The publication compiles the second year of the project and is based on works by artists-in-residence Johnny Chang and Afrang Nordlöf Malekian at Grafikens Hus, as well as yasmine eid-sabbagh’s work at the Arab Image Foundation. They explore, in various ways, “gatherings” as organizational events rather than acts of collecting. One question that the publication’s contributors address is the fact that a collection always risks marking the absence of something. Ghosts, as a concept to talk about how archives and collections exclude, reveal how these structures and systems write their own stories, where presence is marked/defined by absence.

The projects artist-in-residence, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian, publish his script to the performance Suddenly It Happens! that was part of his investigation av the history of the lottery and Public Art Agency Sweden’s collection of prints. The inspiration for this work comes from Grafikens Hus’collaboration with the state-owned lottery Penninglotteriet between 1995–1998, where 75 prints were commissioned to be reproduced in miniature for the scratch-off lottery.

A version of the script from the designer and artist-in-residence, Johnny Chang’s performance lecture Living with Images is also published in the book, reworked into a lyrical essay. Living with Images is a performance lecture that took place at Hägerstensåsens medborgarhus in collaboration with the curatorial project A Movement to Hold. The essay is filled with voices, quotes, reflections, references, phenomenological investigation, and music. It invites the reader on a poetic and political walk in dialogue with archives, people, and acrosstimes.

The two scripts provide an insight into the artistic process. The work of the artists-in-residence is part of the project’s proposals for methods of acquisition, collection, and archives within Samlande tankar/Collecting Thoughts. 

This publication also includes an interview with artist yasmine eid-sabbagh by Johnny Chang and Afrang Nordlöf Malekian. eid-sabbagh works at the Arab Image Foundation—a non-profit organisationbased in Beirut with over 50,000 photos and documents in its collection. The objects are from or connected to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora. In the conversation with eid-sabbagh, names, categorisations, conditions for acquisition, and preservation are discussed, as well as what it means that a collection is absent but claims to exist.

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