FRANK

2021
264 pp
170 x 240 mm

FRANK was an Oslo-based queer-feminist platform established in 2012 to nurture art and critical discourse revolving around gender, desire and sexuality, run by Liv Bugge and Sille Storihle until 2020. The final publication, FRANK, is a self-archive, making the work accessible for the future, filling institutional gaps. It offers insight into the thinking, process and life of FRANK, and it also provides straightforward information about the projects FRANK undertook and when. Running a nomadic platform that started as a salon—as a social and critical meeting place—made FRANK vulnerable to the politics of remembering, but this book gives shape to the nomadic and uncategorizable life of FRANK through newly commissioned essays, conversations, unpublished and reprinted articles, and personal anecdotes and letters.

As with many of FRANK’s other projects, this book has found its form in a three-part structure following a chronology of urgency—one not defined by linear time—and understood as the various phases of FRANK. The first part, Temple of Friendship, fleshes out the initial drive behind FRANK, focusing on the salon and its various forms. Part two, Genealogies, is dedicated to the work on the tracing and touching of history through exhibitions, publications, screening series and the restaging of a historical lesbian club. The last section, Power, marks FRANK’s shift from concerns of representation to production, discussing the power relationships in the art field that have encouraged and provoked FRANK.

Editor
Sille Storihle

Design  
Nell May

Distribution
Torpedo Press

Contributors
Brynjar Åbel Bandlien, Katarina Bonnevier, Liv Bugge, Antonio Cataldo, Malene Dam, Mathias Danbolt, Geir Haraldseth, Shoghig Halajian, Siri Hjorton Wagner, Every Ocean Hughes, Maaretta Jaukkuri, Helle Lindskog, Louise Dany (Ina Hagen and Daisuke Kosugi), Magnus Mork, Eline Mugaas, Wencke Mühleisen, MYCKET, Cecilie Poulsson, Ruben Steinum, Sille Storihle, Elise Storsveen, Fredrik Svensk, Anne Szefer Karlsen, Jim Særnblom and Nico Woche  

Financial Support
Arts Council Norway, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, The Fritt Ord Foundation, Nordic Culture Point, Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Atelier Kunstnerforbundet and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York

www.f-r-a-n-k.org