So, we – Index, PRAKSIS, and our respective Teen Advisory Boards (TAB) – are holding an online Conference: In Character. We wish to invoke the collective spirit behind the word conference, of conferring; bringing together, deliberating and reflecting as a group. Join us as we use listening, discussion and play to critically examine and re-imagine the social constructions connected to exhibition spaces.

Going to a Conference: In Character offers an opportunity to stream into the process stage of the broader ongoing project, In Character, which looks at how we are expected to behave in arts spaces - considering the language, policies and structures that underpin these norms. The project is informed by worldbuilding methodologies found in LARP (Live Action Role Play), where the players themselves first sit together to define the rules of their new fictional world.

Going to a Conference: In Character takes this prompt as its starting point, using the play of a ‘Conference’ to collectively map out the social scores we experience and ask how the use of fiction, radical imagination and roleplay can help us propose new ways of going to an exhibition. 


Going to a Conference: In Character
30         31 January 2021

Day 1: Teen Advisory Boards workshops - Closed event
Day 2: Public Conversations
Stream:  http://twitch.tv/indexfoundation
10:00  - 15:00

Language: Scandinavian Englishes, Swenglish, Norweglish and Danglish.


-Lovisa Jonsson (17)
Index Teen Advisory Board



NORDIC TEEN ADVISORY BOARDS
30         January (Saturday)
Teen Advisory Board Workshops with 
Index and Praksis Teen Advisory Boards, and young delegates of SixtyEight Art Institute Copenhagen

10:00  - 17:00 


Closed event



         


Day one is closed to the general public as Index and PRAKSIS Teen Advisory Boards, together with young delegates engaged with SixtyEight Arts Institute (Copenhagen), claim the comfort of a non-public setting to gather, meet, share and world-build together. Meeting online, we will discuss in-the-flesh experiences from the earlier workshop series, Going to an exhibition: In Character. The knowledge shared will be a starting point to work with speculative formats to push social rules and co-write scenarios that we can perform as a group: in character, online or IRL. These will be the first steps in formulating a collective Game Manual of future workshop proposals.


10:00 - 10:20 Introduction 

10:20 - 10:30 Break

(Go outside and look at the ground: Imagine that every action/person walking leaves a trace on the ground like when it’s snowing)

10:30  - 12:00 Workshop: Mapping Reality

12:00 - 12:30 Collective De-briefing

12:30 - 13:30 LUNCH 

13:30 - 13:45 Guided Tour of our Exhibitions

13:45 - 14:00  What is de-colonial thinking?
Led by Yosra Ali from Index Teen Advisory Board

14:00  - 14:15 Streaming: Building on our Own Ashes: LARP as a Decolonization tool, by Game Designer Jonaya Kemper. (Recorded for Nordic LARP conference 2020)

14:15  - 14:30  Break

(Go outside, look art the sky, imagine that it is pink. After a while it turns purple, then blue and back to green) 

14:30 - 16:00 Workshop: Proposing a Fiction

16:00 - 16:30 Collective De-briefing

16:30 - 17:00 Summary and Prep for Day 2


         

Language: Nordic Englishes. A twist of International Art English, Swenglish, Danglish and Norwegish.

PUBLIC CONFERENCE
31           January (Sunday) 
Online Conversations with Index and Praksis Teen Advisory Boards, and Young Teens from SixtyEight Art Institute Copenhagen and Guest Speaker Temi Odumosu.

10:00 - 15:00 
Stream into the project discusive parts led by Index and Praksis Teen Advisory Boards. www.twitch.tv/indexfoundation
         

Day two welcomes you to be part of a wider audience of online characters, publics, hosts and ghosts. Teen Advisory Board members will host the day’s online-discussions, talks and screenings: with the aim of opening up the challenges and questions raised during earlier In Character workshops. It offers space to think together with the Teen Advisory Boards on how we can re-imagine the social complexities of the exhibition room. We hope to look at underlying structures as they are now, to untangle and destabilize its normality, and make it possible for us to grasp and re-imagine.



10:00 – 10:30     Introduction

A welcome from the characters of the project, reflecting back at what has happened and how we move on from here. Ready. Set. Go

With Emmeli Person Curator of Learning Index, Marit Silsand project leader Praksis Teen Advisory Board, José Esteban Velazques from Index Teen Advisory Board and Annine Slettebø from Praksis Teen Advisory Board. 

10:30 – 10:40     Video break (Klara Utke Acs, Stockholm)
Introduced by Lovisa Jonsson from Index Teen Advisory Board.

10:40 – 12:00      Teen Advisory Boards: World of Questions
Introduced by Adina Edfelt from Index Teen Advisory Board. 

Coming together in smaller online-rooms, the young participants host different discussions playing with the roles of The Conference Characters. Here you will meet “The Secretary ” and “The One Making Sure Everyone Gets To Speak” and “The Questions” that have surfaced during our first set of workshops. 

12:00 – 13:00     LUNCH                   

13:00 – 13:15     Guided Tour of our Exhibitions. Re-collecting our bodies and minds in a guided stretching tour through the virtual rooms inhabit. 

13:15  - 13:30    Video Break (Tormod Carlsen, Oslo)
Introduced by Annine Slettebø from Praksis Teen Advisory Board.

13:30 – 13:45   What is de-colonial thinking?
Short introduction by Yosra Ali from Index Teen Advisory Board.

13:45– 14:00    Streaming: Building on our Own Ashes

LARP as a Decolonization tool, by Game Designer Jonaya Kemper.
(Recorded for Nordic LARP conference 2020)

14:00 - 14:15   Break

14:15 – 14:45    Temi Odumosu: The Battle of Imagination

14:45  – 15:00   Video Ending on Stream (Mia Habib, Oslo)
Introduced by Nasteha Hassan Mahamed from Praksis Teen Advisory Board.
                        
         

*Video breaks are short breaks sharing documentation and thoughts from the workshops held in Oslo and Stockholm during the fall of 2020.

The second day will be live-streamed through the gamestream site Twitch.

Follow us here  http://twitch.tv/indexfoundation

Temi Odumosu is an art historian, curator, and senior lecturer in Cultural Studies at Malmö University in Sweden. She wants to make the world a more open, vibrant, and sensitive place for authentic connection, and she believes that art can help to create it. But how do we get there? Temi started by first facing the history of visual culture during slavery and colonialism, and explored how racial thinking was installed into images. Her research also pays attention to the ways these ideas and stereotyping practices continue into the present day. Furthermore, she is trying to figure out how to contextualise colonial collections, and how not to retraumatise people, now that everything is being digitised and going online. 

IN CHARACTER IS CO-ORGANIZED BY
Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, PRAKSIS, and Publics