flockcircumstance

This publication accompanies the exhibition Flock Circumstance at 16 Nicholson Street Gallery, Glasgow, which presents three works by international artists: Tinja Ruusuvuori (Finland), Madde Edlund (Sweden) and Aga Paulina Młyńczak (Poland, by way of Glasgow). Together, the works posit new relations between words, speakers and listeners, investigating the positionality of language and our society. Alongside them, and through the texts in this publication the grouping (aptly - of three), explores the triangulations at work in the processes of speech and gesture. What takes place in the third space between subject and object, between giver and receiver? This intangible point of reference exists in a collective imagination, and is multiply generative, if we allow it to be.

‘Collection of Undoings’ is a video installation by Tinja Ruusuvuori which shows selections from a crowdsourced archive compiled of ‘useless’ activities. Together these speculate on new collective ways of being on the sidelines; of slipping through the cracks; of skipping around and pausing in opposition to the constant forward march of capitalism/progress. The archive is intended for use as a resource for anyone seeking to find a way to a different value structure, and stills from the videos can be found throughout this publication. Ruusuvuori taps into a language of resistance that is gestural, and asks how we can build it. How can things have meaning without ‘value’ or ‘purpose’ in a capitalistic sense, and embrace an embodied language of collective pleasure? There is a need here to create meaning beyond hierarchy. This is keenly felt in Młyńczak’s ‘Teach Me a Word’ project, which has been ongoing for over a year now. In it, the artist seeks to build an interactive linguistic map of the Govanhill neighbourhood of Glasgow based on her invitation to participants to ‘teach me a word you are afraid to forget’ in any language they speak- a model which will go on to be replicated in Esquiliano (Rome) and Kreuzberg (Berlin). The map intends to question the dominance of English, and to make visible the many languages living side by side, overlapping and intermingling amongst a group of literal neighbours.

The final piece of the triangle is Madde Edlund’s ‘Sonic ID Shower’, a sound sculpture that orientates the listener at different points on a spectrum of control and submission, according to scripts Madde collated from words and sounds gathered at participatory workshops she designed. The sculpture, like the workshops themselves, invites consideration on how sounds and words position you, on your sense of agency as a receiver of sounds, and asks you to pause and let the words hold you gently in these different poses. The showers feature in this publication both as a set of instructions for the workshops, and interpreted as concrete poems that help to visualise the soundscapes created by Madde’s sculpture. Whether visual or sonic, each work in Flock Circumstance acts as a collage encouraging us to think about ways of being better in overlapping with each other. This takes form through explorations of mental health, rest, play, communication, productivity and making together. And this is how we came to see the publication - not just as an artefact of the exhibition and of our collaboration, but as an invitation to take a stance where you gesture others into our shared space.

The publication serves as a place to gather our thoughts, about how the Flock Circumstance project came into being. How did we get here, and who is we? What does collaboration look like in a global pandemic? When every effort you make at working comes up against the phrase ‘I need help thinking’, how can we turn that into a positive thing? It begins with the collaborative text between the three artists and myself, entitled with the same phrase. Throughout the exhibition building process, ‘I Need Help Thinking’ has been a friend, a space that recognises the porousness of us, our work and our lives; our natural way of working and how projects bleed into one another. It served as a text through which and in which we read each other, a systemic story of coarticulation. With it, we wanted to demystify the process of artmaking, and of working with others, crediting every person living or dead, whose ideas and contributions provided the building blocks that enabled the project to materialise. The conversation in ‘I Need Help Thinking’ makes visible our engagement with romantic friendship, and how it nourished the Flock Circumstance exhibition, activating a situation which proves what a queer family can do in terms of creating and healing.

In their texts that follow, Młyńczak, Ruusuvuori and Niamh Moloney explore how resisting fixity can be a generative act. ‘Unlearning the Dictionary’ discusses the proliferation of meaning and multiplication of realities inherent in the act of translation; refuting the bilingual dictionary in an account of Młyńczak’s relationship to language and speaking as a singular act of communion outwith words, an exchange of meaning that is not quantifiable, and certainly not dominated by one tongue. In a similar gesture of loving defiance, Moloney and Ruusuvuori detail the ‘undoing’ of a workshop - revealing how something that is discussed but never finished can give a platform to this precious space of forming things together, a cohabited imaginary place. The reader/s of this publication are invited to participate in their imaginary communal walking workshop through a set of suggested instructions, and are further invited in to the experience of two strangers participating from a different space-time by reading the pair’s conversation.

Młyńczak’s essay on speculative translation, the third space found through Moloney and Ruusuvuori’s walking workshop, and Madde’s sonic shower all seek a common ground for dwelling, creating and meaning making. The texts and collages gathered here in this book reach into this space that is flexible, resourceful and nourishing, a heterotopia where we can all position ourselves alongside others. So much of Flock Circumstance is a project about articulation, gesture and positioning. Throughout the publication, throughout the exhibition, moving forward into the post-pandemic world, we continue to ask: How can we position ourselves in a way that is both considered and considerate?