My Wild Flag

This week marks the return and eighth edition of the dance performance festival My Wild Flag. While past editions notably leaned towards music or performance art, this year signgicantly power-presses the wheel back to dance, in collaboration with Dansens Hus, MDT and Moderna Museet. Curators of the festival; Karina Sarkissova and Pontus Pettersson speak about bringing forth the festival in what is their first year ever without project funding, about their DIY legacy and initially starting out in response to a lack of queer representation and initiatives within Stockholm's dance field. Having recently inspired the birth of a sister festival in Oslo, the two speak about some of the hustle and bustle that goes down behind the scenes of running this festival. And then there's the excitement when dance royalty Mats Ek shows up to your festival.

Ewa Dziarnowska. This resting, patience. Photo: Spyros Rennt

C-P: First things first; who are the two of you; the makers of the brainchild that is My Wild Flag?

MWF: We are Karina Sarkissova, curator and dramaturge, and Pontus Pettersson, choreographer and artist. And we initiated this queer dance and performance festival and platform My Wild Flag eight years

ago now.

C-P: What prompted you to put My Wild Flag into motion and what do you see being your position and role in the dance ecosysyem locally and in Sweden?

MWF: We met discussing the lack of queer representation and initiatives within Stockholm's dance field. Both of us had studied abroad and returned to Stockholm with new perspectives and things we wanted to bring into our locality, in order to be able to be part of it. We started talking and realized we wanted to create a festival. From there, things started to take shape. Over the eight years the festival has existed, we've created an alternative space for dance in Stockholm, possibly even in Sweden. My Wild Flag works as a temporary space, a fiction, a concept and a community where we share works, ideas, and topics we find important. From the beginning, we invited a few friends, but over time, we developed a curatorial practice, because there are ethics involved, of course. 

C-P: What's the funding realities like for MWF and what might be recurring challenges on your end or such you might anticipate in a time where the cultural sector will be forced into a tighter spot?

MWF: My Wild Flag is an international festival for dance and performance, and it's funded through project grants. We receive the same funding as our colleagues who create individual dance works. It’s great because it allows us to run the festival, but it's strange that a Swedish international festival is still reliant on project funding. This system makes it difficult to plan on long-term basis, and we’ve often only been able to look ahead one year at a time. We’ve been fortunate to receive project funding for the past seven years, but this year we didn’t get it, so we’re facing challenges just like the rest of the freelance art scene is. Our collaborations with dance venues, this year with MDT and Dansens Hus are now more urgent than ever. 

Pontus Pettersson and Karina Sarkissova of My Wild Flag. Photo: My Wild Flag

C-P: What creatives make part of My Wild Flag's extended network?

MWF: That's a great question! My Wild Flag, or as we call it by nickname; Flaggan includes not us; Karina and Pontus, but also a wider network of artists we've maintained a dialogue with over the years. We have also “sister festivals”  like Tanz im August in Berlin, Les Urbaines in Lausanne, and Bâtard in Brussels. These collaborations allow us to share resources and ideas, and they present an urgency and curiosity we share.

DIY is a big part of the festivals' spirit and legacy, and so many of our team members are also practicing artists. For example, Jonatan Winbo, our light designer, brings a DIY and punk sensibility to his work. He’s been with us since the beginning, helping solve lighting problems on the spot or developing the relationships with new artists. We’ve also worked with people like Edith Hammar, who designed the merchandise the first three years that really helped the festival find its identity. Graphic designer Sara Kaaman has been a gem and absolute imperative to finding ways in which we can create interfaces to the audience and the curator Mmabatho Thobejane, another key person, has been producing the festival together with us. 

C-P: So, give me the tea and juice on some highlights and crazy stories about things that happened over time...

MWF: Oh, there are so many!  We have been solving problems in unexpected ways, thanks to our communities, wild thinking, giggles and a lot of heavy lifting. We have been building up audience podiums in five minutes, using white carton instead of a white floor for Lydia Östberg Diaktésand Cassie Augusta Jørgensen. Lacking space for Frederic Gies lecture The Anus Dosen’t Exist, we asked them if they could have it in the toilet of Weld, and they agreed. In 2018 we collaborated with Anna Efraimsson (MDT's present director) and her curatorial project The Blob. We co-curated Krõõt Juurak and Alex Bailey’s project Performances for Pets. Anna took time off her job at Stockholm University of the Arts and drove the artists with her car to the homes of cats, and babysat their child while they were performing.

Another memorable production was From the Throat to the Dawn by Sorour Darabi, which involved ice sculptures, designed by Sorour Darabi and Alicia Zaton. We had to transport the ice sculptures in a fridge truck for four hours, and they arrived just before the show to be lifted in the rig with chains. It was nerve-wracking because the room was warmer than expected, and the sculptures were melting faster than anticipated. We had to make sure the water didn’t damage the floor, crawling around with towels in dark spots of the space.  Oh and this year, just yesterday, we actually had Swedish dance royalty Mats Ek and Anna Laguna in the audience for Tiran Willemse's Untitled (Nostalgia Act 3). That was really exciting and interesting to see them in the audience.

Tiran Willemse. Photo: Ianne Kenfack

C-P: What signifies this year's programme?

MWF: This year, we have three dance pieces, one movie night, one discursive event and one party. The theme is Joining Forces, which feels especially relevant this year as cultural funding in Sweden is getting cut. We’ve collaborated with MDT, Dansens Hus and Moderna Museet.

We’re presenting Ewa Dziarnowska's This resting, patience, a three-hour durational piece, as well as a movie night with the iconic Vaginal Davis, for which she picked two dance movies that were influential to her; Hair and All That Jazz. Tiran Willemse's already mentioned Untitled (Nostalgia Act III) is also part of the festival, the group a guttering does an event and a My Wild Flag talk, and there is as well Marga Alfeirão's work Lounge. One thing that runs through all three dance performances, as well as the movie night, is the central theme of dance and how it's used as a vehicle to understand our present moment. Even though each piece is distinct, there’s a very strong focus on dance, possibly the strongest we’ve ever had. Although we call it a dance performance festival, previous editions often leaned more towards music or performance art. But this year, it's truly about dancing. Through dance, political themes emerge—such as labor, dance history, ballet, the European white lens, and themes of sexuality and desire. As always, My Wild Flag has an edge—there’s a bit of nudity and a provocative energy. One of the artists of 2022 even mentioned our festival “is a festival of asses”.

a guttering. Photo: Dalia Alfaghal

C-P: How did Vaginal Davis end up getting rolled in for a movie night. Certainly a bit unexpected!

MWF: It ties into our theme of Joining Forces. Vaginal Davis was already working with Moderna Museet and MDT and since they have a queer and DIY legacy, it made sense to include them in this year's program. Although they’re often associated with visual arts now, Davis' history in shaping today’s artistic and performative landscape made them a perfect fit for the festival.

C-P: From a critical lens; what are the regards in the Swedish dance scene could need improving?

MWF: There’s a huge gap between the fringe and the more established parts of the dance scene, which affects how audiences consume and perceive dance. We’d love to see more experimental work supported by venues and more generosity towards experimental perspectives. Another issue is the lack of touring infrastructure. We need more dramaturges, managers and support systems to work with artists interested in taking their work abroad. Many international artists who come to My Wild Flag are already showing their work in other parts of Europe, but there’s very little support for Swedish artists to do the same.

There’s still a strong presence of classism, whiteness, and color-blindness in the scene. It’s something prevalent across northern Europe, not just in Sweden. We anticipate that dance artists in Stockholm will likely need to become more self-organized to sustain the scene. We will surely see more DIY-initiatives in the future.

Marga Alfeirão Lounge. Photo: Mayra Wallraf

C-P:  Lastly, you inspired a similar festival in Oslo; how cool is that? On that note; what's next for you?

MWF: Yes, the festival Mind Eater, curated by Louis Schou Hansen and Runa Borch Skolsteg in Oslo was inspired by My Wild Flag. That's so cool and we are super honored, but there were many initiatives before us that inspired us, like the queer bar Bitter Pills, the autonomous festival Queeristan in Amsterdam that shaped our understanding of queer spaces and involvement. As for us, we still have one more day of the festival with a few more performances and a party. Beyond that, we’re already talking about next year’s festival. We’ll continue working on our own projects while planning the next edition of My Wild Flag. Pontus has upcoming tours in Finland and Karina curates at Köttinspektionen Dans in Uppsala. There’s always something on the horizon!

Ashik Zaman