Name: Swimming in Reykjavík: Michael Laundry in SIND
Start: 2025-09-05T19:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-09-05T20:00:00+00:00
Location: Hringbraut 122, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland

$Swimming in Reykjav\u00edk: Michael Laundry in SIND$

SIND gallery hosts Michael Laundry's A History of Swimming: Swimming in Reykjavik. The project explores the role of the river poet and eco-phenomenology. Athletic choreography, and memorable monologues appear as 'complementary epistemologies', a term from Louise Westling's 'Darwin in Arcadia. Brute Being and the Human Animal Dance from Gilgamesh to Virginia Wolf' (2006).
The project is part of the artist's long-term project A History of Swimming examining waterscapes and hydro-choreography.
In Reykjavik, Laundry finds supportive waterscapes for making art that discusses pools and politics. Laundry embodies Wolfgang Streeck - a river poet reciting a love letter to Eleanor Perry (1914-1981). Perry was a feminist screenwriter. She wrote the 1968 screen adaptation of The Swimmer (1968). The address to Perry reflects on the loss of public pools as a trend that reveals “new patterns of consumption in the private sector encouraging the privatization of existing public services” namely public pools (Streeck, 2017).
Concept and Direction by MICHAEL LAUNDRY
Created in Collaboration with MEERI MÄKINEN
Performed by MEERI MÄKINEN and MICHAEL LAUNDRY
Musical composition by FENRIR VÁN
Project funding supported by The City of Bergen. Residencies supported by Scen46 Gothenburg (SE), and the Reykjavik Dance Festival.