Line Skywalker Karlström

(Leaving) NEST

2011-12-13T02:21:00.000-08:00

(Leaving) NEST, 2011
Samtalekøkkenet#8
at Carlberg, Copenhagen, DK

Photos: Frederikke Hansen

Watch video documentation here

DOUBLE ROOM with Jenny Grönvall

2011-11-21T01:20:00.000-08:00

DOUBLE ROOM
Jenny Grönvall and Line S. Karlström
Gallery Kakelhallen, Mariehamn, Åland
Nov 20-26 2011

Produced with support by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Nordic Culture Point.

The Collectors (Honey)

2011-10-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

2011
Sitespecific installation, painted beehive, honey bees, honey and table.
DEM, curated by Heidi Hove & Jens Axel Beck /Koh-I-Noor, Alt_Cph, The Factory of Art and Design, Copenhagen, DK

Line Skywalker Karlströms contribution to the exhibition DEM consists of placing a fully functioning beehive next to The Factory of Art and Design at the Sundholm area. With installing a beehive next to the art building the artist intend to direct the audiences attention towards different, yet already present, layers of the Sundholm community – pointing out that it also is a diversive eco-system and a place where production of honey takes place. The performative dimension in the work is represented by the artists use of honey bees as trespassers, moving freely in the area, regardless of borders between us and them. The bees movements are twofolded: they're both dispersing a certain culture and collecting material from the same.

A warm thanks to Bybi for all their support and help.

Photo: Frederikke Hansen/Line Skywalker Karlström

Let Us Remember Licking

2010-11-25T00:53:00.000-08:00

Performance, 30 minutes, 2010.
Performance art and Institutionalization, History of Disappearance, Århus Kunstbygning, DK

A series of movements intended to bodily record and comment on the museums’ architecture, and on the specific exhibition on display (avantgarde performance works from the Archives of Franklin Furnace, NYC). Played out as an act of auto eroticism my movements were videotaped and illuminated by the audience, hence exposing them to their own desire. In that way creating a volatile space that oscillates between public and private.

Photo: Marta Bagicalupo

What Makes The Earth Move Under Our Feet?

2010-11-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

Video by Kristjàn Ingimarson. Documentation of the performance What Makes The Earth Move Under Our Feet?, Big Wheel Gallery, Vordingborg, DK 2010

What Makes The Earth Move Under Our Feet?

2010-10-31T11:30:00.001-07:00

What Makes The Earth Move Under Our Feet?, 2010
Installation, mixed media objects, works in fabric, photography, video and performance
Sizes variable, performance; duration 9 hours
Big Wheel Studio, Vordingborg, Denmark

A solo exhibition that investigate the body in relation to space using choreography – in the sense of ways of ”doing and making” that deviate normal ways of ”doing and making”. The spacious installation functions as scenography for an endurance performance. The room is thought of as a huge piano, where the keys - various materials, movable video projections, light, sound sources and curtains, gets activated by the artists’ thinking with the body. To act in a space is to alter that space.

What Makes The Earth Move Under Our Feet?

2010-10-13T04:58:00.001-07:00

Digital C-Prints, 75 x 100 cm, 2010

I Am The Only One Here, Who Is Not Insane

2010-09-06T01:37:00.002-07:00

Performativ speach based on Valerie Solanas SCUM Manifesto held on nine different locations in public space,
9 x 1 hour,
in Taler Til Folket, Copenhagen, DK
2010

About, English:

Departing from radical feminist philosopher and sex worker Valerie Solana’s SCUM Manifesto, Line S. Karlström has written a speech of sorts.
The speech was performatively read out loud on nine very various, public locations in Copenhagen, including in front of the Danish Parliament
and next The Little Mermaid in order to investigate if it is also the case that life in this - the Danish anno 2010 - society is” an utter bore and no
aspect of society being at all relevant to women”.

Om, dansk:

Line Skywalker Karlström har taget den amerikanske radikalfeministiske filosof og sexarbejder Valerie Solanas’ SCUM manifest fra 1967 op til fornyet overvejelse og skrevet det om til en politisk tale af en slags. Talen holdes på forskellige travle pladser i det københavnske byrum, for et på forhånd ikke-defineret publikum, med henblik på at undersøge om det også forholder sig sådan, at livet i det danske samfund anno 2010 “er røvkedeligt, og at ingen aspekter af det i bund og grund har nogen relevans for kvinder”.

På den ene side opdaterer kunstneren manifestet til en nutidig feminisme, der både har queer kritik af den utvetydige tokønnethed, der ligger til grund for heteroseksualiteten som politisk regime, og verdensmajoritetens (den såkaldte Tredje verden) feministiske kritik af vestlige feministers ukritiske og ubæredygtige bestemmetrang med i bagagen – til forskel fra Solanas. På den anden side er det helt i amerikanerens ånd når kunstneren sætter sin egen omskrivning på prøve i det offentlige rum og rækker hånden ud til andre “civiliserede, ansvarsbevidste og eventyrlystne kvinder (biologisk eller selvvalgt)”, der er – eller kunne blive – sig bevidst, at det eneste rigtige at gøre, er “at omstyrte regeringen, undergrave det økonomiske system, inføre total automatisering og tilintetgøre det mandlige køn.”

To Dance An Archive/At Danse Et Arkiv

2010-08-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

Video stills
Video 23:00 min, no sound, 2010, camera: Thomas Gunnar Bagge

To Dance A Prison /At Danse Et Fængsel

2010-08-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

Video 13:00 min with sound, and photographies, 2010
Camera and photo: Frederikke Hansen

The object of the choreographic piece To Dance A Prison is to transform emancipation, restriction and dominance into bodily positions. On the rural building site for a new state prison the artist conducts a series of impromptu and gawky dance movements, intended to physically interpret the concept of a prison as a building designed to restrict freedom. Done without permission from the current landowners she squats the farmers land, and transforms it into a place for intimacy and emotional rituals.

Body of Evidence

2010-06-18T03:56:00.000-07:00

Performative photography
Self-portrait referring to the artists' performance Marked. 1983 (Cock Line), 2007
Sveg, Sweden 2010
Photo: Frederikke Hansen

Queer Bucharest Biennale

2010-06-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

Queer Bucharest Biennale
22 May 2010
Bulevardul Unirii, Bucharest

Line S Karlström's contribution consisted of ten statements from The Queer Nation Manifesto (1990) that were engraved onto the mirror glasses:

An army of lovers cannot lose.
The freedom to be public.
You as an alive and functioning queer are revolutionary.
Every time we fuck, we win.
If you're queer, shout it!
Where are you Sisters?
I hate straights.
I have friends. Some of them are straight.
Stop waiting for a better more lesbian future.
Let yourself be angry.

There was a cold stone in my chest (Part of Exorcism of a Feminist Collaboration, part 2)

2010-05-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Performative photography, photography and object; burning pen on birch tree,

Digital C-Prints, 70 x 50 cm, 2010

These photographies, plus more, were commisioned by the Swedish queer art magazine FUL and published in FUL #1-2/2010.

Exorcism of a Feminist Collaboration scrutinizes and processes the artists' experiences of being kicked out from the feminist artist/activist group that she co-founded in 2005 - The YES! Association, in 2008-10.

The work Exorcism of a Feminist Collaboration departs from the artists' personal need for rituals in order to process the violent experiences of power in this unsolved conflict, and a need to find a way to speak even though she had been silenced. Partly the works departs from an urge to displace this conflict from a personal to a structural level and to question why, when we encounter personal conflicts in feminist groups, we don't apply the tools internally, that we implement externally.

As Audre Lordes' beautiful and well-known statement declares will the master's tools never dismantle the master's house.

Ich Tier! (Du Mensch), Perla Mode and Dienstgäude, Zürich

2010-04-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

My video performances Queens Deers and The Fall are currently exhibited in the group show Ich Tier! (Du Mensch) – Abrupt Interspecies Encounters.

Watch excerpt of The Fall here

Susanne Merz: Danish performance and activist group Solvognen as the Army of Animals/ from Line S. Karlström's research archive

Feminist Totem

2009-12-15T03:06:00.001-08:00

Birch tree, sea shells, insects, feather, stones, metal wire, fabric
210 x 10 x 10 cm
2009

on exhibit in WORKS ON MANY LEVELS, a collaborative installation by and with works of Sands Murray-Wassink, Peter Brandt, Brad James and Line Skywalker Karlstroem
in Forschungsbericht

Curated by Severin Dünser vs. Christian Kobald
Co-Co, Vienna, Austria, December 12 2009 - February 23 2010

Exorcism of a Feminist Collaboration

2009-12-15T02:45:00.000-08:00

Birch tree, metal chain, stones
Dimensions variable
2009

on exhibit in WORKS ON MANY LEVELS, a collaborative installation by and with works of Sands Murray-Wassink, Peter Brandt, Brad James and Line Skywalker Karlstroem

in Forschungsbericht
Curated by Severin Dünser vs. Christian Kobald
Co-Co, Vienna, Austria, December 12 2009 - February 23 2010

Sex is my soft spot

2009-10-19T04:05:00.000-07:00

Sex is my soft spot
Fabric, ink, glitter, glue
2009

Untitled
Ink, oil pastel and pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm (and detail)
30 x 21 cm
2009

and
Lick
Ink on feather
2009

No One Knows the Day or Hour Serie

2009-10-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

Untitled (No One Knows the Day or Hour Series)
Ink, oil pastel and pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm

2009

Baby in the Corner

2009-08-31T08:34:00.001-07:00

Mixed materials and objects, acrylic paint, plaster
400 x 220 x 120 cm
2009

In collaboration with Frederikke Hansen
(Installation view Unfinished Business, Stege Sugar Factory, 2009)

Death Is Sad and Slow Albeit Soft

2009-07-20T02:52:00.000-07:00

Fabric, fabric ribbons
300 x 45 x 10 cm
2009

Installation view Unfinished Business, Stege Sugar Factory, 2009

The Fall (Forest in Vollerup, With Habibi)

2009-05-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Performance, video stills
2009

Performance, video, length 8:35 (excerpt)
2009

Bondage Safety Obstacle Gentle Touch Trap

2008-11-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

Rope, carabine, rubber straps
Dimensions variable
2008
(Installation view, TOUT INVESTIR, Paris)

Fat Hand Bar

2008-11-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

Used clothes, rubber straps, cushion filling
Dimensions variable
2008
(Installation view, FSPACE, Paris, 2008)

A Bleak Memory Doesn't Mean Becoming Was Bleak (The Fall)

2008-11-07T05:00:00.001-08:00

Used clothes, acryl paint, rope
Dimensions variable
2008
(Installation view FSPACE, Paris, 2008)

She Was and She Was and She Was #1 (War Trophies)

2008-11-07T04:53:00.000-08:00

Used clothes, latex, rope.
Dimensions variable
2008

Marked. 1983 (Cock Line)

2008-07-07T02:34:00.000-07:00

Performance
Duration 10 minutes
2008

I performed Marked. 1983 two days after reenacting Mary Coble's performance Marker. In Marked. 1983 I tag upon my naked body the same word over and over again for ten minutes. The word is a demeaning epithet that was graffitied to a concrete wall on my way to school as a child, and it translates Cock Line. I had to pass it every day for four years, in silent shame. I never got the idea to paint it over. On stage while documentation from Marker (Mary Coble Reenacted was screened behind me I wrote the word on my upper body for ten minutes, until my skin burst, in what functioned as a ritual of resistance and healing.

Marked. 1983 (Cock Line)
C-Prints
30 x 40 cm
2008

Photos: Frederikke Hansen

Marker (Mary Coble Reenacted)

2008-07-07T02:31:00.000-07:00

Performance
Duration 2 hours
Heinrichplatz, Berlin Kreuzberg
2008

Marker (Mary Coble Reenacted) is a reenactment of a performance by artist Mary Coble. Read more about Mary Cobles work here

In Marker (Mary Coble Reenacted) I invited bypassers to write upon my body all the hateful words they had ever been called or called someone else.

With performing Marker (Mary Coble Reenacted) I proposed for us to reclaim those words, to take back the power over them.

By granting permission to express assaulting terms on my body I wished to insist on a collective process of reclaiming hateful epithets such as dyke or lesbian.

Performing Marker (Mary Coble Reenacted) at Heinrichplatz in Berlin was also a way to react to and act against the homo- and transphobic assaults that recently had taken place in the area.

Photo: José Marcal

Privilege or Punishment #3

2008-05-23T04:18:00.001-07:00

Used clothes, clay, latex, rubber bands, colored tape, D-ring.
Dimensions variable
2008

Privilege or Punishment #4

2008-05-23T04:11:00.000-07:00

Cardboard box, electric wire, used clothes, rubber bands, latex, lamp.
Dimensions variable
2008

Privilege or Punishment #1

2008-03-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

Used clothes, fabric, acryl, latex, rubber bands.
2008

Privilege or Punishment #2

2008-03-17T07:56:00.001-07:00

Used clothes, rubber bands, latex, fabric, wood.
2008

Privilege or Punishment #5

2008-03-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

Used clothes, acryl color, fabric, nickel D-rings
220 x 230 cm, straps; measures variable
2008

Fruit Salad (Sexual Politics)

2008-03-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Sculpture
Plaster
2008

Combustion (I am angry and I am sad and so are you)

2008-03-17T07:37:00.000-07:00

Performance, duration 60 minutes
2007

Critique of hetero-normativity was the point of departure for the performance Combustion (I am angry and I am sad and so are you). I entered the gallery wearing jeans and t-shirt, took my t-shirt off and held a short speach before I wrote the text "I am angry and I am sad and so are You" on my chest and arms. Thereafter I invited the audience to come with me out in the street outside the gallery. With me I brought a baby pram prepared with sheets, cloths and newspaper paper.

Outside the gallery I placed the audience on one side of the street and the pram on the other, poured grill fluid over the baby pram and stuck a match to it. While the baby pram was burning I stood together with the audience watching it and asking one person at a time if I could hold their hand. After twenty minutes the baby pram had burned down. Thereafter I went back into the gallery in company with the band Kids On The Ranch(Imri Sandlund and Elin Mörkeberg). They gave a short concert in my installation, where the wall was covered by newspaper clip. The day after the burned out baby pram was installed on the site .

Photo: Elin Mörkeberg

Combustion (I am angry and I am sad and so are you)

2008-03-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

Installation
300 x 300 cm and 120 x 70 x 110 cm

2007

I Will Always Remember Fire

2008-03-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

Carnations left to die on wall, duct tape
Dimensions variable
2007

Querr Space Invaders

2008-03-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

Action, video, 2 min 04 sec
2007

check back soon for clip!

Self-portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe.

2008-03-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Photography
4x5 cm
Digital C-Print
30 x 40 cm
2006

Self portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe is an appropriation of a photography by Douglas Gordon entitled Self-portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe. The work consist of a photo boot photography where my artificially bleached hair is covered by a blond wig. Self portrait is an act of resistance as it attempts to sabotage Gordon's right to inscribe himself into the history of queer identities while also entering the notion of gender to the context. Through occupying identities and writing myself into a historic chain of real or fake blondes I am suggesting a non-essential viewpoint.

"Female" Gestures in Patriarchal Society

2008-03-16T09:24:00.001-07:00

Newspaper cut-outs, plastic bags, duct tape, text
Measures variable
2006–2009
"Female" Gestures in Pathriarcal Society is an archive concisting of pictures of women -cut out of newspapers, books and magazines, that are visual representations of women I can agree on. The archive so far includes more than 200 pictures. The selection process is at the same time an ongoing discussion on my own identity- and representational politics.

When parts of the archive has been exhibited I've shown them in plastics bags with a zip look since I view the pictures as some kind of evidence material, and together with this text, describing my selection criterias.

Categories

"Females" gazing away from the viewer
"Females" with eyes closed
"Females" using tools (axes, banners, music instruments, type writers)
"Females" with cameras
"Females" with texts
"Females" who listen or speak
"Females" with animals

Denmarks Small Heart

2008-03-16T08:58:00.001-07:00

Performance, duration 30 minutes, fabric, fruit tags

2005

All Embroidery is Subversive

2008-03-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Performance, duration 60 minutes, sewing machine embroidered banner
2005

Queens Deers

2008-03-16T08:50:00.001-07:00

Queens Deers
Performance
Elk costume, 10 cardboard cards with photos and texts on female artists
Video 4 min 01 sec
2004

Queens Deers
C-prints
2004

Subversive socks II

2008-03-16T08:49:00.001-07:00

Blanket, yarn, socks, paper, potted plants, wood, fabric, sewing machine embroidered text
Dimensions variable
2004

Occupation

2008-03-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

Tarp, various trash and stored things, bag, books on Deleuze
2004

Draperies

2008-03-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

Fabric, wood
8 pieces à 150 x 250 cm
2004

It's Impossible To Say What's Worst, 'Cos It Is a Structure.

2008-03-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

Cables, surveillance monitor, timer, colored light bulbs, transistor radio, scissors
Dimensions variable
2004

Untitled (Tender Buttons) and Tea Kitchen

2008-03-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Tender Buttons)
Wood, fabric, buttons, colored pantyhose.
220 x 40 x 40 cm
2004

Wood, duct tape, fabric, ties, acryl paint, electric water boiler, tea bags, cups, plane ticket.

Dimensions variable
2004

Subversive socks I

2008-03-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Blanket, yarn, paper, potted plants, sewing machine embroidered text, wood, fabric
Dimensions variable
2004