The platform Tentative Transmits and Malmö Konsthall presented a film screening by artist Delaine Le Bas, and a poetry reading by poet and musician Channa Riedel. The program included a conversation between Riedel and Tentative Transmits, organised by Olivia Berkowicz and Marianna Feher. The event takes its starting point from Lenke Rothman’s exhibition Life as Cloth. 

The program begins with a screening of Delaine Le Bas’ films Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding (2024) and St. Sara Kali George (2020–2021). This is followed by a poetry reading by Channa Riedel and a conversation between Riedel and Tentative Transmits. The invited guests’ work intersects with Lenke Rothman’s practice through a focus on the textile as a bearer of stories and poetry as a way to process complex family histories.

Delaine Le Bas is a British artist whose multifaceted practice explores issues of belonging, identity, and her Romani heritage. Through embroidery, painting, performance, film, and sculpture, she creates works that navigate the personal and the political. The films shown during the evening occupy this borderland where migration, language, and mythologies intertwine. In her work, she challenges contemporary and historical stereotypes of Roma and Traveller communities from a feminist and experimental perspective.

Poet and musician Channa Riedel read from her poetry debut Karlsbad (2023, Albert Bonniers Förlag). The book is based on her Sudeten-German-Jewish family’s escape from Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) during World War II. Karlsbad was nominated for the Katapult Prize 2024 and attempts to write a family history when family ties have been severed or spun in uncontrollable directions.

The poetry reading was followed by a conversation between Channa Riedel and Olivia Berkowicz & Marianna Feher, organisers of Tentative Transmits. Tentative Transmits is a curatorial and artistic sound platform that explores memory, radio history, solidarity movements, and post-socialist transitions around Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Tentative Transmits presented a conversation and listening session with Meira Ahmemulić. The platform Tentative Transmits introduced their work and research about politics of memory, archives and storytelling, as well as post-socialist transitions.

The program included a conversation and listening session with the artist Meira Ahmemulić, featuring the premiere of her newly commissioned sound work När moster gav SKF fingret (translation, “When aunt gave SKF the finger”).

När moster gav SKF fingret is about the haunting power of words and cursing as resistance. Ahmemulić is inspired by curses from the villages Gusinje and Plav in Montenegro, situated in the shadow of Prokletije – the Accursed Mountains.

Tentative Transmits presented an event with the art collective Škart, researcher Ann Ighe and student Taha Khatab. The program departs from local and global student movements and presents the outcomes of a screen printing workshop with Škart, students, and teachers in Gothenburg, in collaboration with the Longest Night.

Škart’s practice highlights overlooked groups in society and often unfolds in public space. Through poetry and graphic design, Škart has been actively involved in the ongoing student demonstrations in Serbia. These massive student-led protests, which have lasted since November 2024, which at that point, were among the largest in the world and directed against widespread corruption and the country’s current government.

The event reflects on the parallels between the Serbian student protests and the student movement for Palestine in Gothenburg. Researcher Ann Ighe also offered perspectives on Gothenburg’s history of activism and squatting.

Grafikens Hus presents an exhibition of Afaina de Jong’s public artwork An(Other) Vernacular in the entrance to Södertälje Science Park.

The exhibition presents an architectural model of the art pavilion and a textile with de Jong’s Södertälje-inspired pattern. During the exhibition period, we invite guests, reference groups and visitors to round-table discussions about how different stories can take place in public space, norm-critical perspectives on urban development and architecture.

Afaina de Jong, living in Amsterdam, is an architect, visual artist and cultural entrepreneur whose work is deeply connected to represent people and cultural movements that are not traditionally represented in architectural form. The project began in 2019 as part of the Public Art Agency Sweden initiative Kunskapsnav offentlig konst, led by Grafikens Hus in collaboration with Södertälje municipality.

In 2023, the project was planned to be inaugurated in Astraparken in Södertälje in the form of a multifunctional art pavilion. Through dialog and printmaking workshops with local associations and reference groups, the architect and artist Afaina de Jong worked together with Innavisions to create a Södertälje-inspired form and color language for the pavilion.

On the first day of spring in Eastern Europe, a celebration takes place to bid farewell to the cold of winter and to welcome the first, tentative steps of spring. Hailing from the pre-Christian era, communities gathered in villages to create a feminine figure representing Morana. Morana (Marzanna) is a slavic, pagan goddess representing rebirth, dreams and the afterlife. During the ritualistic drowning of this deity, a straw effigy is created in her image and adorned with handicraft materials: a simple hat, empty eggshells, beads and pearls strung around her neck.

In Alicja Wysocka’s installation Lamentations, she draws inspiration from pagan, slavic rituals accompanying the drowning of the effigy of Morana. This ritual is still performed nowadays in some parts of Poland, and Czech Republic. The title of the video Lamentations refers to expressions of grief. Laments constitute some of the oldest forms of writing and examples exist across human cultures. This celebration of spring and lament of winter, also brings to the fore the trauma and violence of drowning slavic religious representations and slavic people who resisted forced christianisation. The ritualistic drowning of Morana emerged most likely after the christianisation of Poland. The drowning ritual may appear then as a kind of slavic trauma reenactment.

The installation comprises the video work, as well as a new series of ceramics by Alicja Wysocka. This new series of objects are reminiscent of votive shapes, such as fish, crosses and sinuous cups. Glazed by hand, Wysocka’s ceramics speak to the various expressions of handicraft which accompany pagan, slavic rituals. The video shows constellations of women bathing together in a bathtub performing acts of devotional and religious cleansing. Surrounded by a mise-en-scène of ornate ceramics and props, the protagonists engage in mutual acts of care which may be read as sexual, humorous, religious or friendly. Moments of joy are interspersed with imagery that may be read as more ominous; a cross of mud drawn across a spine, a face disappearing under the surface of the water.

The film reflects on slavic water spirits, water symbolism, and meanings across different religions and rituals. By healing the trauma of Morana, Wysocka is attempting to heal her personal post-christian trauma of being baptised as a newborn, in creating this peculiar cleaning ritual and handmade utensils, as a form of art therapy. In the exhibition space there is also a water dispenser with mineral water from Stuttgart, from which visitors may try the healing properties of water for themselves.