Sweden, the idea of the future raises anxiety levels as people experience the dramatic escalation of climate change alongside new political realities. This conversation with young people, around the idea of the future and the role of contemporary art practice, has been developing through the Index Learning Program for the past three years with support from Arvsfonden.

Index has worked with young people to radically redefine the role of pedagogy and education within an art institution. Starting with the idea of dialogue and curiosity, and an open-ended methodology, Index Learning Program has built an internationally recognized working method which utilises dialogic and socially engaged art practices for ‘thinking-with’ (Donna Haraway) contemporary art. This exhibition was developed with young artists who participated in the 10 day summer course And Forever And, and as the culmination of two years of research working with young people in Index’ schools program The Residents and Index Teen Advisory Board.

And Tomorrow And is not a static presentation but an attempt to articulate competing, collective and vibrant voices on the concept of futures. For the first time in Index’ history, the exhibition model has been inverted. Educational practices, based around working dialogues with young people, have crafted and formed the exhibition, rather than as a secondary process. The exhibition will continue to develop over the coming months. The material manifestation of the space acts as a set of pedagogical tools, reflecting on and supporting the learning processes that run throughout the exhibition.

The exhibition presents a daily looping film program from internationally established artists such as Trieke Haapoja and Laura Gustafson, Institute for New Feeling and Jenna Sutela. The film program pays tribute to Afro-Futurists and Eco-Sexualists, ruminates on apocalypticism and science-fiction aesthetics, and rewrites the form of the manifesto in unforeseen ways. Throughout the exhibition there will be evening screenings and talks, including Water Makes Us Wet (Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens), The Otolith Group’s Hydra Decapita and Fabrizio Terranova’s documentary Donna Haraway: Stories for Earthly Survival.

The breadth of the topics discussed within the exhibition refers to the breadth of interests and concerns presented by the young people central to the Index Learning Program. Drawing on the legacy of the artistic manifesto as a means of making demands of the future, participants in the summer course Saga Flodman, Viola Flø Brøther, Miriam Gustavsson, Leonora Haag, Evelina Jacobson Potenciano, Moa Elvira Lundborg, Leo Silkeberg W-O and Mathilda Tönseth, unpacked possible futures with guest teachers Roxy Farhat, Ulla-Britta Westergren, Iris Smeds and Ellen Soderhult. With text as a central focus of the course, the students developed collective performative and text based pieces that draw on the philosopher Isabelle Stengers model of the ‘reciprocal capture’, which presents a state of reciprocity, where entities enter a process of encounter and transformation, and in this state, find ways of coming together. The state of ‘reciprocal capture’ is central to the modes of working present in the learning program of Index and this exhibition.

And Tomorrow And is an attempt to understand the role of artists in proposing distinctive and livable futures, to act as a counter point to the dominant ideals of the so-called Anthropocene. Within the exhibition, artists both emerging and established, have the ability to suggest and demand different futures, to come together and in the friction of this situation, develop new models for futuring.