School of Aging: Performative reading, talk and workshop

Welcome to a workshop, performative reading and talk on the School of Aging with artist Ana Gallardo and writer and curator Alejandra Gatti. Introduction by Alba Flgado.

School of Aging is a project by Ana Gallardo in which the artist explores the violences that society imposes on old people, but also how elderly women have overcome them by collectively engaging in learning, caring, and support activities. She engages in long-term work and conversations with elderly women from different backgrounds, and together they develop activities that relate to their unrealized dreams and life goals.

Welcome to a workshop, performative reading and talk on the School of Aging with artist Ana Gallardo and writer and curator Alejandra Gatti. Introduction by Alba Flgado.

School of Aging is a project by Ana Gallardo in which the artist explores the violences that society imposes on old people, but also how elderly women have overcome them by collectively engaging in learning, caring, and support activities. She engages in long-term work and conversations with elderly women from different backgrounds, and together they develop activities that relate to their unrealized dreams and life goals.

In this two-part event, first a workshop and then in a performative reading and talk, the School of Aging will be in different ways presented and discussed. The workshop is an exercise in collective creation and learning with Ana Gallardo and Alejandra Gatti. The workshop has limited availability and participation requires pre-registration.

In the performative reading and talk Ana Gallardo will engage in a dialogue with Alejandra Gatti and share with the public her experience of working with the School of Aging since 2016. Together, they will share ideas around how to archive a work that is mostly immaterial and based on multiple personal relationships. This is open for public without pre-registration.

 

Programme

2 – 4PM
Workshop: Drawing Through the Other – Copying as a Point of Departure
With Ana Gallardo & Alejandra Gatti
Limited availability, RSVP to me@iaspis.se

This workshop aims to reflect on the relationship between the original and the copy. We propose to question the concept of originality as a notion that denies collective memory and what has been transmitted or learned through it. What happens when we walk a path already travelled by others? What remains from that experience? What do we take? How do we transform it?

The workshop emphasizes “the copy” as a legitimate and meaningful act of creation, while questioning the notion of originality. What does it mean for something to be “original”? What value do we place on origin when every stroke, every form, is inevitably influenced by our past experiences and references? We will also challenge the idea of individual creation, opening up the possibility of thinking and learning as a collective act where copying does not deny creativity, but rather expands it. Because every new creation carries fragments of others—whether visible or not.

5:30 – 7:30PM
Performative reading around School of Aging 
Ana Gallardo and metaninfas (Alejandra Gatti)

Departing from the book that metaninfas has written and edited around School of Aging, Ana Gallardo and Alejandra Gatti will host a performative reading. They will read various excerpts around the word AFFECT and the stories contained in it. The reading, which will last around 20 minutes, will be held in Spanish and English, alternating between the two languages that are the backbone of the book.

Based on this experience, we will talk about the word affect—about having an effect on others, about being affected, about influencing one another. Informally, through the book, they will also talk about School of Aging, about the experience we’ve shared (Ana – metaninfas), about Ana’s work and practice.

The event is organised by IASPIS in collaboration with A movement to hold.

 

Ana Gallardo is an artist based in Argentina. She addresses with her practice different levels of gender violence and the violence of growing old. In her work she proposes urgent and unique processes that move between invisibility and psychological depth; desperate words and helplessness; discretion and the exposure of the taboo. Gallardo is lecturer at Soma and runs various independent initiatives, such as Imán and La Verdi.

Alejandra Gatti is an independent writer, curator and editor. Between 2016 and 2020 she was curator of the Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires. Her current work investigates collective writing processes and practices that focus on open, displaced and constantly moving dynamics. She uses editorial work as a tool for action to circulate artistic projects and practices.

Alba Folgado is a curator based in Uppsala, Sweden. Her practice frequently focuses on exploring the visual narratives of social uprisings, including spatial, affective and counter-historical questions. Folgado is curator at Köttinspektionen as part of HAKA group. She is also artistic director of A Movement to hold archive.

A movement to hold is an open archive of artistic representations, which focuses on revisiting immaterial, critical and non-hegemonic experiences. In this occasion, A movement to hold presents “School of Aging” as a new incorporation to its open “storage” https://amovementtohold.com