Bergen Art Book Bath

Presentation

Sat 13.04 at 19:00

Nordnes Sjøbad

Attention bathing enthusiasts and aficionados of artist’s books! It's time to gather your reading glasses, towels, swimwear, and cozy essentials, and embark on a unique adventure with us at the inaugural Bergen Art Book Bath – the first of its kind in the world!?

Launch of new book Aquatic Encounters. A glossary of hydrofeminisms, by the pool performance by Imi Maufe, sauna readings by Fredrik Rysjedal and Leander Djønne. DJ set by FLEE Project.

Collaboration with Nordnes Sjøbad and Tekstallianse.

Ends at 21:00. Tickets 50,- Pre-sale of tickets here

Nordnes Sjøbad – with seawater pool, saunas and direct access to the sea

Aquatic Encounters: Arts and Hydrofeminisms

Working with the relatively new and emerging notion of hydrofeminism, Aquatic Encounters aims to unravel and employ knowledges surfacing from various areas, such as visual art, artistic research, ecofeminism, affect theory, and feminist new materialist theory. The project aims at exploring the notion of hydrofeminism as an apparatus bringing together and entangling notions of politics, ethics, aesthetics, embodied experience, and the potential of transformation in a feminist framework. 

The publication takes the form of a glossary. It provides a linguistic tool for accessing and implementing hydrofeminist thought in artistic and research practices. The book documents/collects and develops a series of aquatic encounters within a community of hydrofeminist artists, curators, scholars and activists. The community emerged through a series of online and offline communal reading sessions, workshops, research retreats (in collaboration with Contemporary Art Archepelago led by Dr. Taru Elfving), and other forms of encounters organised, led or attended by Aquatic Encounters: Arts and Hydrofeminsms - project duo/team.

Aquatic Encounters is driven by the fact that water as a resource and, crucially, as an all-encompassing matter is radically shared by human and non-human bodies, bodies which are porous (Tuana 2008) and are never independent or sealed. As watery bodies, we are always already entangled in the global power dynamics, that is: in global watery queerness, coloniality, catastrophies, capitalisms, imaginaries and futurities. Each contribution engages with waters in process-/context-/site-specific.

The book is initiated and edited by curator Elina Suoyrjö and researcher Anastasia Khodyreva. It is designed by professor of design Arja Karhumaa and published by Rooftop Press.