On stage
Undercurrents – Conversations about Water
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Water. Mist, snow, ice, steam, clouds, streams. An element we cannot breathe in. One that partly makes up who we are and without which we cannot live. One of the key components in watercolour painting.
To mark the release of Ord&Bild’s latest themed issue, "Water," the magazine, in collaboration with The Nordic Watercolour Museum – situated by the sea and with water at the heart of its artistic work – invites you to an evening where both water and art are in focus.
During the evening, author Mattias Hagberg, originally from Skärhamn and Mollösund, and Ann-Sofi Noring, former Deputy Director of Moderna Museet, will present their contributions to the new issue in a conversation with Ord&Bild editor Jonatan Habib Engqvist. The discussion will revolve around the elements, particularly the one that forms part of us and without which we cannot live – exploring artist Roni Horn's Water Museum and the work of author Joseph Conrad.
“I own a few things from my grandfather: a ship in a bottle; a top hat bought in London in the 1920s; and a yellowed copy of Joseph Conrad’s 1912 memoir, A Personal Record.”
In the essay My Grandfather, Conrad, and a World Bound by Water, Mattias Hagberg writes about how the sea held a special role in Joseph Conrad's work, whose territory was "the shifting waters, not the solid ground."
Ann-Sofi Noring has visited artist Roni Horn’s Water Museum in Iceland. The journey stems from an unrealised exhibition with two other artists and takes us to island worlds high above the earth. There, one can "observe phenomena, however trivial, that would otherwise have remained hidden."
Don't miss the rest of the museum before the talk!
At 5.30 pm, there will be a guidad tour of the current exhibitions (held in Swedish) led by Jonte Nynäs, educational leader at the museum.
Participants for the evening:
Ann-Sofi Noring has over four decades of experience in the arts, most recently as Deputy Director of Moderna Museet. She has written an extensive essay on Roni Horn and the Water Museum in northeastern Iceland.
Mattias Hagberg is a cultural journalist, author, and teacher of literary composition at the University of Gothenburg. His latest novel is Skallarna (2019). In this issue, he has written a piece about his grandfather, the sea, and Joseph Conrad.
Jonatan Habib Engqvist is an author, exhibition curator, and one of two editors of Ord&Bild. Among other contributions, he translated S. Ayesha Hameed’s essay Black Atlantis: Three Songs in issue 3-4 2024.
About ORD&BILD
For 130 years, the magazine Ord&Bild has been a voice of the times, a platform for art, cultural, and societal debate, for both new Swedish and newly translated foreign prose and poetry, for essays and boundary-pushing creations between word and image.
Contributors to Ord&Bild issue 3-4 2024, WATER:
Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, Wilson A. Bentley, Johannes Björk, Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Mattias Hagberg, Anna Hallberg, S. Ayesha Hameed, Ann-Marie Tung Hermelin, Ann Ighe, Elin Anna Labba, Inka & Niclas Lindergård, Patricia Lorenzoni, Lundahl & Seitl, Ann-Sofie Noring, Maria Hymna Ramnehill, Sara Rossling, Vandana Shiva, Olav Fumarola Unsgaard.