Weekly Mass 3
with Bahareh Mirhadi & Arash Mirhadi and SYSTERIA art collective

Friday November 2, 6-9 PM

The third Weekly Mass brings forth the two remaining performances in the Weekly Mass series: the fantastic installation by Bahareh and Arash Mirhadi will open its doors to the chosen ones – but who will the chosen ones be? And SYSTERIA art collective will search for consolation and lament in each other, performing their selves to the last drop.

Bahareh Mirhadi & Arash Mirhadi, Better safe and sorry performance

While waiting in line for your turn to maybe enter the room of the installation, we invite you to take some time and reflect on control, on when moments of institutionalized distrust, profiling and carelessness change lives, break apart relationships and reaffirm, again and again, the pyramid of power. Sweden in this case, and Schengen/EU, use profiling as a tool to hinder mobility and access when requested by residents of countries framed as “a risk” in migration law terms.
The waiting and the wondering are part of the performance. This is a chance to take time and reflect on how waiting, feeling controlled, refused or accepted in the safe environment of the gallery actually translates In Real Life.

SYSTERIA art collective performance

In the artists’ words:
The weekly mass. Where people go to cope and continue breathing. To the land where we live without ourselves. But oh how the pitfalls keep us coming.
Every day, every week, every month and every year we consume various substances as if they were religious rites. We consume both legal and illegal kinds. Our intake differs from one person to the next.
We make ourselves dependent on our phones and other electronic products. We make ourselves dependent on tobacco, alcohol, coffee, sugar, reassurance and prescription drugs. They make us dependent. It makes us dependent.
When we beg for help we receive pills in abundance. When we beg for help but don’t receive any, we find help in something else. Or someone else. Even if temporary.
We can not make it on our own. We can make it on our own. We die alone in our small apartments with surrounding neighbors who do not know our names. Whose names we do not know. Our faces are forgotten.
Systeria highlights these social and religious masses in her performance. Welcome!

Weekly Mass 3 is the third instalment of the exhibition and performance series Weekly Mass, curated by Simona Dumitriu and Tawanda Appiah.
Thank you: Linus Svensson, Konsten att Mötas*, Unicorn Artists in Solidarity and the National Association of Swedish Art Societies.

 

* Konsten att Mötas (Art to Meet)

The National Association of Swedish Art Societies through the project (Art to Meet) will create new exciting meetings and creative collaboration processes, while facilitating newly arrived artist to enter the Swedish art scene. Art associations are an important part of civil society and, like many other non-profit organizations, they have a significant function in creating integration models and working to change the norms and attitudes of society in an inclusive manner.
Through The National Association of Swedish Art Societies, participating artists will gain access to a nationwide network of art scenes on local, regional and national level. At the same time as art associations are given the opportunity to meet interesting and inspiring artistry that can open up the associations for new audiences and art-interested public.
“The Art to Meet” is carried out in collaboration with the Artists’ National Association (KRO) and their ongoing projects “The Art to Share: Image and Form” which aims to establish a national network and a mentorship program for foreign-born cultural creators living or staying in Sweden, And the student association Sensus. The project fund is through The National Lottery Cultural Fund.