Intersticio is pleased to present ‘Somewhere Along Those Lines’ Katarina Sylvan (b. 1988, SE) first solo exhibition in London. The exhibition is accompanied by a text written by Adam Hines-Green.

They started the interview with the full barrage of necessaries and a little of the informal. The candidate was positioned in the very centre of the room on a swivel chair. The directors sat A to D, clockwise, in each corner. Questions were asked by director A then director B then director C then director D sequentially and very much in that order. Directors A to B headed up health and services, and directors C to D comms and skills, and though none had previous experience they absolutely loved directing. A glass of water was provided but went unnoticed.

Tell us about a time you encountered unhealthy communication. 
[B raises eyebrows to D, who glances momentarily at A]

The candidate recounted a narrative beginning with Once upon a time, and ending with They all lived happily ever after, and in the middle likened themselves to the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. It positioned them in an exceptionally good light. C noted they’d used a mixed metaphor at one stage but otherwise the candidate was uninterrupted. The directors pressed the candidate about the nuts and bolts of the candidate’s candidacy. The candidate said they’d always wanted to join the directors on the other side and described an elaborate but metaphorical trebuchet-like mechanism to propel them there. The directors reminded them that the interview was for ‘Candidate-in-Chief’ and certainly not director, and given the four corners were occupied there obviously wasn’t currently a vacancy for director, but they appreciated the ambition and all simultaneously ticked a box for ambition and scrawled competency aspired to along the straight line beside it.

Tell us about a time when you were overprepared but underexposed.
[A nods to C, and then nods at D too because C isn’t looking in the right direction]

The candidate told a roundabout tale of preventing mischief and mayhem when they worked as a desk clerk in a role they described as deadly serious. They regularly referred to individuals nicknamed the attempteur and the attemptress in various positive and negative lights. Ultimately, no-one came across well except for the candidate, who excelled. Here’s the thing, said B, who pulled out a leather-bound dossier from the basement archives of the practice – a basement the candidate was totally unaware existed. It’s very cold down there – excellently preservative said C. Opened like a book, the dossiers held phalanxes of USBs encrusted by rust on ornamental keychains. But damp too, C went on. These are the cold hard facts of the matter at hand. The candidate made a face to say they recognised these as the dastardly contraptions of a wicked soothsayer. This was the evidence from a wizard who won’t forget. They stopped considering progression and would settle for survival. The candidate said they’d changed tack since then. They started to think of terrible ideas some of which bordered on the nihilistic – wiring in bathtubs and plug sockets dripping in the pouring rain. They started to make sounds which were no more than elaborate ummms, ahhhs and hmmms. They were talking a lot but not saying anything. They felt themselves tilting towards the inept. The directors began to apply pressure – they asked the candidate if they’d be willing to take a hit from the eyebrows up for the team. A started to share plans about warmongering with their fiercest competitors, and aggressive craft-based strategies for foyer remodelling. B said they must have missed a memo, but kept saying missed like it was a longing nostalgia. C recounted the fatal consequences of a noisy voice message which revolved around confusion between miscommunication and missed communication. D shared their ambition to devise a GPS-trackable lawnmower called the Clattermole. These outlined the necessary tangents for the knockout punch.

Tell us about a time when you were adept.
[A to D smirk in alphabetical order]

The candidate asked for the question to be repeated, and said well when you’ve got a hammer in your hand everything looks like a nail and that isn’t the half of it, and said another way to look at things is the nail repeatedly slapped the hammer flush in the face, but died trying and was summarily buried. The candidate started to repeat a-dept like it was a thing perched on their palm, which disintegrated into each letter being enunciated individually, and they riffed on this discovery for some time, replacing consonants for t and k sounds on loop and vowels with guttural umlaut-related noises. They started to cry but it wasn’t clear to anyone whether in the ecstasy of creation or the misery of failure. In the first clear thought for some time they thought of their father, who offered some advice on his deathbed from a career in surgical theatre – Don’t just do something, stand there. And so the candidate didn’t say anything at all, and the directors didn’t ask anything again. The candidate swivelled from director to director clockwise, to the point where it felt like the silence had constructed a podium to start bellowing:

I scream quality despite all the available evidence! I scream quality! I scream quality! I scream quality! and

I’m talking about problems here big problems I’m talking about the car crash of the century and the permanently unfinished second storey and what I call the patination chain I’m talking about a sort of travelator of accumulative flow and tin hats and iron masks dirty bracken and a hard rain falling I’m talking about the problem of relative growth the problem of straight lines the problem of trying really hard and the corresponding problem of absolute and unwavering public humiliation and most of all I’m talking about the influencing machines and their almighty gleeeam can’t you see what I’m talking about can’t you can’t you can’t you see

Push had come to shove. They accidentally kicked the glass of water over on their way out. It made a watermark the shape of a teardrop on the grid of carpet tiles.

Adam Hines-Green

Katarina Sylvan (b.1989) is a Swedish artist based in London working across sculpture, text and sound. After graduating with a BA in Fine Art from Konstfack University of Arts & Crafts in 2014, she worked as a scenic painter for theatre at Riksteatern in Stockholm, and created artworks for venues such as Fylkingen, ФОМО and Into the Valley Festival. She graduated from the MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London in 2019 and has since then exhibited at Non-Space, Aarhus, Platform, Stockholm and De:Formal Gallery among others and is in 2021 looking  forward to solo-presentations of her work at Intersticio, London, Galleri K4, Oslo and Cylinder Gallery, Seoul. Her work has received awards from the Kenneth Armitage Foundation, Gilbert Bayes Trust, Konstnärsnämnden and Konstakademien. She is currently in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Intersticio is pleased to present ‘Claro el Bosque’ the inaugural exhibition of the new space In Madrid at Calle Alcántara 31, a year after the opening of our space in London. 

The group exhibition ‘Claro del Bosque’ includes works by Josefina Anjou (SE), Nora Aurrekoetxea (ESP), Lucía Bayón (ESP), Isabella Benshimol (VE), Julia Crehueras (ESP), Diego Delas (ESP), Johanna Odersky (CH), Andrés Izquierdo (ESP), Maren Karlson (DE) and Paul Maheke (FR), exploring the spaces, symbols poetics and rituals involved in the process of the occult, the collective and their healing and empowering force.

‘The clearing in the forest is a center where it is not always possible to enter’¹. We cross a verge towards a desire, a dream, a vision, a place for communion and reunion. It is a productive center, but also the start of an exit; a space for conspiration and whisper, where defenseless ghosts, elucubrations of futures and hidden memories navigate. 

The access reveals itself as accidental, frontal, at night or during the day, it is a surprise, a futurity. ‘It is the immediate lesson of the clearances in the forest: you don’t have to look for them, neither look for anything from them’², they will offer themselves to you.

Upholded images appear, recalling encountered lifes, breezes, blindings or reliques from a dream. Unerring spaces lighting a path,
sloped on occasions.
Blind maps shaking us.  

We would not know how we enter,
neither remember the exist,
if a clearing in the forest invites us to access its original feeling. 

A space of prophecies, latent and denied knowledges shrinking away from binarity. Disseminated rituals across new ways of doing, spaces for propositions evading a limitant reason. 

A scenario for healing without even knowing how long that moment may last. A frame for a ritual, traces of light and shadow, whispers crossing our feet. 

We cross the verge and we mutate bodies, circulating across a space of adoration and pause,
daydream and emptiness, where shadows,
games,
failed plans, cover us presenting the listening of those voices from the substratum.

The clearing in the forest is an offering, a recovery. A place of encounter where to shed our skin, remodel the emptiness, listening, a space for a collective reborn.

The brighting light, discordant, appears over a sky, ‘discontinuous, a clearing itself too’³ . 

1
Zambrano, María
Claros del bosque
(Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1977)
p.27

2
Ibid, p.27

3
Ibid, p.30

Intersticio is pleased to present ‘this light, toxic’, a group exhibition curated with Alejandro Alonso Díaz. The show presents works and poems by Dionne Brand, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Barbara Hammer, Diana Policarpo and Leticia Ybarra. The exhibition is accompanied by a text written by Alejandro Alonso Diaz.

This exhibition has been possible thanks to the generous support of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).

In this light, toxic a world of interconnected particles unwinds through light and sonic vibrations. The different parts of the self are entangled in multiple processes of toxicity: from the physiological to the environmental, from the psychic to the sensorial.

The exhibition examines how our perception is embedded in toxic objects and bodies through our corporeal membranes, senses, and tissues. Isn’t “light pollution” an euphemism for the pollution of human, animal, and plant vision? Doesn’t this coy expression build on an ancient analogy between the inner luminosity delimited in the eye and the immeasurable light of the element, notably fire?¹

this light, toxic is a proposition to engage with the profanation of silence and the perversion of images as they cut across multiple levels of existence. Breaking through our dreams, pesticides, relations, metaphysical dimensions, radioactive materials, sounds and shadows, the smell of toxicity, like a poisonous flower we breathe in, becomes us.

1
Marder, Michael
Being Dumped
Environmental Humanities
(2019) 11 (1): 180–193

Alejandro Alonso Díaz (ESP) is a curator, writer and researcher whose work explores the metabolic encounters between natural, social and poetic structures of knowledge. He is the founding director of fluent, a para–institution dedicated to artistic research. His writing on art, moving image and nature has been published in magazines including Frieze, Terremoto, Mousse and several exhibition catalogues. His practice is concerned with epistemologies around notions of environmentalism, love and neo–feudal communality, often grounded in an enquiry into other forms of existence, and rehearsing radical ways of otherness. He has curated and participated in projects for the Serpentines Galleries, London; Matadero, Madrid; Chisenhale, London; 18th St Arts Centre, Los Ángeles; the Athens Performance Biennale; Tenderpixel; Fundación Botín; P/////AKT, Amsterdam and Jupiter Woods among many others. Currently he serves as an associate curator at Fundación Sandretto Re–Rabaudengo.

Dionne Brand (CA) has a legion of literary credentials. Her latest novel, Theory, won the 2019 OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Literature, and was a Globe and MailBest Book. Her latest poetry collection, The Blue Clerk,was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize. Her collection Ossuarieswon the Griffin Poetry Prize, and other collections have won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Among her novels, In Another Place, Not Here was selected as a NYT Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book by the Globe and Mail; At the Full and Change of the Moon was selected a Best Book by the LA Times; and What We All Long For won the Toronto Book Award. In 2006, Brand was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing, and from 2009 to 2012 she served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. In 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada. Brand is a Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto.

Dorota Gawęda (PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (LT) are an artist duo established in 2013 and based in Basel (CH). Their work spans performance, installation, fragrance, sculpture, video and drawing. They have exhibited internationally including: Swiss Institute, New York ( 2020); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2020); MWW, Wroclaw (2020); Kunstverein Düsseldorf ( 2020 and 2016); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); MMOMA, Moscow (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2017); ICA, London (2017); MOMA, Warsaw (2016) among others. Their recent solo shows include presentations at: Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2020); OnCurating, Zürich (2020); Body Archive, Zürich (2020); Trafo Gallery, Budapest (2020); Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (2020 and 2018); Fri Art – Centre d’Art de Fribourg / Kunsthalle Fribourg and Wallriss (2020); Futura, Prague (2019); Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (2018); Cell Project Space, London (2018). Upcoming exhibitions include: Swiss Performance Award, Le Grütli, Geneva; Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (solo); Istituto Svizzero, Milan ( performance); Swimming Pool, Sofia (solo) . The duo are also the founders ofYOUNG GIRL READING GROUP ( 2013 – ) and co-initiators of it’s online archive hosted by ARIEL, Copenhagen.

Barbara Hammer (USA) was born in Hollywood in 1939. Her documentary and experimental films are considered among the earliest and most extensive representations of lesbian identity, love, and sexuality. Accompanying her career as a filmmaker, Hammer has time and again worked with performance and installation. She has participated in group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial in 1993, the WACK! show at MOCA L.A. and MoMA PS1 in 2007/2008. With film retrospectives at New York’s MoMA in 2010 and the Tate Modern, London, in 2012, the artworld’s interest in Hammer’s work has recently increased. Hammer has been a teacher for many years and held a professorship at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (CH). She died in 2019.

Diana Policarpo (PT) is a London based visual artist and composer whose work consists of visual and musical media, including drawing, score, sculpture, acoustic composition, performance and multi-channel sound installations. She finished her MFA at Goldsmiths in 2013. Her work investigates power relations, popular culture and gender politics, juxtaposing the rhythmic structuring of sound as a tactile material within the social construction of esoteric ideology. She has recently had solo exhibitions at GNRtion, Biennal of Contemporary Arts, Braga, PT (April 2019), Belo Campo / Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon, PT (2018) or Kunstverein Leipzig, DE (2017). Her work has also been included recently in group exhibitions at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (MACE), Elvas, PT (2020) or Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisboa, PT (May 2019). Policarpo has presented performances and readings at Passos Manuel, Porto, PT; Kunsthall Oslo, NO; LUX – Moving Image, The Lexington, Tenderpixel Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Cafe OTO, Pump House Gallery, IMT Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Leticia Ybarra (ESP) is a poet, artist and curator. She runs the department of Literature and Thought of La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain), where she also curates the festival ‘Gelatina’, among other projects. She is shortly publishing her first book of poems with Caniche Editorial (2021). Her poetry and artistic work deals with universes around the child’s world, of dreams, fantasy and religion, appropriating its nonlinear fecundity to deal with trauma, their relation with the body or the concept of death; as well as to explore questions of reproduction and non-normative architecture. Recently, her work has been exhibited as part of ‘pen pressure: a show of poetry, fantasy and faith’ in Haus Wien (Vienna, September 2020), PoemRoom (Madrid, March 2020), This is Jackalope (Madrid, December 2019) or Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporánea (Valencia, September 2019).

Text by Alejandro Alonso Díaz (PDF)

Download Press Release + List of Works (PDF)

There is a void inside me that I need to fill up by talking, but what I say is always off the mark. Off the mark. Either I am a mirror or a hole. I don’t want to be a reflection of others. A hole is empty but it is real. (Hurriedly, nervously opens eyes) What? (turns only head to left) Has anyone arrived? Anyone there? (Anxious) A visit? (Closes eyes) Hush! Let’s not get nervous. Nobody is here. A voice of something already heard, of something already learned is always repeated when I open my mouth to speak. Indistinct and hazy dark place. Indoor or outdoor space. Words are truly of others, but let’s talk as if we were buried under damp earth. It could be a desert, an olive grove, or the plaza of an empty city in northern Spain. The stage slopes downward. Unless we want the horse to wakes us up, the far is much higher than the near. The ground looks like a hard shoulder, and I have trust in its consistency, but it is eating me. (Pause) Can you hear that buzzing sound? I can tell you cruelly have exit attempts of transformation. You can’t guess how much I want to throw myself into the sea now that I feel the water getting closer and closer. Look at my feet, you will see yourself reflected. I am truly becoming a specter. Total-image, which is to say, death in person1. Here is Sadak climbing from a stone to the leading mountain where the waters are. Not even today. I can’t transcribe it. What? Nothing. (Pause) Do you think this is normal for someone like me? Upside down olive branches are suspended at the top giving the feeling of falling or floating. The flies have stopped buzzing. I might be asleep. Everything deep is absurd. A dim light frames the action. The depths of yesterday sound today like a deception, and we must feel ashamed. It seems nighttime and is cold but it doesn’t feel like December. Words are confusing because they lack of precision and accuracy. Now is Spring. So yesterday…what was it, if not Spring? Something I learned, I can’t remember now. Time passes in a strange way. It’s like I can stretch it out, stir it up, and do whatever I want with it. If I think that everything happens quickly, I truly believe it. But quickly…as for what? At the same speed, of course. Trying to correctly define something must be paralyzing. If words feed the transformations of ideas, they must foster doubt. Synonyms are enemies of the speaker and they make us stutter. (Pause) Has anyone arrived? (Turns his head to the right) Is anyone there? No visits? I want something more. Distractions and made-up words encourage the disuse of a language. People haven’t stopped talking to each other. (Manages to stand up. Annotation of movement, paired silence. Change of light to a lighter one) (Voice of a radio announcer) A magnificent sun is shining in this country. Dawn marvelously, letting go absurd winters. No man’s land, were you born somewhere? If you are children of the Earth, defend the Sun that still shines because there isn’t a body which doesn’t shine in the light. At your side, you will tell him. (Pause) We already know that we do not all share the same opinions. It is purely a geographical problem. You are there and I am here. No, no, no…it can’t be…what can’t be? The more you fight, the more is going to pull you in.  Please help, I am drowning. (Noise of water entering the character’s mouth) Help? I don’t want to have sex with strangers. The Dead! (opening their eyes a lot). The dead, and every day feels like an open (wide eyes open) and close (closes eyes) of eyes. Another day that, suddenly, without realizing, a heart beats differently. The day dawns, and although this noise gets magnified, it helps me speak. Speaking four different languages involves the speaker to stop speaking their mother tongue well. This should be the difference between different and distinct. Exactly. Don’t you think everyone feels the same? Consciousness, conscience, conscience, conscience…While still losing their ideas of metamorphosis. Have you found a movement? Changing, variant and mutable bodies to be truthful to all that change. Accept to stop thinking what has been thought a while ago. Be a faithful unattached host. But for that we should have a sense of control.