2017: The Year According to SANY

Samuel Nyholm (also known as SANY) is an illustrator and artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. Samuel is a professor in illustration at the HfK in Bremen, Germany.

1.
Skulptur Projekte Münster

From 2015 to 2017 I had the honor to work together with the designers Lehni & Trüb, the curator Britta Peters, and the semi-deus Kaspar König with the design program and sculptural installations for Skulptur Projekte 2017 in Münster. Even if the artistic part did not get very much critical acclaim, especially not in my home country, it was definitely one of the most complex and stimulating projects I have ever worked with, which means a great deal for my future activities.

—About some things, they just don’t know what to write, my best friend Ksenia Pedan wisely whispered.

2.
Kim West

Over a lunch, in an animated discussion about Apparatus and Aether with the art historian and philosopher Kim West, the week before his dissertation, I had my first auditory hallucination. In the middle of a sentence I heard someone saying a scornful “Samuel” behind my back. When I turned around I expected to see some joker of the past, but there was nothing but an unknown couple enjoying a peaceful meal. I tried to keep an unaffected face in front of Kim, but got quite terrified and tried to direct the conversation to more everyday topics. Since then, no more hallucinations, apart, possibly, from the occasional breathing sounds emerging from the ventilator in my flat.

3.
Post-feminism

Me and my former coworker Jonas Williamsson had a collaborative relapse in a book project for the 30th celebration of the Modern theater in Stockholm. Through some of the reference material from the editor, Cecilia Malmström-Olsson, I got more acquainted with post-feminist philosophy. I realized that I’ve previously had quite a prejudiced apprehension of these thoughts, but that were in fact much more of a qualified pronunciation of my own half-baked ideas in philosophy. I already had some empirical experience of gender as quality, rather than biological category, owed to my dear and wise child.

However far from any imagined goal, the relativizing of genus is in a strong rampage in Sweden, which is something that again makes me quite happy to live here. Currently we are hash-tagged back to the old binary gender polemics, but this may also lead to something good in the end.

4.
The Opera

In a brief relapse into Tinder-use in early September, I had a date with a sexual psychologist at the opera in Stockholm. We saw Romeo and Julia. They moved walls over the stage and played Tchaikovsky. Even though the date itself was perhaps not the most libidinal experience, at least not after we actually met, I thought it was going ok and maybe there was a chance to meet again. While saying farewell at the turnstiles at Hötorget’s metro station, she frankly declared that this would not be the case, even if this night was kept in her memory forever. I was astounded by this unrequested frankness and felt like we’d entered a new level of abstraction, where relations are evaluated and executed by efficient computations, like a DSM-5 scheme. I decided to quit virtual dating immediately, but nonetheless the experience appears in a new film script for my brother, Johannes.

5.
Paris

One night in November at Olivier and Susanna’s place I could neither talk, nor write. The whole routine of semiosis was temporarily out of order, even the drawing state.

In the darkness, before sleep, FAQ with Über-ich. Surpassing the linguistic lethargy, Über-ich quickly floated over all other existential possibilities with a twist of terrifying and scornful affirmation. Of course, of course, we are alone, persons, liaisons, as they seem, as they are, not more than cysts of words, symbolic attempts, on the ever-floating-ocean-like-skin-perception. It floated and floated very quickly. You/me are simultaneously Plato, Voltairine de Cleyre, a trashcan, my own face, and my own bowels; your face; felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object, whose name is common to all, but which no one has looked upon.

I thought first to write it down or draw it, but it was impossible, both mechanically and semantically (of course). What made best sense was an indexical record—inscriptions in the bark of Aether, that could, or could not, be translated later due to the given guidelines of Über-ich.

The next day I woke up and thought it was all a dream, but still a pretty good idea.

6.
AI

“If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them” and by those measures, binary computation will embrace the binary world. Everything else remains unmoved.

7.
Catalonia

Great news from Catalonia! Hopefully the whole map will eventually disintegrate in to smaller cells, of less than 150 people in each cell. Vivat Terra Scaniae. The darkness of our flag reflects the absence of banner. May this darkness wave like a forgiving kiss over all misunderstandings.

8.
Tablet and app

The combination of tablet and OneNote meant a great leap for the segmentary function of Sany’s office, Professor Nyholm, and the general efficiency of year 2017. Hats off to Microsoft and Apple Computers, Sincerely, L. Cohen.

9.
Konsthall Ruben Östlund

Be there or be Square. The Swedish film director Ruben Östlund unfortunately decided for the latter in his slapstick epos The Square. But the silver lining of that cloud was manifested in the meta art space “Konsthall Ruben Östlund” in Årstaberg, Stockholm, converting his bully-belly flop of popular pleasure in to mother Chaos virtue. Directed by Linn Hallström and co-managed by Esteban Barrios Vargas, together with yours truly.

10.
Schizotopia

In collaboration with the art universities in Lyon, Bordeaux, Oslo, Karlsruhe, and the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, HfK Bremen will make an attempt to materialise the visions of Goethe and Nietzsche: the marriage of Nous and Chaos, the schizotypal quality with Prussian organisation and perverted occidentalism.

The grandiose failure of this attempt can be witnessed the 18th to 21st of January in the Auditorium of the Univeristy of Arts in Bremen. Be there or be ¬ “square”. (www.schizotopia.com)