Moon in your Mouth
UKS, Keysers gate 1, 0165 Oslo, Norway
Exhibition: 26 May – 25 June
Preview: 26 May 7–10 pm
Open: Wednesday-Sunday 12–5 pm,
Thursday 12–7 pm
I CONSENT – Summer School
30 May – 1 June
Public Programme
at UKS and Kunstnernes Hus
30 – 31 May
7 – 9 pm
Curated by Max Hannus and presenting the works of artists Thora Dolven Balke, Tarek Lakhrissi and Inari Sandell, Moon in your Mouth considers consent, intimacy and emotional labour in the realm of exhibition making.
Thinking of consent in artist-curator relationships, Hannus asks how to think about consent as a methodological tool, and how to host or mediate different agencies in relation to the presentation of artistic work. Moon in your Mouth looks at processes of desire and intimacy in relation to questions of access. If we think of intimacy as seeing and being seen, what is required for the seeing to take place: how does one access intimacy?
As a parallel to the exhibition UKS, Bedside Productions and Frame come together to co-host I CONSENT, a three-day summer school in Oslo. Convening around consent, complaint and intimacy, this multi-day programme offers a tender environment to explore alternative, safe and loving ways of relating, particularly in the context of arts institutions and cultural production. There will be a public programme open for everyone in the evenings during the summer school.
Still: Tarek Lakhrissi, Spiralling, 2021. HD Single channel video
I CONSENT
Summer School
How does it change our ways of living and working together, if we bring questions of consent, complaint and intimacy to the forefront?
Growing from the exhibition Moon in your Mouth, UKS (Young Artists’ Society), Bedside Productions and Frame Contemporary Art Finland come together to co-host I CONSENT, a three-day summer school in Oslo from 30 May to 1 June 2023. Convening around consent, complaint and intimacy, this multi-day programme offers a tender environment to explore alternative, safe and loving ways of relating, particularly in the context of arts institutions and cultural production.
Taking place at UKS, the school supports a small cohort of 20 participants from across the art and cultural sectors – including hosts, contributors, guests and attendees – to learn alongside one another for three days. As part of a shared responsibility of building a safe and intimate space participants are asked to commit to the full three days. An evening programme at UKS and Kunstnernes Hus is open to everyone.
Session hosts include feminist pornographic film production collective Bedside Productions, curator Max Hannus, artist and activist Raju Rage, and artist Vishnu Vardhani, with others to be announced.
The curriculum is framed by a series of questions that softly guide the programme and discussions without placing emphasis on arriving at direct answers:
How might we welcome structures, principles and practices of consent within creative processes and working relationships? Can consent be instituted?
Can we embrace ‘complaint’ as a generative and generous act? Can we understand complaint as a shared project?
If we think of intimacy as seeing and being seen, what is required for the ‘seeing’ to take place? How does one access intimacy?
The structure of the school encourages different styles of collective learning, with some workshop sessions led by invited guests and time left open to allow for unfolding questions.
Every day, we take time to cook and eat together, making room for a slower space for digesting between the workshop sessions. In the evenings the school expands into a public programme of film screenings, readings, performance and discussion at UKS and Kunstnernes Hus.
I CONSENT – Summer School
DAY 1.
Tuesday 30 May, UKS
9am–12pm: Welcome, introductions and guided tour of the exhibition Moon in Your Mouth with curator Max Hannus
12–2pm: Cooking communal lunch with artist Raju Rage
2–5pm: ‘BDSM for Collaborative Art Making’ led by Bedside Productions
7–9pm: ‘Care and Complaint’ Nora Sulejmani and Vishnu Vardhani in conversation with a letter from Johanna Hedva. Moderated by Yvonne Billimore and Miriam Wistreich at Kunstnernes Hus Cinema.
DAY 2.
Wednesday 31 May, UKS
9am–12pm: Sessions led by artists Vishnu Vardhani
12–2pm: Cooking communal lunch with artist Raju Rage
2–5pm: ‘BDSM for Collaborative Art Making’ led by Bedside Productions
7–9pm: Bedside Productions screening of 2426F at UKS
DAY 3.
Thursday 1 June, UKS
9am–12pm: Open floor, reflective discussions and closing session
12–2pm: Cooking communal lunch with artist Raju Rage
Public Programme:
Care and Complaint
Tuesday 30 May, 7–9pm (CEST)
Nora Sulejmani and Vishnu Vardhani in conversation with a letter from Johanna Hedva.
Moderated by Yvonne Billimore and Miriam Wistreich
at Kunstnernes Hus Cinema, Wergelandsveien 17, Oslo
and Streamed on UKS YouTube channel and Frame’s website. Free and open to all.
“What does it mean to go beyond being accepted, to be loved and cared for? I’m not talking about care work (….) I’m talking about ‘access intimacy’” —Raju Rage.
In connection to UKS and Frame’s I CONSENT—summer school, this event brings together artists, activists and curators to consider the relationship between care, complaint and access, and how institutions might better attend to these as a commitment to a more inclusive arts ecology.
The event opens with a letter specifically commissioned for this event from writer, artist, and musician Johanna Hedva, Followed by a poem by body philosopher Vishnu Vardhani.
In correspondence with Hedva’s letter and Vardhani’s poem, curators Yvonne Billimore and Miriam Wistreich host a panel discussion with Vishnu Vardhani and activist Nora Sulejmani discussing complaint as a form of care. Are there ways to think of complaint as something generative, something that creates new possibilities of working together, differently? How can we see complaint as a project of shared response-ability?
Programme
7pm: Welcome
7.15pm: ‘I am very awake, which means I have a lot of complaints.’ A letter from Johanna Hedva
7.30pm: ‘Complaint a poem’ by Vishnu Vardhani
7.45pm: Panel discussion with Yvonne Billimore, Nora Sulejmani, Vishnu Vardhani, Miriam Wistreich
8.45pm: Audience questions and closing remarks
Public Programme:
Bedside Productions screening 2426F
Wednesday 31 May, 7–9pm (CEST)
Hana Noelle aka. Cherry Velour and Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup, Bedside Productions
at UKS, Keysers gate 1, 0165, Oslo. Free and open to all.
Hana Noelle aka. Cherry Velour (performer/kink educator) and Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup (cofounder & leader of Bedside Productions) will present their new film ‘2426F’ and share some thoughts its conceptualisation and production, BDSM, consensual nonconsent and graphic depiction of violence in porn.
*Content Warning. Please read before attending*
This film contains graphic depictions of hardcore pornographic violence and CNC (consensual non-consent) between consenting and experienced adults. This includes sexual assault and abduction, unsimulated torture, and blood.
This event is for those who feel confident to watch a film of this nature, and we urge anyone that feels uncertain about this to not attend the screening. As an alternative, you will be able to watch the film at home, perhaps with someone you trust, once it is released on Bedside Productions’ website.
We will give another warning before the screening and audience members are very welcome to leave at any time.
Moon in your Mouth – Exhibition
Exhibition is open for visitors 26 May – 25 June 2023, preview on Thursday 26 May at 7–10pm.
Opening hours:
Wednesday 12–5 pm
Thursday 12–7 pm
Friday–Sunday 12–5 pm
UKS, Keysers gate 1, 0165 Oslo, Norway
I CONSENT – Summer School
Registration for the summer school is now closed.
Public Programme
The events are free and open to all, registration is not required.
Should you have any access questions, needs or desires you would like to let us know about, you can contact Miriam Wistreich at m.wistreich@uks.no / +47 9203 4848.
The film screened during the public programme will later be available on Bedside Productions’ website.
Venues:
UKS is accessible by wheelchair. The exhibition space at UKS has multiple levels which are accessible by stairs and elevator. They have one disabled bathroom with grab bars. The toilet is located on the lower level of the exhibition space and is accessible by elevator. Read more about accessibility at UKS.
All the spaces on the ground floor and in the exhibition halls are accessible for wheelchairs. Kunstnernes Hus Cinema has space for a wheelchair in front of the first seat row. FAQ about the Kunstnernes Hus space.
Language:
The language of the summer school and public events is English. The event at Kunstnernes Hus will be streamed and captioned in English.
Should you have any access questions, needs or desires you would like to let us know about, you can write them in the expression of interest form, or contact Miriam Wistreich at m.wistreich@uks.no / +47 9203 4848.
The film screened during the public programme will later be available on Bedside Productions’ website.
Thora Dolven Balke’s practice involves both an exploration of image-making and sound and an involvement in the organization of artistic and curatorial platforms that contribute to the development of other artists’ work as well as their connection with other cultural forms, such as music and performance. Her photographs, in the form of polaroids and photographic albums as well as films, suggest a diaristic, subjective approach to image-making that is not clear about the level of fiction the photographs contain.
Johanna Hedva (they/them) is a Korean-American writer, artist, and musician, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives between LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of the novels Your Love Is Good and On Hell, as well as Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and the Moon. Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” originally published in 2016, has been translated into eleven languages.
Max Hannus is a curator and writer based in Helsinki working in the intersections of sexual/romantic relationships and art making. Hannus’ practice is autobiographic, and they work with different forms of writing: mundane, unpretentious, blunt – always searching for (queer) love.
Tarek Lakhrissi (lives and works in Paris) is a French artist and poet with a background in literature who explores socio political narratives and speculative situations of transformation and magic through text, film, installation, and performance.
Raju Rage is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival. Born in Kenya, raised in London and living/working beyond, they explore the spaces and relationships between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. Their current interests are around sustainability, economies, care, and resistance. They are a member of Collective Creativity arts collective and are a creative educator and independent scholar with an interest in radical pedagogy.
Inari Sandell (b. 1991 in Lahti, Finland) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Helsinki. Their lens-based and sculptural work takes form as installations, addressing themes of coping, rest, and sensory experience entangled with post-digital and post-human millennial existence. Often inspired by mundane objects, Sandell’s work combines delicate textile with sharp and heavy materials like glass and metal.
Bedside Productions is a Copenhagen based community producing queer pornographic films, porn magazines, (sex)parties and educational material on topics related to sex, pornography and nightlife culture. We work to create sustainable and inclusive spaces, where representation, respect and nuanced ideas of sex, eroticism and intimacy are top priority.
Hana Noelle aka Cherry Velour is an educator, performer, artist, dominatrix, and all-around BDSM clown. Drawing on her background in art, she approaches kink education with creativity, accessibility, and playfulness, expanding our perceptions of BDSM and taking it out of the dungeon. @MissCherryVelour
Mille Nor Koefoed works as a project lead, collaboration coordinator and with process design for sustainable collaborative practice, with Bedside Productions. She has an academic background where she has specialised in the intersection between horror and eroticism, which also applies to her artistic practice. @vitamille
Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup is a cofounder & leader of Bedside Productions. In recent years she has focused on Emotional Fluffing (intimacy coordination/consulting) for artists and TV/film, educational work on sex, pornography and health, in addition to her work with Bedside´s own productions, where she has experience performing, producing and directing. @pappa_christmas
Nora Sulejmani is a human rights activist. She is a political science student at the University of Oslo and a member of the central board of the Norwegian Blind Association of Youth. Nora has always been interested in art and sometimes makes art herself. It is important for her that the artistic world becomes more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities.
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan – Body philosopher, has spent the last decade in creating community centred practices. Their practice spans performance arts, movement, quilting, stand-up comedy and film making. A hyphenated identity, multidisciplinary practices, building connections between art, science, witchcraft, history and cultures define them. Oscillating between cultures, methodologies and sexual identities, each different from the other are instrumental in their visual Language. Twerking, Napping in public spaces, connecting people and head stands in airports are Vishnu’s whatchamacallits for ‘everyday-activism’.
The exhibition Moon in your Mouth is co-organised by Frame Contemporary Art Finland and UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society). The accompanying I CONSENT—summer school and public programme is co-hosted by Frame, UKS and Bedside Productions. Moon in your Mouth is curated by Max Hannus and I CONSENT is curated by Yvonne Billimore, Jussi Koitela and Miriam Wistreich.
Rehearsing Hospitalities 2023 is part of the EU-funded project Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions. I CONSENT—summer school is supported by Nordic Culture Point, The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute (FINNO), Kulturfonden för Finland och Norge and Fritt Ord.
The Rehearsing Hospitalities 2023 programme is organised in collaboration with The Showroom (London), UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society) (Oslo), Vera List Center for Art and Politics (New York), Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland. The programme is part of the EU-funded project Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions.