Krabstadt is a transmedia project occupying the narratives and aesthetics of popular media. In a multitude of art forms, current topics meet the fantastical: participants encounter a talking volcano with an anger management problem, a Magic Hill Mall, and much more. The design of the digital game mixes existing buildings and landscapes found in the Nordic regions with invented structures. While the content is sarcastic and crude, the visual style is cute and sweet. The project establishes a virtual geography, explores existing phantasies of the Arctic, and implements a feminist agenda.
Besides the digital game, the imaginary community of Krabstadt takes shape in animated films, a digital game, online performances, sculptures in public space, printed matter, academic texts, and most recently, an online learning platform (Krabstadt Education Center). Krabstadt’s animated film, "Whaled Women", premiered at the Berlin Biennial 2012 and has since been shown at numerous international film festivals, on television, in art galleries, and biennials. The second film, "Sex & Taxes", premiered at the Moscow film festival 2014 and has been screened at Krabstadt's own cinema "Claw" and in the basements of festivals such as the Cannes Short Film Corner. Krabstadt performances include pitches at Cartoon Media, Torino Film Lab, staged discussions at the Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden, and performative lectures at academic conferences.
This online event touches on challenges regarding the maintenance of artist-made games, matters of collaboration, and coding feminist knowledge into the game space.
Speakers: Jeuno Kim and Ewa Einhorn (artists, filmmakers and founders of Krabstadt)
Moderator: Vera Tollmann, cultural scientist
About the Speakers:
Ewa Einhorn is a visual artist and filmmaker working with animation, satirical drawing, and documentary formats. Influenced by popular culture, her work seeks to unhinge everyday assumptions by misusing language and images. The topics relate to the construction of societies, and more specifically, the relations between political rhetoric and nations as brands in the Nordic context. Einhorn received her BA from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and an MA from Malmö Art Academy and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. She teaches at the Valand Academy, the Fine Arts and Crafts department at Gothenburg University. She was born in Poland. She is currently based in Berlin and Malmö.
Jeuno JE Kim is an artist with a background in feminist theology, music, and radio. Kim's artistic practice and research focus on sound, performance, video, and text. Her peripatetic interest has an interdisciplinary framework, mixing disparate methods and cultural canons. Her work is inspired by the ongoing modernization in Korea and the Pacific East region and the urgency of the political, sociological, and cultural issues that permeate this reality, such as nationalism, identity construction, and historical narration.
Born in South Korea, Jeuno is based in Copenhagen and Gothenburg. She received her BA from Oberlin College and completed her master's degree in theology at Harvard University and an MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jeuno is currently a professor and study leader in the BFA program at Copenhagen's Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
Ewa and Jeuno have worked together since 2009 on topics related to the construction of North, and more specifically on the relations between political rhetoric, assumptions of national territory, and nations as brands in the Nordic context. Their joint feminist animation project, Krabstadt is a series of short films that satirize current topics such as immigration, integration, unemployment, and sex. "Krabstadt" employs the potential of animation as a tool for critique. In 2019, they received funding for a joint research project "Touché: Animated Images as Knowledge", which turned "Krabstadt" into a video game. The game was released in the summer of 2020 on itch.io.
The event will take place as a digital live stream on the "Open Stage" in the Collaboratory - the new digital Open Space of the Lenbachhaus: www.collaboratory-lenbachhaus.de
Questions can be asked via the chat.
No advance registration is required for the event.
Allow a few minutes for the digital journey to the stage.
The Collaboratory works best on a PC or laptop with a Google Chrome browser.
After selecting a name and color, participants become a marble and can move freely through the endless 3D space using mouse clicks or keyboard arrow keys. The Open Stage (blue round platform with green screen) can be found at the back left of the room. When you approach it, the button "Enter" appears. The live stream will open in a new window.
If a participation via the Collaboratory is technically not possible, you can follow the event (without chat possibility) directly via Youtube.
