Index Stockholm: Diaries Notes and Sketches: del 1: Historieskrivning i realtid och spridandet av queer konst

**Eng below!**

Välkomna till den första delen av en samtalsserie på Index med utgångspunkt i Jonas Mekas film Walden. Med start i Walden kommer vi att titta på Mekas olika praktiker och roller i det konstnärliga ekosystemet – hans curatoriella arbete, hans journalistiska och redaktionella arbete, hans poesi, inrättandet av Anthology Film Archives, Film-Makers’ Cooperative med mera.

Det första avsnittet i samtalsserien fokuserar på rättsfallet 1964 där Mekas dömdes för att ha anordnat en visning av Jack Smiths film Flaming Creatures. En grupp inbjudna gäster kommer att diskutera metoder och strategier för att upprätta levande arkiv och att visa och sprida queer konst idag. Medverkar gör Anna Linder från SAQMI – The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images, Augustas Čičelis från Lithuanian Queer Archive, Johan Sundell från Arkivet för Rosa Brus samt Laima Kreivytė, curator och konstkritiker.

Moderator: Isabella Tjäder, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation.

Eng:

Diaries, Notes and Sketches pt 1: Real-time history writing and the dissemination of queer art

Noting the centennial of Lithuanian poet and filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Index will be hosting a three part screening series showing Mekas’ experimental diary film Walden from 1968. Using Walden as a point of departure, the series will focus on Mekas’ important role as enabler, organizer, connector of people, and devout advocate for art.

When premiering the three hour long Walden, Mekas created a schema, a sort of map guiding viewers through the film. The brief introductory text to the map states that “the Author won’t mind (he is almost encouraging it) if the Viewer will choose to watch only certain parts of the work (film), according to the time available to him, according to his preferences, or any other good reason”. Following this logic, each session will contain the screening of one of Walden’s six reels, followed by a discussion between invited guests.

This first session is inspired by Mekas’ role in creating Anthology Film Archive and his legacy of fighting censorship and championing the work of queer filmmakers. It will focus on building archives for material which has been misrepresented or excluded in traditional writings of history, and methods for promoting and disseminating queer art.

Isabella Tjäder, Curator of Learning at Index, will moderate a discussion between Anna Linder, SAQMI – The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images; Augustas Čičelis, Lithuanian Queer Archive; Johan Sundell, Arkivet för Rosa Brus; and Laima Kreivytė, curator, writer and founding member of the queer feminist artists’ collective Cooltūristės.