Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova

In the spring of 2019, I was invited by the Anchorage Museum to become an artist-in-residence at the newly opened SEED Lab for the month of May. I spent 30 days in Anchorage. On May 4th, Shaghayegh Cyrous and myself organized two participatory performances as the Mother Tongue Space project during the NorthxNorth festival -an embroidery workshop and a song sharing circle. From May 7th, I worked on what would become the There Is a Place in My Body project. I reached out to local women to talk about agency over one’s body and femme-related bodily changes. One of the physical outcomes of these moments will be a cassette with ten different audio pieces. Another is this zine to accompany it. On May 29th, I also facilitated an event at SEED Lab for the participants, friends, and allies at the SEED Lab building.

Cassette

Side A

00:05 Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova: Body x(n). A Chorus

07:56 Rebecca Lyon: As Women, Our Names Do Change*

13:11 Jenny Irene Miller: Close to Me. A Self-Portrait

16:58 Synclair Butler: Two Poems: From the Guts of a Black Dyke Butterfly*

23:37 SEE Stories: Safia and Iqlas: In Ten Years*

Side B:

00:01 Amy and Astrid Meissner: Girl Story*

09:23 Simonetta Mignano: Next Generation Might Find a Different Mood*

14:05 Melissa Shaginoff: Beads*

21:02 Indra Arriaga: Tlaconetes: Earth Babies*

24:25 Holly Mititquq Nordlum: Tundra Sprouts*

* edited by Magdalena J. Härtelova

All tracks mastered by John Broback

Body x(n) is an audio recording, a score for six voices, a performance of said score by six female-identifying performers, and/or an audio installation featuring objects and a video.

Body x(n), body in dimension yet-to-come, considers potentiality and change in relation to a body capable of becoming pregnant, to the process of abortion, and to the limits of language when it comes to the appearing and disappearing of matter.

Currently, the piece exists as a voice recording made as part of a residency at the SEED Lab at Anchorage Museum featured on the There Is a Place in My Body cassette, as a voice recording accompanied by a soundscape by slowfoam, as a short movie conceived by Imogen Mansfield, featuring Catherine Mamani Valles, Salma Jaber, Kahine Daaou, and Ana M. Alarcon. It has also been performed live as an audience participatory performance at Certain Kind of Darkness event at Cross Attic in Prague and at How Long Is Forever event at Kunstler, Kunstlerin in Berlin, both performances featuring synthesis by John Broback.

Iterations in preparation include a publication of the performance score/non-linear poem as a chapbook and a new live performative sound form in collaboration with slowfoam, to be premiered at hidden gallery in Prague in October 2020.

2015 - 2018

A loose series of performances captured on my computer camera in which I tried to see myself and maybe discuss the tension between exhibiting and inhabiting a body.

For more see Vimeo

A video on the suspended future

A performance with Ella Schoefer-Wulf

Piece consists of the two artists smashing different edible objects with meat mullets, an audio of an original text read and a video projection of Ella Schoefer-Wulf’s video Shaking.

The piece addresses the problematic relationship of the patriarchal society to softness, that, one one hand, demands it as a feature of attractiveness, on the other, devaluates its labor and exploits its position.

2017

An installation including four channel video installation, a paper scroll, seating, and my greatgrandmother's scarf.

In collaboration with Daughter's Tongue collective
(Grace Fondow, Ella Schoefer-Wulf, Deshara Suggs-Joe)

Selected for and exhibited at 2017 California College of the Arts Commencement Exhibition, San Francisco

Three Sentences on Body is a meditation on the similarities and differences of having a female presenting body. It elaborated on my past and current work by incorporating parts of it, reinterpreting them, and broadening them. The installation featured the 2015 video Outside Myself from the Performances for a WebCam series, together with six videos, two by each, by the  poets of the women of color writing coalition Daughter's Tongue. In the videos, the artists react to the sentence: "I'm just trying to be a woman...". The videos were playing simultaneously and in different intervals, making the work generate new connections and contexts constantly. On one of the monitors two sentences were switching: "But I know whatever I am or have become, slipperiness is not one of it. Maggie Nelson" and "What we take as a shattering of language is a shattering of body. Julia Kristeva". The featured Paper Towel Scroll from the Mountain (from the Paper Towel Scroll series) addresses failing empathy.

2016 ongoing

A loose series of drawings on paper towels about questioning, not only sexuality.

2015 - 2017

A loose series of manuals exhibited in the form of a sent letter to the gallery. In a lightly absurd, poetic way, the manuals took on the form of fluxus-inspired instructions and addressed anxiety and social interactions at large.