Authors:
Madde Edlund
Aga Paulina Młyńczak
Tinja Ruusuvuori
with Niamh Moloney
Edited by Nell Cardozo
A part of a curatorial project under the same title
Curated by Aga Paulina Młyńczak
This limited edition of 20 unique books accompanied the Flock Circumstance exhibition and serves as a place to gather our thoughts around the language of art and labour.
Each publication is handbound by Glasgow-based bookbinder Juju Books @juju.books and contains three, one of a kind, original analogue photographs by Aga Paulina Młyńczak @aga.mlynczak
How did we get here, and who is we? What does collaboration look like in a global pandemic? When every effort we make at working comes up against the phrase ‘I need help thinking’, how can we turn that into a positive thing? Throughout the exhibition building process the first text, ‘I Need Help Thinking’ has been a friend, serving as a text through which we read each other: a systemic story of coarticulation. With it, we wanted to demystify the processes of artmaking and working with others. The conversation in ‘I Need Help Thinking’ makes visible our engagement with romantic friendship, and how it nourished the Flock Circumstance exhibition, activating a situation that proves what a queer family can do in terms of creating and healing.
In their texts that follow, Młyńczak, Ruusuvuori and Niamh Moloney explore how resisting fixity can be a generative act. ‘Unlearning the Dictionary’ discusses the proliferation of meaning and multiplication of realities inherent in the act of translation; refuting the bilingual dictionary in an account of Młyńczak’s relationship to language and speaking as a singular act of communion outwith words, an exchange of meaning that is not quantifiable, and certainly not dominated by one tongue. In a similar gesture of loving defiance, Moloney and Ruusuvuori detail the ‘undoing’ of a workshop – revealing how something that is discussed but never finished can give a platform to this precious space of forming things together, a cohabited imaginary place.
The publication was edited by Nell Cardozo @nocardozo
Curatorial project: Aga Paulina Młyńczak @aga.mlynczak
Designed by Zineb Benassarou @zineb_bnssr
With original texts by Tinja Ruusuvuori, Madde Edlund, Aga Paulina Młyńczak and Niamh Moloney @tinjaruu@madd2222 @aga.mlynczak
Original Analogue Darkroom Prints by Aga Paulina Młyńczak