Attitude Apoteket: Swamps of Zolitude, Talking Mirrors and Dreams
This one is about friendship, art, collectively building culture and dreams.
I keep seeing this quote:
“Buy art from living artists, the dead ones don’t need the money”
I went ahead and I asked Perplexity.ai. (Note: if you haven’t tried Perplexity yet, I can’t recommend it enough. In my humble opinion, this model—and others like it—is the future of search. And it does not contain ads. I repeat, it has no ads, at least at the time of writing.)
Here is the result:
“The quote "‘Buy art from living artists, the dead ones don’t need the money’" is attributed to Calum Hall, the founder of Creative Debuts, an art platform dedicated to celebrating emerging talents in the art world. This mantra reflects his mission to democratize the art world by encouraging people to support living artists rather than focusing on the works of deceased artists who do not need financial support.” Link to response and sources here.
Why am I telling you this?
Because life is funny that way. Calum and Creative Debuts’ mission is something I feel very deeply.
Artists don’t survive only because of their passion and their urge to create.
Artists working in (INSERT ARTISTIC DISCIPLINE HERE) have kids, mortgages, and bills just like everyone else. Thank God the world is realizing that without creativity and art, we are doomed.
Which brings me to the topic of today’s post. At Rebel Strokes, I have tried very hard to keep a good balance between contemporary artists and legendary artists from the past.
Luckily, we are experiencing an explosion of art and creativity, which I believe will only increase, for good or for ill, due to advances in technologies like AI. Everyone and anyone can create.
You could argue that the craft, the mastery of art, may be diminished, but I prefer to have a protopian point of view about this subject.
I believe Generative AI is creating a tsunami of creativity, just like the Internet and the digitalization of art did back in the day. I touched on this in one of my recent posts and I’ll be writing about this topic regularly.
In any case, Rebel Strokes’ main goal is to document my art research, curate the artists that I love, and most importantly, educate myself about artists who inspire me, move me and have changed my thinking.
But “when was the last time you changed your mind?” you might be thinking.
I’m glad you asked.
It was a couple of weeks ago when a couple of artists—for lack of a better word, as describing them is somewhat complex—released (I thank the old Gods and the new ones) their website.
Saying I was happy would be an understatement.
Only on occasion, I have talked about artists I’ve met in person in this publication. Although in this specific case, I have. Only briefly though.
Today I am going to brag about this couple.
Open the Mythological Door to Attitude Apoteket
Allow me to introduce you to Attitude Apoteket, they are not on Substack, in case you are wondering.
They are an incredible duo of creatives/artists/geniuses that I have the privilege to call friends.
I met John and Katri—the humans behind Attitude Apoteket—in 2017 through one of my artistic ventures, AARHUSMAKERS, a platform cooperative of artists with a mission in mind:
To develop a cultural platform that curates, develops, and exposes cultural projects to a Glocal community of experience seekers.
Although, in all fairness, it all started as a small online marketplace for artists complemented by Art Fair events in the city of Aarhus, it kept evolving and iterating until, well, until it didn’t, and we disbanded.
With that said, some of my greatest creative memories come from that time of my life.
I remember meeting Katri at Tir Na nÓg, the local Irish pub here in Aarhus.
She had been talking with Dan—my co-founder and friend at AARHUSMAKERS. Katri wanted to check in with me whether “she could help”, and thus, the beginning of a creative friendship began.
The incredible work they kept putting in front of our audience, out of love, care, and an immense level of creativity is beyond the detail this post could cover.
I can say this out loud, I have never met anyone like them.
In 2019, we ran 25 exhibitions at the “End of the Line,” a small temporary gallery placed between an industrial district and the main hospital in Aarhus. The space is also known as the Ovartaci Fields, and I believe it is still operating under new management.
That year, we invited upcoming and well-known artists in the local scene to participate, exhibit and create.
We covered every medium, from music to immersive exhibitions, from painting to theatre, and it was all done on a non-profit basis. As curators and gallerists, we purely took a commission from any sales or tickets to maintain the production of art for the sake of art (remember that quote at the beginning?).
Attitude Apoteket was critical to keeping the project alive, from producing their incredible visuals to curating our Instagram feed, to of course, producing their own immersive exhibition, Zolitude Swamp.
This exhibition encapsulated the ethos and universe this duo - the particle and the wave - have been dreaming and ideating since before I met them.
Here is a selection of shots, all taken by yours truly:
I hear Zolitude Swamp II is coming. I won’t miss it.
John and Katri, are so unique in their point of view, so versatile—digitally, with artisanal artifacts and visual art—that, as I mentioned before, it is difficult to find a category for their work.
In my opinion, they are a gift to this world. There, I said it.
Unfortunately, after shutting down our operations, many of the contributions from Attitude Apoteket to the development of AARHUSMAKERS are no longer online. However, some threads of their work with AARHUSMAKERS still exist.
Today, I’m just lending them this small corner of the internet. Because I think their website launch has been long time coming. Because I feel an arrival like this should be celebrated.
I could try to describe them, but I’m sure I won’t be able to do it better than themselves. Let’s take it from the horse’s mouth, shall we?
“Attitude Apoteket is a renaissance duo based in Aarhus, Denmark.
To live in a parallel structure, to create independently, to search for meaning, to share.
We are both particle and wave.
/ John and Katri.”
Since their website launch, I devour their writing, love the Dream Work section, and have participated in their TALKING MIRROR, an introspective exercise for which they will provide:
“a prescription that arrives at your email address. While it starts in the same place for everyone, it eventually adapts to your individual alchemy, rhythm, and level of interest.”
I got mine. It was wild. Unexpected. Odd. I’m still digesting.
When they launched their website, I received this email as the first issue of their letters.
I think this encapsulates Katri’s ethos and universe so well that, again, me trying to describe it would be incredibly disrespectful, so I have taken the liberty to post it here.
To me, this is an incredibly moving ode to vulnerability:
Where to begin.
“I just don’t know where to start”.
I hear myself saying this far too often. A beginning doesn’t have a “where”. Just like walking, to start is to trust that you will not fall face down as you lean your body forward. But I find a bitter-sweet comfort in telling myself, “I don’t know where to start”.
From a very young age, I turned to poetry as a way to externalise the indescribable. Putting words in rhythmic patterns brought relief, it made sense of what didn’t make sense within.
In moments when I remember that I want to be friendly with myself with no expectations, to drive out the negative self talk and the chants of “not knowing” — I often find myself humming, a song longing to find escape, a magic spell trying to find its way to the surface.
In one such moment, a couple of years ago, fed up with the drumming of “not knowing where to start”, I let my humming rise in my throat, forming words, so I could hear what my true self wanted me to know:
“Have you been hiding the comfort
of fighting the urge to do things?
Resistance is sweet…”
I recorded this moment and it often plays in my head now, next to the low drum of “not knowing”. Like everything else — it is by choice. And it comes down to my choice, just the same, to let go of the sweet sticky comfort of making excuses, to acknowledge the inner song and accept the inconvenient truth.*
It is hard work to be honest with your self. It takes perseverance, requires grace and demands energy.
“Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.”
{Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah}
I was six years old when I made my first magazine. At eleven, I was creating first websites, which where much like a magazine as well. It has taken me a better part of the last 5 years to start building this www space for Attitude Apoteket. I only had one goal in mind — I want to write.
But getting close to what you desire is a curious feeling and sometimes has effects opposite to moving forward. I now had a page ready to hold my thoughts and I was really struggling to let any of them out, because “I don’t know where to start”.
So for me, this is the most honest way to begin — to admit, that I was too attached to the comfort of my own resistance. And to accept, that while terrified of the unknown, I also can’t wait to see what it’s like.
To fail is to begin, watch what happens next.
As always, I would love to know what you thought reading this, if you feel the same way or if it brought up something that was hidden inside you.
x, Katri
online version of this letter includes the audio recording of my inner song and a workbook form you can fill out to reflect on your own inner song of resistance.
I have nothing else to add to this. I just hope - I implore you really - you take a few minutes of your limited time to explore their universe and connect with Attitude Apoteket.
Their artistic vision and practice - whether they like the praise or not - is beyond description.
so so grateful <3 working on my own version of 'Ode to AARHUSMAKERS' ;>