Multiple Spirits

Stephanie Misa & Multiple Spirits
The Snake & The Archive 

Venue: PENGERKATU7TYÖHUONE HELSINKI
Date: 8 – 24.9 2022

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday: 14:00-19:00
30′ booking slot (one/two person.s at a time) 
Free / Booking here:
https://vello.fi/pengerkatu7tyohuone/

The Snake & The Archive is a collaborative research and installation project by Stephanie Misa and queer feminist, zine-producing duo Multiple Spirits. The installation approaches and encounters the archive—whether as subject, source or concept, and the intersections between them— through embodied and situated knowledge and culturally distinct perspectives. In New York, research for The Snake & The Archive was conducted at the Franklin Furnace Archive, founded in 1976 by artist Martha Wilson, and has supported and archived time-based art forms which are vulnerable due to institutional neglect, cultural bias, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content. 

Following Stuart Hall’s writing, The Snake & The Archive encounters archives as a ‘living’ institution that is by definition incomplete and open to the future and connects fragmented archival histories and memories– dealing with gaps and absences– and exploring their potential to allow for creative becomings. As the snake that molts and sheds its skin, archival material here has been returned to a cycle of creation, reborn, to evoke different subjectivities, knowledge, agencies, and imaginaries and to propose visions of the past, the present, and the future.

Stephanie Misa is a visual artist and writer. Misa’s work consistently displays an interest in complex and diverse histories, relating to these topics through her installations, sculptures, videos, prints, and writing— bringing forward questions of historical ‘authenticity’, hybridity, and embodiment. She is currently a doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki and was awarded the Art Foundation Merita prize for Artistic Research in 2021. Future projects include a Tuesday Session at the Secession (Vienna), and further exhibitions with Multiple Spirits at Pengerkatu 7 – Työhuone (Helsinki) in September 2022. www.stephaniemisa.com

Multiple Spirits is a Japanese/English bilingual queer feminist art zine founded by Mai Endo and Mika Maruyama in 2018. Based in Vienna and Tokyo, it focuses on transcultural exchanges and offers a variety of approaches to vocabularies and languages of re-narration and resistance by inviting artists, researchers, and activists from different backgrounds to contribute to the platform. Multiple Spirits has also conducted research on the historical and political role and impact of queer and feminist magazines in society. https://marusupi.love/

The Snake & The Archive is simultaneously on view at the KODA house on Governor’s Island (New York) until September 10, 2022.
With the support of SKR (Finnish Cultural Foundation), and special thanks Finnish Cultural Institute in New York.

Related event in Helsinki during the show:

21.9. Stephanie Misa: “Filipinos, Cannibalism, and Mothers Dancing on Tongues”