Double Release: Queer Timeline for Gothenburg + Artist Book by MC Coble and Louise Wolthers

First up: SAQMI has for a long time now worked on a timeline for Gothenburg’s Queer Film History and March 23rd it will finally be released! This is an online archive everyone across the world can help us build bigger! 

Second: The artist book Things Change Anyway!
This book is a collaboration between non-binary, trans* artist MC Coble and art / photo historian Louise Wolthers about various kinds of metamorphosis in life, bodies, relationships, and nature. The book first and foremost consists of photographs from the couple’s image archive, spanning a decade and presented in radical, non-linear editing. Intersecting the image flow are five essays by Wolthers and twelve drawings by Coble. More about the book below.

Release party the evening of March 23rd at Friggahuset, Pölgatan 5, in Gothenburg! Come and celebrate with us and share your queer knowledge and histories in a cosy space <3 The timeline will be online for everyone everywhere! Enjoy!

The Timeline is made possible thanks to funding from Holger and Thyra Lauritzens foundation.

Program for the evening:

19:00 – Presentation and live screening: Timeline for Gothenburg´s Queer Film History

Pause

20:00 – Presentation of Things Change Anyway by MC Coble and Louise Wolthers + Open talk

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More about the Book:

Things Change Anyway by MC Coble and Louise Wolther

The artist book Things Change Anyway is a collaboration between non-binary trans* artist MC Coble and art / photo historian Louise Wolthers about various kinds of metamorphosis in life, bodies, relationships, and nature. The book first and foremost consists of photographs from the couple’s image archive, spanning a decade and presented in radical, non-linear editing. Intersecting the image flow are five essays by Wolthers and twelve drawings by Coble. 

Above all, the book is an examination of the meaning of photography, looking and being seen.One strand of photographs in this book documents Coble’s ongoing gender affirmation, another theme is Wolthers’ struggles with menopause. Other strands include still lifes and snapshots from the everyday – with all its vulnerability, imperfection, and impermanence. The image strands are woven together to form a dynamic montage across time and space reflecting what change, non-human connectivity and queer kinship might look like. 

Wolthers’ personal essays contextualize single images with a wider body of photo history and gender/queer/trans* theory. Coble’s drawings form a visual, non-linear diary and synthesize various experiences – dealing with depression and during COVID, of being put on hold by the system, and of ways of transitioning and gaining agency. 

Things Change Anyway (192 pages) is co-published by Breadfield Press (Sweden) and forlaget *[asterisk] (Denmark). 

Color photographs by Coble and Wolthers, black and white drawings by Coble and essays by Wolthers titled: Re-enacting Representation; Connected by Blood, Related by other Substances; Mirroring Bodies; Queering Landscapes, Changed by Nature and Pictures Never Taken.  

Graphic Design by MC Coble and Louise Wolthers with support from Tina Enghoff.

Printed 2023 at Narayana Press with support by The New Carlsberg Foundation.

MC Coble is a non-binary trans* artist, living and working in Gothenburg. They work mainly through performance art and photography. Some of Coble´s documentation and videos is part of SAQMI´s Archive and the Timeline for Gothenburg´s Queer Film History. Contact: mc@mccoble.com

Louise Wolthers is an art historian, writer, and curator. Since 2012 she is head of research at The Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg. Contact: lowolthers@gmail.com