In Like a Lioness, Out like a lioness

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"My desire is my virtue- subordinated to the common good. I want to go back to where it all began and, more than all, I want an eight-hour sleep so I can dream about you. I may spontaneously combust -my body will set the school on fire- burning the buildings to the ground until nothing is left but coal, experimental art objects mixed with party alcohol melting into lumps of creation and destruction. I wake up from inhaling smoke at the office upstairs and, I’m 63, I blink and I’m 36 again, Memos of what was flying away in the background remind me to walk out through what is left of the gate. I don't look back at the Lion and Swine staring at me walking away on the virgin snow as the main building explodes.

I’m in deep as you are waking me up by carrying me to your car, driving me home in the dead of night, and putting me to bed because sleeping in class is forbidden."

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This part from "In Like a Lioness out like a Lioness" is part of the research conducted in the frame of the course Collective Practices II, Symbiotic Organizations. In parallel to being a postmaster student, I worked in the student union Club Mejan as a student representative on different boards.
However, I was never a member of the club.
The 8-page long text was a way to encompass a year-long academic research that was nourished by school politics and shaped by questions of desire, sleep, hospitality, accessibility, and sobriety.
The reader is met with a series of anecdotal chapters revealing a conflicted storyteller. Who is, on the one hand, attempting to investigate the wrongs and common concerns of the territory by addressing the administration, architecture, and locus, and on the other- indirectly slowly confessing an almost obsessive-like admiration and attraction to the school’s Vice-chancellor.

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The Medici Lions

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"Dear Nat,
I am sending you on a commission mission as you are passing by Florence, the home of the original Medici
Lions. This Lion has become a well-established ornamental sculpture that is set to welcome the comers and goers of
institutions worldwide. The Lion with a ball is sourced from Buddhism symbolism and is usually accompanied
by a Lioness with a small cub, it is supposed to bring luck to the city it is supposed to mimic the same prestige
and honor and referencing a story of the caged lion that escaped -kidnap a child and returned him unharmed
to his mom -It all seemed like an analogy for something and I am not sure what-however I read the ball is, in
fact, a cannonball- and I walk to the Island the first thing I see are those cannons- of the Island and the school’s
In military history, there was a great effort to reestablish the swine and the lion as symbols for the school to
replace the crown-the informal motto of getting smashed and party hard is a stronger tradition than some royal
legacy-since the institution was started by a king (and now ruled by a queen:)). I want to invite you to write a short text about this lion- the copy became the original and the original is the point of reference."

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The texts were self-printed in ~ 100 copies, the distribution was to friends and colleagues personally by hand/by post -

they are the archive- contact the one you know to borrow a copy.

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A

Diana Agunbiade-kolawole (SK)

Nada Ali (SK)

Beatrice Alvestad Lopez (SK)

Michal Amram (TLV)

Denise Araouzou (ROM)

Sara Arrhenius (PAR)

B

Astrid Braide Eriksson (SK)

Salomé Burstein (PAR)

C

Grégory Castéra (PAR)

Nicola Chemotti (IT)

Kiril Cherikover (TLV)

Alicja Czyczel (WAW)

D

Sebastian Dahlqvist (SK)

Stella D'Ailly (SK)

Martina Sara D'Alessio (SK)

Stella Dieden Richter (SK)

E

Annika Enqvist (SK)

Guy Eytan (LEJ)

F

Daniela Fernández Rodríguez (BER)

Tine Fetz (BER)

Laura Fiorio (BER)

Aron Fogelström (SK)

G

Gwen Gbt (SK)

Steffie de Gaetano (EIN)

Orna Gilad (TLV)

Lucija Grbic (BER)

Liat Greenberg (SK)

Joanne Grüne-Yanoff (SK)

H

Jonatan Habib Engqvist (SK)

Sarah Heuberger (SK)

Laura Huertas Millán (PAR)

Hanna Husberg (SK)

K

Mikaela Karlsson (SWE/US)

Emma Kihl (SK)

Adriana Kemp (TLV)

Inbar Kemp (SK)

Anne Klontz (SK)

Sanne Kofod Olsen (SK)

L

Mikkel Larris (ODE)

Camilla Larsson (SK)

Alexey Layfurov (SK)

Michal Lazar (TLV)

M

Martí Manen (SK)

Lara Molina (ES)

Harun Morrison (LON)

Veronika Muráriková (SK)

N

Peter Thomas Ndaula Kinross (SK)

Evdokia Noula (AHN)

O

Margalit Oren (TLV)

Jenny Övergaard (SK)

P

Špela Petrič (LJU)

Alice Pontiggia (IT)

R

Erika Råberg (SK)

Alina Rentsch (SK/BER)

Andreas Ribbung (SK)

Julie Robiolle (SK/GVA)

Borja Rodríguez (SK)

S

Judit Sánchez Velasco (ES)

Antonine Scali Ringwald (PAR)

Rebekka Sæter (OSL)

Nat Skoczylas (BER)

Silvia Susanna (ROM)

Sona Stepanyan (SK)

Sara Szostak (WAW)

T

Erik Thörnqvist (SK)

Isabella Tjäder (SK)

Laura Tynan (SK)

U

Andrej Ujházy (SK)

Hagai Ulrich (TLV)

W

Dania Weiner (BER)

Sabrina Wetterkamp (SK)

Gernot Wieland (BER)

Y

Didem Yıldırım Boström (SK)

Z

Florine Zegers (AMS)

Adelė Žilinskaitė Vaškevičė (SK)

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You can make a special request for a personal copy with delivery by post by writing to me here.

 

'In like a lioness Out like a lioness' (2022) is available in limited copies at Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, free of charge. 

Reading copies are available at Mindepartementet and The library at the Royal Institute of Art (unlisted).

Digital and Audio copies in three versions are available via QR code/ link. For a link DM me at https://www.instagram.com/tal_gilad_/?hl=en

 

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