Skip to content

The Many Headed Hydra

→

Ni6369. Shell samples collected by Eggert Ólafsson & Bjarni Pálsson in 1752-1757, authors of “Travels in Iceland” (1772) courtesy of the Iceland Institute of Natural History. Skeljasýni safnað af Eggert Ólafssyni og Bjarna Pálssyni á árunum 1752-1757, höfundum Ferðabókarinnar (1772) með leyfi frá Náttúrufræðistofnun Íslands.

Arctic Hysteria by/eftir Pia Arke, video performance, 5:55 min, 1996. Courtesy Pia Arke Estate and Nuuk Art Museum. Með leyfi Pia Arke Estate og Nuuk listasafnsins.

Finnafjordur Voelva. By/eftir The Many Headed Hydra (Bryndís Björnsdóttir & Suza Husse. Video, 10.min, 2022.

Fallen Sails (House of Kal & Harbour Failures Mashup Scenography). By/eftir The Many Headed Hydra (Emma Wolf Haugh with Aziz Sohail, Bryndís Björnsdóttir, Suza Husse & Zahra Malkani). Soft architecture/mjúkur arkitektúr, 2022. 

Ghosting Richard Burton: Travels in Iceland & Pakistan 2021. By/eftir The Many Headed Hydra (Emma Wolf Haugh and Aziz Sohail photographed by/ljósmyndað af Zahabia Khuzema & Suza Husse). Photographs prints on wall/Ljósmyndir á vegg, 2022.

Harbour Failures. By/eftir The Many Headed Hydra (Aziz Sohail, Bryndís Björnsdóttir, Emma Wolf Haugh, Suza Husse) & Aziza Ahmad, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Pia Arke, Zahra Malkani with/með Khalida Hussain translated by/þýtt af Haider qhahbaz. Zine publication/zine útgáfa, 2022.

Samandari Ehsaasat/Oceanic Feelings. By/eftir Zahra Malkani, sound works and zine designed by Aziza Ahmad/Hljóðverk og prentverk hannað af Aziza Ahmad 2021/2022.

Photos by Vigfús Birgisson.

Lesa á íslensku

In 2022 work is planned to begin on a planned deepwater harbor in Finnafjordur which is projected to become profitable as a major shipping hub for Arctic extraction and geopolitical dominance in half a century due to ice-melt spurred by global warming. “Harbour Failures” takes this token of capitalist prophecy in the north-east of Iceland, a project by the private German development company Bremenports GmbH and the Icelandic government, as its departure point to interrogate capitalism’s constant expansion and its eventual failure on the edge of climate catastrophe. In linking this harbor dream with another harbor speculation in Gwadar, Pakistan, this time with Chinese money, the collective proposes that the destinies and trajectories of Global North and Global South are deeply intertwined through future, past and present.

In resistance to mainstream technology and ideology, which morbidly ferry us towards a bleak destiny, TMHH offers oracles and embodiments of radically different futures. In a manyvoiced temporary collectivity created by decolonial dreaming and transoceanic affinities, TMHH connects new works with invited contributions by artists Zahra Malkani, Pia Arke and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and the deep time presence of three petrified shells. In  1752-1757, when Iceland was a Danish colony, the shells were collected by two explorers of the Danish Crown, authors of “Travels in Iceland”, an inventory of life and land mapping extraction potentials. TMHH’s video oracle utters spells and stories from the ecological and mythological depths of the shell fossils in dialogue with Finnafjordur bay. “Finnafjordur Voelva” extends ancient future teller’s technologies into ritualistic glitches against the (neo)colonization and militarization of arctic life from Finnafjordur. 

While Pia Arke’s video performance “Arctic Hysteria” and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory’s long poem in the “Harbour Failures” zine engage indigenous lifeworlds and anticolonial practices from Greenland to disrupt the legacies of European and US imperialism in Greenland, Zahra Malkani’s “Samandari Ehsaasat/Oceanic Feelings” offers a space of deep listening with recordings from across the expansive Indian Ocean ecologies of Sindh and Balochistan. Queering the figure of the ‘explorer’, TMHH examines Richard Burton, a 17th century British explorer who traveled to both Sindh and Iceland. Creating glitches in the white male story of capitalist success, the collective tells Burton’s stories of failure on arrival and exit from the harbours of Karachi, Reykjavik and Dublin, carrying with him scandal, sickness, and colonial shame.

The Many Headed Hydra (TMHH) is dedicated to queer ecologies, myth making and situated practices that emerge from bodies of water. TMHH collaborates with inhabitants of different lands and seas to cross-connect queer*feminist and decolonial research, art making, and publishing. TMHH uses ritual and fiction, shape-shifting collectivities and storytelling to set resistant knowledges into motion. TMHH’s magazines are a performative device – they circulate as rumors, gatherings, printed matter, performances, exhibitions, radio broadcasts, evocations. The Many Headed Hydra was initiated by visual artist Emma Wolf- Haugh (IE, DE) and Suza Husse (DE) in 2016 in Berlin and has recently expanded to include the curator Aziz Sohail (PK, US) and artist/curator Bryndís Björnsdóttir (IS, DE) as part of the core collective.

Pia Arke (née Gant) (1958–2007) was a Kalaaleq (Greenlandic Inuit) and Danish visual and performance artist, writer and photographer. She is remembered for her self-portraits and landscape photographs of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), as well as for her paintings, writings which strove to make visible the colonial histories and complex ethnic and cultural relations between Denmark and Greenland.Throughout her artistic-research practice, the artist used the metaphor of her own mixed-heritage as an opportunity to engage these historical relationships, as well as address significant questions of Arctic Indigenous identity and representation 

Zahra Malkani is a multidisciplinary artist based in Karachi. Her research-based art practice spans text, video and web, and explores the politics of development, infrastructure and militarism in Pakistan. She is a co-founder with Shahana Rajani of Karachi LaJamia, an experimental pedagogical project seeking to politi- cise art education and explore new radical pedagogies and art practices. Zahra is also an Assistant Profes- sor of Practice in Communication and Design at Habib University and is currently a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. 

Immune / Ónæm

The Many Headed Hydra

Árið 2022 er fyrirhugað að hefja byggingu umskipunarhafnar í Finnafirði, sem gert er ráð fyrir að verði arðbær eftir hálfa öld, vegna bráðnunar jökla af völdum hnattrænnar hlýnunar,  sem ein helsta miðstöð fyrir flutning jarðefna af norðurslóðum og landfræðilega pólitísk áhrif. Verkefnið er kostað af þýska, einkarekna byggingarfyrirtækinu Bremenports GmbH og íslensku ríkisstjórninni. Listamannasameykið handan hafsins nýtir sér þessa táknmynd kapítalísks spádóms fyrir Norðausturhluta Íslands, sem útgangspunkt fyrir frekari skoðun á stöðugri útþenslu kapítalismans og óumflýjanlegra endaloka hans á barmi loftslagshamfara. Með því að tengja þennan hafnardraum við aðra fyrirhugaða höfn í Gwadar, Pakistan, sem áætlað er að reisa fyrir kínverskan pening, leggur sameykið til að örlög og ferlar hins vestræna heims og hins þriðja, séu fléttuð saman í gegnum fortíð, nútíð og framtíð. 

Í mótsögn við tækni og hugmyndafræði meginstraumsins, sem flytur okkur sofandi að feigðarósi, færir TMHH fram véfréttir og holdgervinga framtíða sem breytt hefur verið á róttækan hátt. Í draum um afnýlenduvæðingu og skyldleika yfir hafið, verður tímabundna, margradda sameykið THMM til, sem sameinar ný verk við framlög listakvennanna Zöhru Malkani, Piu Arke og Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory ásamt djúpstæðri, viðurvist tímans í þremur steingerðum skeljum. Árið 1752-1757, þegar Ísland var dönsk nýlenda, söfnuðu tveir landkönnuðir dönsku krúnunnar, höfundar Ferðabókar Eggerts og Bjarna, skeljunum. Úttekt fyrir kortlagningu möguleikans á jarðefnanámi lífs og lands. Í samtali við Finnafjörð fer vídjóvéfrétt TMHH með töfraþulur og segir sögur af vistfræðilegum og goðsagnakenndum dýptum steingervinganna. „Finnafjarðarvölvan“ framlengir tækni fornra framtíðarspámanna yfir í helgisiðaskrik gegn (nútíma)nýlendustefnunni og hervæðingar norðurheimskautalífsins í Finnafirði. 

Vídjógjörningur Piu Arke „Arctic Hysteria“ og langt ljóð Laakkuluks Williamson Bathory, sem birtist í tímariti „Harbour Failures,“ takast á við lífheima innfæddra, sem og grænlenskar hefðir sem vinna gegn nýlendustefnunni í þeim tilgangi að sundra evrópskri arfleifð og bandarískri heimsvaldastefnu á Grænlandi. Á meðan býr Zahra Malkani til rými djúphlustunar, með „

Samandari Ehsaasat/Oceanic Feelings,“ upptökum frá vistfræði Sindh og Balokistan, sem liggja við hið víðfeðma Indlandshaf. Með því að hinsegingera „landkönnuðinn,“ skoðar TMHH breska 17. aldar landkönnuðinn Richard Burton, sem ferðaðist bæði til Sindh og Íslands. Með því að skrika sögu hins hvíta karlmanns sem öðlast hefur kapítalíska velgengni, segir sameykið sögu Burtons sem sögu mistaka, allt frá því að hann stígur á land, þar til hann stígur af landi í höfn við Karachi, Reykjavík og Dublin, með hneyksli, sjúkdóma og nýlenduskömm í eftirdragi.