A story within a story

The book will examine ways in which systems of power have used tactics of amnesic oblivion and silence as a political strategy. The project will look at work by artists who interfere with history-making by rescuing events and their protagonists from historical oblivion and seek to open up the readings of contemporary history. Moreover, A story within a story will explore history as a radical act by focusing on socially engaged projects, which interrogate notions of collective memory and publicness from transnational and transhistorical perspectives. Taking the notion of open work as both a conceptual backdrop and curatorial methodology, GIBCA 2015 will question the structure of biennials themselves as systems of power and propose instead to engage with a series of acts of conscious freedom. This project invites artists, thinkers and cultural producers, together with members of civil society and public authority from Scandinavia and across the globe to partake in various initiatives enquiring the meaning and production of history. This book is published in conjunction with Göteborg Art Biennale 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden.