Talk
Chapter 2: Self
September 24th 2022
How does an individual practitioner develop creative agency within a collective with shared goals? Artist Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo alongside research consultant and dance artist Valentina Martinez present an honest and insightful discussion into Tenthaus, an Oslo-based art collective. Itself a tangle of artistic outputs, Tenthaus currently encompasses both a project room and an exhibition space, a mobile studio, and a wide range of curatorial projects. They focus on local contexts exploring collectivity and inclusion through different forms of engagement.
By gathering an inter-disciplinary team of artists, designers, researchers and historians, Tenthaus questions what contemporary art practice can mean to different audiences, and together as a collective they explore a common curiosity of exploring what a community engaged practice is. At Grafill, Jacky and Valentina delve into Tenthaus’ projects including residencies in local schools, visits to senior centres, curated dinners and workshops- each time deftly reflecting on how a collective structure manifests both practically and personally. The nomadic design practice that has been honed at Tenhaus generates a unique immediacy and reflexivity in their approach to projects.
Practically, Tenthaus operates as a holocracy, where hierarchies are distributed horizontally and workloads are shared in accordance to personal capacity. Quoting Brene Brown, the collective maintains the principle of “clarity is Kindness”, and Jack and Valentina examine communication as a vital tool between individuals within the collective. Personally, they share the nuances of being an immigrant in Norway and the complexities of being regarded as ‘exotic’ and ‘interesting’ but not necessarily ‘unemployable’, and how first and second (and third) languages form layers within themselves that can be peeled away in different situations. Both of them (alongside many other Tenthaus practitioners) came to Norway ‘with their everything’; the intensity of such an experience brings with it a sixth sense for each-others sensitivities and emotional capacities during projects. Conversations at the peripheries between friends and colleagues, subtle indications, and gentle readings of body language become gestures of care within project discussions- and this care reverberates through their work and into the communities Tenthaus engages with. At once both holding space for ‘the self’ whilst questioning, and redefining, its role within socially engaged practices.
Tenthaus gave a talk on September 24th 2022, for the symposium of the Post Design Tangle, Chapter 2, which had the theme Self. Chapter 2 of the Post Design Tangle took place at Grafill in Oslo, Norway.
Footnotes and that the audience and team brought during the talk were: The exhibition at Natsjonalmuseet that Tenthaus is participating in, the SeSiSå project, The Cultural Schoolbag, Tenthaus’ various radio activities and their location for interested visitors.