DISCUSSION
Kohta Zoom: Intervening the Void
Thursday, 8th November 5.30–7 pm
with guest speakers Georg Grotenfelt, Hanna Johansson, and Richard Misek

Conversation in English
Free entrance
Address: Kohta, Työpajankatu 2 B, building nr. 7, 3rd floor

Join us for a discussion about artist Aslan Gaisumov‘s works at Kohta next Thursday, 8th November at 5.30 pm.

We are happy to present our guest speakers: Georg Grotenfelt, filmmaker and documentarist, and Hanna Johansson, Professor of Contemporary Art Research at the Academy of Fine Arts, as well as the moderator of the discussion, Richard Misek, filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Kent.

The discussion will be held in English, with a focus on Gaisumov’s video piece from 2017, Keicheyuhea. There will be an opportunity to watch the film in full at the beginning of the conversation.

Gaisumov, who grew up during the two Chechen Wars of 1994–96 and 1999–2009, has gained recognition for his visually and conceptually convincing articulations of the country’s colonial history and recent past. Working with the moving image, with objects and installations and on paper, he has established himself as a shrewd, sophisticated transformer of historical wrongdoing – and in particular the void of silence that often cordons it off – into crystalline images that unite the corporeal and the analytic, the incandescent and the meditative.

Currently on view at Kohta, Keicheyuhea is Gaisumov’s first ‘proper film’. It takes the form of a travelogue, in which Zayanu Khasuyeva, Gaisumov’s maternal grandmother, is being brought to the mountainous Galain-Chaz region from which she and all other inhabitants were expelled, wrongly accused of having collaborated with Nazi Germany. It is the first time in 73 years that she is allowed back. The car stops as close as it is now possible to get to Kayçu-Yuxe, or Keicheyuhea (the Chechen name for her native village, which can be interpreted as ‘White Closeness’). Khasueva, standing at the roadside and leaning on a too-short stick, addresses the dead quiet valley: ‘Hail, place!’

Welcome to hear more at Kohta on Thursday, 8th November!

—

Kohta Zoom is a new line of programming at Kohta. The aim is to stimulate in-depth discussion on the content of the exhibitions in conversation with exhibiting artists and other invited participants. The initiative is supported by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.