Taking a selection of images from our recent publication ‘Things Change Anyway’ Louise and I will present a new site specific installation for this group exhibition.

March 23, 2024-May 1, 2025

Love, Lust and Freedom is the first major Danish-produced exhibition with a focus on photography as a focal point for stories about living authentically as a queer. The artworks tell multifaceted stories that are about caring for yourself as the person you are, standing up for yourself, your desires and your desires and not least fighting for the right to love who you want - and how you want.

Based on historical material, the exhibition will unfold a wide range of both young and established photographers' depictions of queer love life in all its diversity; from touching coming-of-age stories and quiet glimpses of everyday life to poetic accounts of loneliness and dive into underground cultures that cultivate the uncompromising appetite for life and liberation.''

The Swedish Photobook Prize recognizes photography in book form and is awarded annually by the Photo Authors within SFF. The prize was established in 1996, and in 2024 the Photo Book Prize will be awarded for the 28th time. The winner will be chosen at the photobook gala on 20 March 2024 and will receive a scholarship of SEK 40,000, and the nominees will receive a scholarship of SEK 10,000 each.  

Coimbra // Citemor Festival // 28 jul 2022 
Stockholm // Dansens Hus // 27 to 29 Oct 2022
Gothemburg // Skogen // 16 and 17 Nov 2022
Lisbon // Teatro do Bairro Alto // 12 to 15 Jan 2023

Five queer dancers go through each other's bodies. They care, challenge and learn from each other.

They touch, drag, carry, fold, abandon, warm, stretch, melt into, drop, perforate, weigh, rub and operate each other. They also represent, simulate, reconstitute, recall, pretend, and play together over different sets of uncanny rules.

Through witnessing these actions, the weight of these bodies becomes more and more tangible to us. Their bodies transform with this doing. They become the quality of each of these actions. The bodies transform from flesh to movement and weight.  A musicality emerges from the metamorphoses of qualities of these bodies of weight rather than rhythmical variations.

They follow this tempo with an accuracy strange to sensation and still an intimacy foreign to authority.
 
In this self-disciplined engagement, these bodies question mainstream ideas of freedom as a territory absent of rules. Instead, they propose freedoms through the intrinsic politics that negotiate and consubstantiate their bodies, movement, and the way they touch and allow to be touched by each other.

In this Rite of Spring, nobody is elected to protagonism and beauty is not orgasmically consumed into death. No one is killed or takes their own life. Instead, this dance stays collectively protagonised by this queer group in an intimate space. It emancipates from the necropolitics of the historical fetishist projecting of tragic premonitions over queer lives.

Choreography, Costumes, scenography and light by 
Dinis Machado (they/she - SE/PT)

Original Soundtrack by 
Odete (she - PT)

Dancers
MC Coble (they - SE/US)
Ves (they - PT)
Mia Meneses (she - PT)
Ali Moini (he, FR/IR)
Sumi Xiaomei Cheng (they/she, UK/DE/CN)

Developed and premiered with
MC Coble (they - SE/US)
Ves (they - PT)
Mia Meneses (she - PT)
Puta da Silva (she - BR/PT)
Sepideh Khodarahmi (she/they - SE/IR)

Photos by
Miguel  Refresco 
Nadja Vorman 

Produced by
BARCO/Dinis Machado in collaboration with Carolina Goulart (they - BR/PT) 

Coproduced by
Teatro do Bairro Alto (Lisboa)
Dansens Hus (Stockholm)
Citemor/TAGV (Coimbra)
MARC (Knislinge)

Created in residency at 
Teatro do Bairro Alto (Lisboa)
DansInitiativet (Luleå)
MARC (Knislinge)

Project financed by
Kulturradet/Swedish Arts Council (SE) Stockholmstad (SE).

 

Annoucement from SAQMI (Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images) 

DOUBLE RELEASE: ARTIST BOOK & QUEER TIMELINE
Thursday March 23

First up: The artist book Things Change Anyway! This book is a collaboration between non-binary, trans* artist MC Coble and art / photo historian Louise Wolthers about various kinds of metamorphosis in life, bodies, relationships, and nature. The book first and foremost consists of photographs from the couple’s image archive, spanning a decade and presented in radical, non-linear editing. Intersecting the image flow are five essays by Wolthers and twelve drawings by Coble.

Second: SAQMI has for a long time now worked on a new database and timeline for Göteborg’s Queer Film History and March 23rd it will finally be released! This is an online archive everyone across the world can help us build bigger! 
Release party the night of March 23rd at Friggahuset in Göteborg! But the timeline will be online for everyone everywhere! Enjoy!
 

I have been working together with Louise Wolthers on a book project called Things Change Anyway that (fingers crossed) will be coming out in early 2023.  

We have been invited by artist Henriette Heise to speak about the project in Copenhagen on Saturday 3 September, 4pm as part of her exhibition at Astrid Noacks Atelier - The Lunatic Future for the Depressed Planet and the Flanet (flat planet): Learning from the late work of artists – who figured out how on earth to keep going' 

We are excited about seeing this work by Henriette and about speaking publicly about the project for the first time.  
We would love to see you all there! 

EVENT: Things Change Anyway

Saturday 3 September at 4pm, MC Coble and Louise Wolthers:

Things Change Anyway is an ongoing collaborative project by artist MC Coble and art historian Louise Wolthers. Consisting of photographs from the couple’s shared image archive, montage drawings by Coble and essays by Wolthers, it revolves around various kinds of metamorphosis in bodies, relationships, nature, and life – in all its non-binary impermanence and imperfection. Both the image flow and Coble’s drawings, a series of which will be on display at ANA at the event, convey a deliberately ‘messy’ complexity of ephemeral, bodily, and imaginary temporalities and experiences – of gender transition, ageing, and being put on hold by the system, of life after depression and ways of gaining agency. At ANA, readings from the essays include excerpts that connect themes such as photo history, abjection, trans* theory, the non-human, adoption, desire, friendship – as well as pictures never taken.
The event will be held in English.
 

May 6-29 2022
Gothenburg, Sweden




The Door – The Visionary Void is aimed at an audience that is interested in artistic methods that engage people and bring about change. The ”door” belongs to Vague Reseach Studios studio in Majorna, Gothenburg, Sweden and is passed daily by residents, craftsmen and dog owners, and many pass to and from the tram, school and pre-school. A small exhibition space that is accessible to a mixed audience at all hours of the day. 

The title ”The Door – The Visionary Void” describes the borderland between the public and the private that can give new impetus to visions that affect both the common and the personal. The exhibition space consists of the window in the door to the studio. In this window, we want to show and examine artists’ visions to be a part of creating change. As an artist, developing processes aimed at changes in society is an in-between position, between individual art making and activities in larger groups and associations with specific goals for change. This is a starting point for discussions, and you can listen to them here in the recorded talks with the artists.

ABOUT THE POSTER
Lke many other artists, my practice and scheduled activities were altered in 2020 due to the pandemic. Unable to perform live with collaborators and quickly exhausted by online platforms I focused on what had begun the year before as primarily a personal diary in the form of pencil drawings. Originally, they served as documentation and reflections on the process of coming out as a non-binary trans person at the age of 40, having top surgery and experimenting with testosterone.  Then as my transitional journey intersected with other experiences such as stress-related depression and the pandemic the drawings became a method of not only processing what was happening but a mode of connecting to others and of political protest.   
 
The sketches developed into a montage of daily life in a state of anticipation with comments on encounters with institutions like the health care system and migrationsverket – as well as alternative ways to cope and to maintain hope when the systems fail. The drawings can be seen as manual appropriations and scans of various communications, research and physical surroundings. Constantly growing in number, the archive testifies to a time-consuming and emotional labour, which in turn reflects the experience of various temporalities – of queer time, of anti-capitalist progress and of being put on hold.  
 
This specific poster Movement Transitioning Between Bodies that was created for The Door – The Visionary Void reflects the challenges I have making sense of our world in this moment.  How to think about the local and global violence and injustice we face? 
 
As I write in the poster: Lines of people waiting…for asylum from war, for trans* health care, for climate justice.  Bodies that are fleeing and bodies that are fighting. Bodies that are formed by the spaces between. Bodies of water, flesh, fur, bark, soil and wind.
 
The amazing complexities and interconnectivities around us can be both joyous and confusing. The lack of a black and white, of clear-cut and complete answers, of understandable explanations and instantly implementable solutions.






 

More to come but for now we have some dates for a new dance by choreographer Dinis Machado called 'Tender Memories of Queer Affection' 

I along with 4 others have been invited by Dinis Machado to dance in this new work. For now check out their website https://dinismachado.com and we'll update you with details soon.

July 15, 2022 // MARC, Knislinge SE // Tender Memories of Queer Affection (Work in Progress)
 
July 28, 2022 // Citemor, Coimbra PT // Tender Memories of Queer Affection PREMIERE

October 27-29, 2022 // Dansens Hus, Stockholm SE // Tender Memories of Queer Affection
 

MANY THANKS TO MALIN GRIFFITHS FOR THE PHOTOGRAPH OF ALL THE ARTISTS AND CURATORS AT THE OPENING

Comforting the machine

GIBCA Extended Regional Exhibition 2021 is the result of an open call to artists based in the region of West Sweden and is curated by Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu.

´The exhibition, as reflected in its title, makes a comment on the machine that is present day. Like in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the decline of the body through interaction with the machine is inevitable. The artists show markings, sutures, reactions, and manifestations of these interactions. Surrounding them, Gothenburg presents itself as a contraption made of roads, bypasses, infinite passages, noisy cranes, segregation, forming the maze of contemporary society. Its roads and blockages go nowhere – there is, in a sense, nowhere to arrive. Its paths, like arms, cross through incessant scaffolding into the barren unknown of colonial history. What then? Does it demand comfort, or do you feel comforted by it as it stands and looks at you, washing away the secrets of its trading history, anachronistic yet completely powerful and veiled in indifference? To note, whilst walking through the exhibition remember that the machine should not be befriended as it might bite. ´
– Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu.

Radical Empathy, A Continuous Score, Act 11: The Musical

Saturday 17 April, 19:00 CET.  Free online live performance and conversation. You must book a ticket in advance.  Do that now here! https://bit.ly/3smaeN4

19:00-20:45, Welcome by Lotte Juul Petersen, Director of Rønnebæksholm, followed by performance with a 15-minute intermission.
21:00, Q&A with P*D*A* moderated by curator Stine Hebert.

In April a new online performance by P*D*A*, commissioned by Rønnebæksholm in collaboration with freelance curator Stine Hebert, will launch on social-digital platforms. P*D*A* (Public* Display* of Actions*) is a collaboration between artists and educators Kjell Caminha, MC Coble, Andreas Engman and Jeuno Kim.

To develop the new online performance P*D*A* has collaborated with the following artistic partners: Anna Carlsson (musical theater/musical song composition), Dinis Machado (choreography), Sky Deep (soundtrack) and Inga Kolbrun Söring (stage/tech).

Taking its point of the departure in the musical genre, the new performance draws from the spirit of reform and education that defines Rønnebæksholm’s historical specificity, the serendipitous finding of singing collectively as a pedagogical strategy for raising awareness
and formation of a collective identity.

The new performance works within conditions of instability that compound the restrictions on movement and isolation from others, the anxiety and fear of illness, as well as the nationalisms and racism that rallies around the virus. Act 11: The Musical comes from the need to share vulnerabilities and coping strategies while aiming to be a space of both refuge and
action. Act 11: The Musical will rift on, borrow from, materialize, collage, and translate the social fabric around us during these precarious times. Woven in between narratives of personal reflections, institutional experiences, and public desires are ‘Public Service Announcements’. They serve as sonic beacons, urging vigilance when white supremacist powers and institutional violence amass in the wake of political instability fuelled by post truth politics, white fragility and entitlement during this raging pandemic.

Radical Empathy, A Continuous Score is an ongoing project that, with each act introduced, seeks to find new tools of action and awareness. How can the visual and performative literacy of art be shared and used collectively among artists, activists, researchers, and the general public to navigate the swiftly changing social and political climate?

Radical Empathy, A Continuous Score, Act 11: The Musical by P*D*A* is developed and commissioned by Kunsthal Rønnebæksholm in collaboration with freelance curator Stine Hebert. The work is part of Rønnebæksholm artistic program FællesRum supported by Det Obelske Familiefond and further support from the Danish Arts Foundation and Nordic Culture Point has enabled
this new work.

P*D*A* (Public* Display* of Actions*) is a collaboration, since 2017, between artists and educators Kjell Caminha, MC Coble, Andreas Engman and Jeuno Kim. They are informed by queer feminist performance art, street/guerilla theater, agitprop and Speakers’ Corners as well as by the differing contexts from which the members identify (Korea, USA, Brazil, Sweden and Denmark).

For questions, please contact: kjellcaminha@gmail.com

SAMMENSTØD=a crash, to crash together, bumping into each other

I was invited to participate in a group exhibition by the Ringsted Galleriet, in Ringsted, Denmark.  The work was to be in public space with some remains in the gallery.  I had planned to collaborate on a perfomance PULSE however due to Covid-19 and not being able to travel I had to change my plans.  So for the first time I will debut a few drawings, made into posters that will be placed in the public and oversized postcards that can be taken from the gallery.

Here's a glimpse of them fresh off the press. 

Thanks to Jonas Kjeldgaard Sørensen for the invitation to participate in the show and for handling the printing and installation of the poster!

Ny kunstnerisk satsning finder i år sted i Ringsted, hvor Ringsted Galleriet med støtte fra en række fremtrædende fonde præsenterer en mere åben og pågående profil med udstillingsprogrammet, SAMMENSTØD. http://www.ringstedgalleriet.dk/program2021/

I 2021 vil Ringsted Galleriet lade kunsten træde ud af de vante galleri-rammer og ind i byrummet samtidig med, at der etableres en formidlingscentral på galleriet. Med den dikotomiske læresætning: Art is art. Everything else is everything else af Ad Reinhardt er ønsket at blande kunst og alt andet sammen. Ikke fordi der stræbes efter en harmonisering af kunst og ikke-kunst, men for at skabe et sammenstød mellem kunst og hverdag, hvor kunsten i højere grad vil forstyrre hverdagslivet og dukke op der, hvor folk færdes og der, hvor man mindst venter det.