Third Space

The exhibition Third Space spans across place, politics and poetry; bringing together works that relate to a social progress that is currently transforming. It takes its point of departure from our globalized and segregated societies—where young voices tell of their experiences of being “in-between,” where cultures and languages meet and where new ones are formed. This is the context in which a conflicting and shifting condition of being both on the “inside” as well as on the “outside” exists. We treat the Third Space as a space of negotiating the imaginary—creating a continuous flow towards what has not yet become.

Accessing Utopia (2017) is the latest work from the collaborative artistic research group Bathutä (René León-Rosales and Behzad Khosravi-Noori). The piece is based on interviews with young Swedish activists who have engaged in organizations dealing with the multiple expressions of racism and social injustice in the Swedish society. Using artistic research methodology the project articulates a narrative strategy which aims to put forward the complexities in the young people’s understanding of their own activism, and hence their political subjectivities. The work is staged in the format of a polyphonic multi-channel video installation.

studio nāv’s installation out of the body (2017) takes its outset in “movement,” and is authored through the trajectory of the underground and endoscope. From the body’s interior a subjective landscape is formed, in which incongruence and intuition dissolve the binaries “departure” and “arrival.” Here, the acousmatic voice, once purposeful for the underground, negotiates a flow of relations without a given destination. out of the body is a spatial installation consisting of a video and two soundworks. studio nāv is made up of Carl Fransson och Thomas Paltiel. At Botkyrka konsthall they have also authored the exhibition’s scenography. 

Alex Rodallec and Nabil Dorbane meet in the collaboration Double Culture (2017) featuring poetry and illustrations, text and sounds, where a variety of languages and voices portray the experience of what is popularly called the “suburb” in both Sweden and France.

”What is the feeling of the suburb? A phenomenon easily recognized regardless of whether it is in France or Sweden. Areas that are largely populated by a working and lower class with a migration background. What are the pictures stuck with many of us who grew up in these places? What are the sounds and languages? The sorrow and joy? What is it that we carry within of being in between places, on borders? What are the feelings that colour our memories?”

The exhibition title borrows from the postcolonial thinker Homi K. Bhabha’s theory “The Third Space” that describes a space where cultures are influencing each other and new identities are formed.

The exhibition is Botkyrka konsthall’s final programme that takes place in Tumba before embarking on a journey towards a new art space that is being built, and will open in Fittja in early 2019.

Contact:
Anneli Bäckman, curator
anneli.backman [​at​] botkyrka.se