Sandberg Institute: Subterranean Grids

What does it mean to belong in a communing sense of non-belonging? Queer bonding is a subterranean grid-practice in which our messy currents meet and spark below formal structures. Within institutions, we connect on underground levels.The selection of works is by current and former Sandberg students and can be approached as – but should not be reduced to – acts of queering dominant orders.

Artists:

Rowena Buur (alumni Design Department)

Rowena Buur is a non-binary feminist and “artivist”. Their work revolves around identity, sexuality, gender and family. Buur works with interviews, video, photography and typography as a method to confront themself and others, with a bit of humor and irony. This process becomes a way in which they can deal with reality.

The short documentary shown is a work-in- progress where Rowena investigates the meaning of Femininity by interviewing people who stand close to them. What does it mean to be feminine? How do we perform Femininity? What did our parents teach us about being feminine? By asking these questions Rowena tries to find their own definition of femininity.

“When Did You Become a Heterosexual?” is a poster project that exists around sexuality and the heteronormative morals that society spits in our face. Within the project Buur explores the daily and (in)visible aggressions that LGBTQI+ people have to face. It is a protest against oppressing morals, a protest that aims to make a reflection and a transformative reaction by reversing recurrent comments, questions and opinions that we didn”t ask for, so… When did you become heterosexual?

Vita Evangelista (alumni Critical Studies)

How does somebody stay in and out of touch with materialities that are sliced by oceans / borders / differences / laws / optical fibers?

Reinterpreting the affects that permeate their gendered experience of trauma and migration, Vita collaborates with developer and visual artist Javier Damonte to construct the VR environment for Unwound. The performance work combines intuitive writing, spoken word, and VR. Using the common potential of these mediums for creating immersive narratives that are only enabled through embodiment, the emotional environment can in turn be collectively inhabited. Strangers become familiar. Bodies, memories, affects, hardware, and digital technologies exist with and through each other.

Alice Slyngstad (first year Fine Art)

Alice Slyngstad makes performances where architectural sites and bodies become resonance chambers for mental voids, excitement and nervousness. Working with text collages, musical compositions and choreography, Slyngstad makes spatial sequences reflecting on the shaping of language and identities. By dwelling in awkward moments, they negotiate the tension between performers and audiences as well as space. Recent performances include «Soft boiled» at Les Urbaines festival in Lausanne (2019), «Magic Towel» at Kunsthall Trondheim (2019).

Derk Over (alumni Design Department)

Tough Boys is a short movie about non-western gay migrants interacting with the Amsterdam gay scene. Through their eyes, we take a look at a party scene where loneliness and depression is still very present. What does is mean to build a life as a "western" homosexual? We hear stories of speakers struggling to exist in a world where everything is possible, but where you fight mostly for yourself. Those unable to blend in to the Dutch gay lifestyle, are often left on the outside, alone. What does it take and who do you need to become to live the gay dream?